Frequently asked questions

Drop any URL on the homepage. We send a single HTTP request from a European data center with an 8-second timeout, then show you the verdict (UP / DOWN / DEGRADED), response time, HTTP status, SSL certificate info, DNS resolution, and tech-stack hints. No signup, no IP storage, results are cached for 60 seconds. Free checks are rate-limited per hashed IP-prefix to prevent abuse.

We check every five minutes, so the worst case is roughly five minutes plus the time it takes to deliver an email — usually under a minute. We don't claim sub-second alerting, because we'd have to lie. Other tools advertise 30-second or instant intervals; in practice that means more noise, more false positives during their own infrastructure hiccups, and a higher price tag. Five minutes is the sweet spot for solo operators.

Yes. One European VPS, currently in Belgium. We say so on every relevant page because honesty matters more than the multi-region marketing theatre. For 95% of solo founders this is what you actually need: the question 'is my site up?' has the same answer from any vantage point most of the time. Multi-region monitoring matters when you're already running NOC-grade ops — and at that scale you've outgrown us anyway.

Three things. (1) More monitors — 10 to 100 via a slider at $1.50 per monitor instead of Starter's fixed five. (2) AI anomaly explanations: when a check trips an unusual pattern (response-time spike, DNS change, SSL expiring, server header drift) we generate a plain-English explanation via Claude Haiku so you don't need to interpret the raw data. (3) Weekly AI executive summary: every Monday 09:00 in your local timezone, Claude Sonnet writes a 5-7 sentence operations digest covering uptime trends, incidents, and recommendations.

Monitors pause and we stop running checks, but your account, monitor list, and history stay intact for 30 days. Add a payment method during that window to reactivate without losing anything. Don't add payment within 30 days and we'll fully delete the account and its data — that's the GDPR floor and it's also the right default.

No IP address is logged anywhere. Free-tier rate limiting uses a salted hash of the IP-prefix that expires hourly, so even the rate-limit cache can't be reversed to identify visitors. The only personal data we hold is your account email (paid tier) and any URLs you choose to monitor. We use cookieless self-hosted Umami analytics, opt-in via the GDPR cookie consent. No Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no third-party trackers — ever.

Public HTTP/HTTPS endpoints only. We block private IP ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, 169.254.0.0/16, ::1, fc00::/7), localhost, and any hostname that doesn't resolve to a public IP. This is both an abuse-prevention measure and a basic SSRF guard — without it, the free-check tool could be weaponized against internal infrastructure. If you need staging monitoring, expose it on a public hostname (Cloudflare Access works well as a gate) and monitor that.

Solo-operated by flndrn out of Belgium, paid for entirely from operating revenue. No VC, no acquisition exit plan, no surprise pricing changes when investor runway depletes. The roadmap is accountable to paying users instead of a board. This is a real, sustainable, single-operator project — see the About page for the longer version.

Polar.sh — our merchant of record — charges in USD because the global SaaS market expects USD. They convert into your local currency at checkout. We're paid out in EUR after their fee and the FX conversion, which is also why the listed prices include a small premium over a pure EUR-pricing equivalent. Predictable for you, FX-resilient for us.

If you're billing from a country that requires VAT collection (EU, UK, Australia, and several others), Polar.sh adds VAT at the published rate at checkout. You see the full breakdown — subtotal, VAT, total — before paying, and your invoice itemizes it for accounting. Customers outside VAT regions pay just the listed price.

$1.50 per monitor per month, anywhere from 10 to 100 monitors. Drag the slider to your number, the price recalculates instantly. So 13 monitors is $19.50/mo, 27 is $40.50/mo, 100 is $150/mo. There are no monitor 'tiers' or surprise step changes — it's pure per-seat. Annual pricing is the same formula times 10 (giving you 2 free months versus paying monthly).

Yes, anytime, via the Polar.sh customer portal accessible from your billing page. Polar handles proration automatically — upgrade mid-cycle and you're billed for the difference; downgrade and the credit applies to the next cycle.

Polar retries automatically per their dunning schedule. We mark the subscription past_due in Convex but keep monitors running through the standard retry window. If retries fail through the cutoff, monitors pause and you can reactivate by updating the card.

Yes. Cancel from the Polar.sh customer portal — no email needed, no retention call. Monitors run through the end of the current period you've already paid for, then pause. Account data stays around 30 days in case you change your mind, then deletes automatically (GDPR-aligned).

Yes — within 14 days of payment, no questions asked. Reply to any email we've sent you, or use the contact form, and we'll refund the most recent charge. Beyond 14 days we generally don't refund, but reach out if you've been charged for service we couldn't deliver and we'll make it right.

Yes, two months free — pay 10× the monthly rate for a year of service instead of 12×. Same for Starter ($60/year vs $72) and Pro ($150/year at 10 monitors vs $180, scaling linearly).