Healthchecks.io launched in July 2015, which means this year we turn 9. Time flies!
Previous status updates:
- In 2018, My One-person SaaS Side Project Celebrates its Third Birthday
- In 2021, Healthchecks Turns 6, Status Update
Money
Healthchecks.io currently has 652 paying customers, and the monthly recurring revenue is 14043 USD. MRR graph:
Side note: to minimize the number of data sub-processors, I am not using revenue analytics services. I used a script and a spreadsheet to make the MRR graph!
I’m happy to see MRR gradually go up, but I’m not optimizing for it. Healthchecks.io is sustainable as-is, and so I’m optimizing for enjoyment and life/work balance.
More stats (user count, check count, pings/day) are available on the Healthchecks.io About page.
Still a one-man business?
Yes, Healthchecks.io is still a one-man business. Until 2022, I was part-time contracting. Since January 2022 Healthchecks.io has been my only source of income, but I work on it part-time.
At least for the time being I’m not looking to expand the team. A large part of why I’m a “solopreneur” is because I do not want to manage or be managed. A cofounder or employee would mean regular meetings to discuss what’s done, and what’s to be done. It would be awesome to find someone who just magically does great work without needing any attention. Just brief monthly summaries of high-quality contributions, better than I could have done. But I don’t think I can find someone like that, and I also don’t think I could afford them.
Growth Goals
I’m not planning to tighten the limits of the free plans. I started Healthchecks in 2015 because I thought the existing services (Dead Man’s Snitch and Cronitor) were overpriced. I started with “I think this can be done better and cheaper”, and I’m sticking with it.
For the same reason, I’m also not planning to raise pricing for paid plans.
I’m choosing not to pursue enterprise customers who ask about PO billing, payments by wire transfer, custom agreements, and signing up to vendor portals. “But you are leaving money on the table!” – yes, it is a conscious decision. In my situation, the extra money will not make a meaningful difference, but the additional burden will make me more busy and grumpy.
Feature-wise, I am happy with the current scope and feature set of Healthchecks. I am not planning to expand the scope and add e.g. active uptime monitoring, hosted status pages, or APM features.
Healthchecks the product is hobbit software and Healthchecks.io the business is a lifestyle business.
Hosting Setup
The hosting setup is mostly the same as in 2022. Just a few updates:
- Web servers upgraded to Hetzner’s AX42 (AMD 8700GE, 8 cores). On the old machines, saw a few nonsensical Python exceptions. A kernel update and a reboot didn’t fix it. Rather than messing with hardware troubleshooting, I upgraded to newer, faster, and more efficient machines.
- Database servers upgraded to Hetzner’s EX101 (Intel 13900, 8+16 cores). I was setting up new database replicas after an outage and failover event and took the opportunity to upgrade hardware.
- Healthchecks.io now sends its own email using maddy.
- Healthchecks.io now stores ping body data in S3-compatible object storage. This keeps the PostgreSQL database size down but adds reliance on an external service.
That’s it for now, thank you for reading! Here’s to another 9 years, and in the closing here’s a complimentary picture of me trying to fit through pull-up bars, and my kids, Nora and Alberts, cheering:
Happy monitoring,
Pēteris,
Healthchecks.io