Free Website Monitoring Without the Usual Compromises
JF Website Monitor's free plan includes 10 monitors, 5-minute checks, email and Telegram alerts, content change detection, HTML snapshots, SLA reports, and incident timelines — all free, no credit card, no trial period. The free tier is the full product.
Quick answers
What is actually free?
Everything: 10 website monitors, 5-minute check frequency, email alerts (with verification), Telegram alerts, content change detection, HTML snapshots (up to 10 per site), SLA reports with PDF export, incident timelines, and daily check logs.
Is there a trial period or time limit?
No. There's no 14-day trial, no credit card required, and no expiry date. The free plan is free for as long as we offer it. Paid plans are planned for the future, but early users will get advance notice and a clear migration path.
Why offer this much for free?
We're in our launch period and prioritizing growth over revenue. We want to build a user base, collect feedback, and prove the product works. Limiting the free tier would slow that down.
What happens when paid plans launch?
We'll notify all users before any changes go into effect. Free tier users will always have a usable monitoring plan — we're committed to not pulling the rug.
How Free Tiers Usually Work (And Why They're Frustrating)
The standard playbook for monitoring SaaS free tiers goes like this: offer just enough to get someone hooked, then paywall the feature they actually need. UptimeRobot's free tier checks every 5 minutes — but the moment you want 1-minute intervals or SMS alerts, you're on a paid plan. StatusCake's free tier is so limited in check frequency and features that it's more of a demo than a usable product.
The result: users who start on a free tier and hit any meaningful scale feel forced into a paid plan whether or not the value justifies it. That's a frustrating user experience and — we think — a shortsighted business strategy.
What JF Website Monitor's Free Plan Actually Includes
During our launch period, the free plan includes everything we've built:
10 website monitors — enough for a freelancer managing a handful of client sites or a small business watching its key pages.
5-minute check frequency — every 5 minutes, around the clock, from our US-based monitoring server.
Email alerts — with full verification flow for each recipient address, and smart alerting that doesn't spam you during extended outages.
Telegram alerts — the best real-time alert channel for people who live in Telegram. Requires your own bot token (takes 2 minutes to set up).
Content change detection — configurable per-site threshold, normalized HTML comparison, and automatic recovery alerts.
HTML snapshots — up to 10 per website, stored every time the page content changes, accessible from your dashboard.
SLA reports — filterable by date range, exportable to PDF.
Incident timeline — full history of every downtime event with timestamps, duration, and recovery confirmation.
None of this is a limited version. It's the full product.
The Honest Comparison
Let's compare what you get free on the major services:
**UptimeRobot (free):** 50 monitors, 5-minute checks, HTTP/keyword monitoring, email alerts. No SLA reports, no content change detection, no HTML snapshots on free tier. Based in Bulgaria.
**StatusCake (free):** 10 monitors, 5-minute checks, limited alerts. Most useful features (page speed, domain expiry, SSL) are paid. Based in the UK.
**JF Website Monitor (free):** 10 monitors, 5-minute checks, email + Telegram alerts, content change detection, HTML snapshots, SLA reports with PDF export, incident timeline. All data stored in the US.
The tradeoff is clear: we offer fewer total monitors than UptimeRobot's free tier, but more features — specifically the features that matter beyond basic uptime: change detection, snapshots, and reporting.
Why We Can Do This
We're self-hosted on a Raspberry Pi 4 running in Massachusetts. Our infrastructure costs are low and our team is small. We don't have a VC mandate to maximize revenue this quarter — we're building a product we want to exist and growing it on our own terms.
The free plan during our launch period is a deliberate choice to build a user base and collect real feedback. Every new user who monitors real websites helps us find edge cases, improve our alerts, and understand what matters most.
When Paid Plans Arrive
We plan to introduce paid tiers in the future — most likely adding higher monitor counts, shorter check frequencies (1 minute), and potentially team/multi-user features. When that happens:
- All existing users will receive advance notice - A free tier will always exist — we're not pulling it - Early adopters will get priority access to any beta features
For now, sign up, add your websites, and use everything. That's what it's here for.