Operations · Weekend build
Build your own UptimeRobot
Ping the thing. Tell me when the thing stops pinging. UptimeRobot charges $24–$69 per month — that’s $288–$828 a year — for something you can replace with focused software of your own. Here is the honest scope, the honest timeline, and the exact prompt to hand your coding agent.
Who this replacement is for
This build targets a developer monitoring fewer than 25 websites and APIs. The goal: check endpoints on a schedule and send useful alerts when failures persist. If you need more than that, keep paying — the point of building it yourself is owning a tool shaped exactly like your workflow, not re-implementing a venture-funded roadmap.
Same build, different logo: this v1 also replaces Checkly, Better Stack and Pingdom — they all solve the same core job.
How long it actually takes
One number would be a lie, so here are three. Each tier is a real, usable product — pick the one that matches how much of UptimeRobot you actually use.
| Estimate | What you get |
|---|---|
| 6 hours | cron http checks, email alerts |
| 2 days | failure thresholds, incidents, latency charts, uptime stats |
| 1 month+ | global probe regions, phone alerts, synthetic browser tests — the part you should probably skip |
What a minimal UptimeRobot alternative needs
- HTTP monitors with method, URL, expected status, timeout, and interval
- consecutive-failure threshold before opening an incident
- recovery detection and incident duration
- latency chart, uptime percentage, and recent check log
- email alerts with failure reason and recovery follow-up
Data model
Monitor, CheckResult, Incident, AlertChannel
Integrations
Cloudflare Cron Triggers, email
Capability context
Workers, D1, Astro
The guardrail
Restrict private-network targets to prevent SSRF and use bounded timeouts and response sizes.
Deliberate non-goals
Do not build global probe regions, phone calls, synthetic browser tests, or infrastructure monitoring.
The complete build prompt
Copy this into your coding agent of choice. It is scoped for a useful v1 — journeys, screens, business rules, data model, security, tests, and acceptance scenarios included. Pick your stack:
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pingthing”, a deliberately focused alternative to UptimeRobot. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: a developer monitoring fewer than 25 websites and APIs. Primary outcome: check endpoints on a schedule and send useful alerts when failures persist. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of UptimeRobot. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The developer creates an HTTP monitor, chooses method, URL, interval, timeout, expected status, and failure threshold, runs a safe test check, then enables scheduled monitoring. 2. Scheduled checks exceed the consecutive-failure threshold, open one incident, send one detailed alert, and continue recording checks without creating duplicate incidents. 3. A later successful check closes the incident, records its duration, sends a recovery alert, and updates the monitor’s uptime and latency history. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Monitor dashboard: up, down, paused, and unknown counts; monitor rows with current state, last check, latency, uptime, open incident, and add-monitor action. 2. Monitor editor: name, method, URL, expected status, interval, timeout, failure threshold, alert channel, enabled state, validation, and test-check result. 3. Monitor detail: current state, 24-hour and 30-day uptime, latency chart, recent check log, response reason, incidents, pause, edit, and run-now controls. 4. Incidents and alerts: incident start, confirmation checks, recovery time, duration, alert delivery status, email destination, and retry history. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. HTTP monitors with method, URL, expected status, timeout, and interval 2. consecutive-failure threshold before opening an incident 3. recovery detection and incident duration 4. latency chart, uptime percentage, and recent check log 5. email alerts with failure reason and recovery follow-up DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Allow only public HTTP and HTTPS targets; resolve and re-check every redirect destination, reject loopback and private-address ranges, and defend against DNS rebinding. 2. Bound connection time, total timeout, redirect count, and response bytes; record status and timing metadata without retaining arbitrary response bodies. 3. Open an incident only when consecutive failed checks reach the configured threshold, keep exactly one incident open per monitor, and close it on the next successful check. 4. Give each scheduled check and alert transition a stable idempotency key so overlapping cron runs, retries, and delayed email responses cannot duplicate results or notifications. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Monitor, CheckResult, Incident, AlertChannel. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Astro pages and ordinary HTML forms. Use HTMX for form submissions, partial navigation, and server-driven updates, then Alpine.js only for small local browser state. The core workflow must remain understandable if either enhancement layer fails. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with the AHA stack: Astro for routing, layouts, and server-rendered pages; HTMX for interactions that benefit from HTML fragment responses; and Alpine.js for small, local interface state. Prefer Cloudflare D1 for relational persistence, R2 for object storage, Workers for server endpoints and scheduled work, Durable Objects only for coordinated real-time state, and Workflows or Queues for durable background jobs—but only when the product requirements call for them. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Workers, D1, Astro as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with Cloudflare Cron Triggers and email. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Restrict private-network targets to prevent SSRF and use bounded timeouts and response sizes. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a monitor with a threshold of three, two failures followed by success create no incident and reset the consecutive-failure count. 2. Given three consecutive failures, the third opens exactly one incident and sends one failure alert even if the scheduled job is retried. 3. Given an open incident, the next successful check closes it, records the correct duration, sends one recovery email, and returns the monitor to up. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build global probe regions, phone calls, synthetic browser tests, or infrastructure monitoring.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pingthing”, a deliberately focused alternative to UptimeRobot. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: a developer monitoring fewer than 25 websites and APIs. Primary outcome: check endpoints on a schedule and send useful alerts when failures persist. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of UptimeRobot. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The developer creates an HTTP monitor, chooses method, URL, interval, timeout, expected status, and failure threshold, runs a safe test check, then enables scheduled monitoring. 2. Scheduled checks exceed the consecutive-failure threshold, open one incident, send one detailed alert, and continue recording checks without creating duplicate incidents. 3. A later successful check closes the incident, records its duration, sends a recovery alert, and updates the monitor’s uptime and latency history. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Monitor dashboard: up, down, paused, and unknown counts; monitor rows with current state, last check, latency, uptime, open incident, and add-monitor action. 2. Monitor editor: name, method, URL, expected status, interval, timeout, failure threshold, alert channel, enabled state, validation, and test-check result. 3. Monitor detail: current state, 24-hour and 30-day uptime, latency chart, recent check log, response reason, incidents, pause, edit, and run-now controls. 4. Incidents and alerts: incident start, confirmation checks, recovery time, duration, alert delivery status, email destination, and retry history. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. HTTP monitors with method, URL, expected status, timeout, and interval 2. consecutive-failure threshold before opening an incident 3. recovery detection and incident duration 4. latency chart, uptime percentage, and recent check log 5. email alerts with failure reason and recovery follow-up DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Allow only public HTTP and HTTPS targets; resolve and re-check every redirect destination, reject loopback and private-address ranges, and defend against DNS rebinding. 2. Bound connection time, total timeout, redirect count, and response bytes; record status and timing metadata without retaining arbitrary response bodies. 3. Open an incident only when consecutive failed checks reach the configured threshold, keep exactly one incident open per monitor, and close it on the next successful check. 4. Give each scheduled check and alert transition a stable idempotency key so overlapping cron runs, retries, and delayed email responses cannot duplicate results or notifications. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Monitor, CheckResult, Incident, AlertChannel. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Render with React Server Components by default. Use Server Actions for authenticated form mutations and add Client Components only for interactions that genuinely require browser state, browser APIs, drag-and-drop, or live updates. The core workflow must remain understandable before client-side JavaScript finishes loading. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Next.js, the App Router, and TypeScript. Use Server Components by default, Server Actions for authenticated mutations, and Route Handlers for public APIs, OAuth callbacks, webhooks, feeds, uploads, and downloads. Use PostgreSQL through Drizzle ORM with versioned migrations and an isolated test database. Access S3-compatible object storage through a server-only adapter, and run slow or retryable work in a real job or workflow system instead of the request lifecycle. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Workers, D1, Astro as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with Cloudflare Cron Triggers and email. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Restrict private-network targets to prevent SSRF and use bounded timeouts and response sizes. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a monitor with a threshold of three, two failures followed by success create no incident and reset the consecutive-failure count. 2. Given three consecutive failures, the third opens exactly one incident and sends one failure alert even if the scheduled job is retried. 3. Given an open incident, the next successful check closes it, records the correct duration, sends one recovery email, and returns the monitor to up. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build global probe regions, phone calls, synthetic browser tests, or infrastructure monitoring.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pingthing”, a deliberately focused alternative to UptimeRobot. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: a developer monitoring fewer than 25 websites and APIs. Primary outcome: check endpoints on a schedule and send useful alerts when failures persist. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of UptimeRobot. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The developer creates an HTTP monitor, chooses method, URL, interval, timeout, expected status, and failure threshold, runs a safe test check, then enables scheduled monitoring. 2. Scheduled checks exceed the consecutive-failure threshold, open one incident, send one detailed alert, and continue recording checks without creating duplicate incidents. 3. A later successful check closes the incident, records its duration, sends a recovery alert, and updates the monitor’s uptime and latency history. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Monitor dashboard: up, down, paused, and unknown counts; monitor rows with current state, last check, latency, uptime, open incident, and add-monitor action. 2. Monitor editor: name, method, URL, expected status, interval, timeout, failure threshold, alert channel, enabled state, validation, and test-check result. 3. Monitor detail: current state, 24-hour and 30-day uptime, latency chart, recent check log, response reason, incidents, pause, edit, and run-now controls. 4. Incidents and alerts: incident start, confirmation checks, recovery time, duration, alert delivery status, email destination, and retry history. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. HTTP monitors with method, URL, expected status, timeout, and interval 2. consecutive-failure threshold before opening an incident 3. recovery detection and incident duration 4. latency chart, uptime percentage, and recent check log 5. email alerts with failure reason and recovery follow-up DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Allow only public HTTP and HTTPS targets; resolve and re-check every redirect destination, reject loopback and private-address ranges, and defend against DNS rebinding. 2. Bound connection time, total timeout, redirect count, and response bytes; record status and timing metadata without retaining arbitrary response bodies. 3. Open an incident only when consecutive failed checks reach the configured threshold, keep exactly one incident open per monitor, and close it on the next successful check. 4. Give each scheduled check and alert transition a stable idempotency key so overlapping cron runs, retries, and delayed email responses cannot duplicate results or notifications. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Monitor, CheckResult, Incident, AlertChannel. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Blade views and ordinary forms. Use Livewire for focused server-driven interactions and Alpine.js only for small local interface state. The core workflow must remain understandable without relying on a client-side application shell. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Laravel, PHP, Blade, Livewire, and Alpine.js. Use controllers and Blade forms for durable navigation, Livewire for focused interactions, Form Requests for validation, Policies and Gates for authorization, and small application actions or services for domain transitions. Use Eloquent with migrations, database constraints, and transactions; Laravel Storage for private S3-compatible files; queued Jobs for retryable work; the Scheduler for recurring work; and Notifications or Mail for email. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Workers, D1, Astro as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with Cloudflare Cron Triggers and email. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Restrict private-network targets to prevent SSRF and use bounded timeouts and response sizes. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a monitor with a threshold of three, two failures followed by success create no incident and reset the consecutive-failure count. 2. Given three consecutive failures, the third opens exactly one incident and sends one failure alert even if the scheduled job is retried. 3. Given an open incident, the next successful check closes it, records the correct duration, sends one recovery email, and returns the monitor to up. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build global probe regions, phone calls, synthetic browser tests, or infrastructure monitoring.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pingthing”, a deliberately focused alternative to UptimeRobot. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: a developer monitoring fewer than 25 websites and APIs. Primary outcome: check endpoints on a schedule and send useful alerts when failures persist. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of UptimeRobot. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The developer creates an HTTP monitor, chooses method, URL, interval, timeout, expected status, and failure threshold, runs a safe test check, then enables scheduled monitoring. 2. Scheduled checks exceed the consecutive-failure threshold, open one incident, send one detailed alert, and continue recording checks without creating duplicate incidents. 3. A later successful check closes the incident, records its duration, sends a recovery alert, and updates the monitor’s uptime and latency history. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Monitor dashboard: up, down, paused, and unknown counts; monitor rows with current state, last check, latency, uptime, open incident, and add-monitor action. 2. Monitor editor: name, method, URL, expected status, interval, timeout, failure threshold, alert channel, enabled state, validation, and test-check result. 3. Monitor detail: current state, 24-hour and 30-day uptime, latency chart, recent check log, response reason, incidents, pause, edit, and run-now controls. 4. Incidents and alerts: incident start, confirmation checks, recovery time, duration, alert delivery status, email destination, and retry history. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. HTTP monitors with method, URL, expected status, timeout, and interval 2. consecutive-failure threshold before opening an incident 3. recovery detection and incident duration 4. latency chart, uptime percentage, and recent check log 5. email alerts with failure reason and recovery follow-up DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Allow only public HTTP and HTTPS targets; resolve and re-check every redirect destination, reject loopback and private-address ranges, and defend against DNS rebinding. 2. Bound connection time, total timeout, redirect count, and response bytes; record status and timing metadata without retaining arbitrary response bodies. 3. Open an incident only when consecutive failed checks reach the configured threshold, keep exactly one incident open per monitor, and close it on the next successful check. 4. Give each scheduled check and alert transition a stable idempotency key so overlapping cron runs, retries, and delayed email responses cannot duplicate results or notifications. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on Monitor, CheckResult, Incident, AlertChannel. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Rails views and ordinary forms. Use Turbo for navigation, submissions, and server-driven updates, then Stimulus only for small browser-side behavior. Do not turn the product into a client-side SPA, and keep the core workflow usable when enhancement fails. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Ruby on Rails and Hotwire: Turbo for navigation, form submissions, and server-driven updates, and Stimulus for small browser-side behavior. Use RESTful controllers with strong parameters and explicit authorization, with domain transitions in testable models or small application services. Use Active Record migrations plus database-level constraints and transactions; Active Storage with an S3-compatible service for private files; Active Job with a durable queue backend for retryable work; Action Mailer for email; and Action Cable only when live updates are required. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Workers, D1, Astro as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with Cloudflare Cron Triggers and email. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Restrict private-network targets to prevent SSRF and use bounded timeouts and response sizes. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a monitor with a threshold of three, two failures followed by success create no incident and reset the consecutive-failure count. 2. Given three consecutive failures, the third opens exactly one incident and sends one failure alert even if the scheduled job is retried. 3. Given an open incident, the next successful check closes it, records the correct duration, sends one recovery email, and returns the monitor to up. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build global probe regions, phone calls, synthetic browser tests, or infrastructure monitoring.
Build just one piece
Not ready to replace all of UptimeRobot? Fine. These are the peculiar sub-problems hiding inside it — the parts that are actually interesting to build. Each one is a standalone prompt, scoped to an evening, no strings attached to the full build.
The pinger that can’t be aimed inwardSSRF defense: private ranges, redirect re-checks, and DNS rebinding.
Build the URL safety layer for an uptime monitor — a service whose whole job is fetching user-supplied URLs, which is also the textbook SSRF setup. Accept only http and https targets. Before every check, resolve the hostname and reject loopback, private (RFC 1918), link-local, and cloud metadata ranges (169.254.169.254 is the prize attackers want). Do this per check, not just at creation: DNS rebinding means a hostname that resolved publicly yesterday can resolve to 127.0.0.1 today. Best practice is to connect to the vetted IP directly while sending the original Host header, so resolution and connection cannot disagree. Redirects are the second door: each hop's destination must pass the same resolution checks before you follow it, with a hard cap on hop count. A public URL redirecting to an internal address must fail the check with a clear reason. Bound everything: connect timeout, total timeout, response size read. Done when: monitors targeting metadata IPs or private ranges are rejected at creation and at check time, a redirect into private space fails safely, and rebinding between checks is caught.
Three strikes, one incidentA failure-threshold state machine that never opens duplicates.
Build the incident state machine for an uptime monitor: raw check results in, calm and accurate incidents out. Each monitor has a consecutive-failure threshold. Failures below it increment a counter; a success anywhere resets the counter to zero and no incident exists — two failures then a recovery on a threshold-of-three monitor is a non-event by design, because paging humans for a blip is how they stop reading your alerts. The check that reaches the threshold opens exactly one incident, records its start as the first failure in the streak, and triggers one failure alert. Enforce at most one open incident per monitor with a database constraint, not just application logic — overlapping check runs will eventually race, and the constraint is what holds. While an incident is open, further failures attach to it as confirmations rather than opening siblings. The next successful check closes it, computes the true duration, sends one recovery alert, and returns the monitor to up. Done when: fail-fail-recover at threshold three creates nothing, a third consecutive failure opens exactly one incident with one alert, and recovery closes it with correct duration.
Cron jobs that overlap without lyingStable idempotency keys per scheduled slot, for checks and alerts alike.
Build overlap protection for a cron-driven uptime checker, where the scheduler is allowed to misbehave. Cron runs will overlap (the previous run hung on a slow endpoint), double-fire (scheduler retry), and skip (deploy window). Design so none of that corrupts results. Give every check a deterministic identity: monitor id plus the scheduled time slot it represents. Two workers attempting the same slot collide on that key, and exactly one result is recorded — the loser discards silently. A monitor on a one-minute interval gets at most one result per minute regardless of how many workers fired. Apply the same trick to alert transitions: the notification for "incident X opened" is keyed on that transition, so a retried job after a timeout cannot email twice. Missed slots simply do not exist in the record — uptime math must tolerate gaps rather than assume perfect cadence. Keep per-check runtime bounded below the interval, and skip a monitor whose previous check for an earlier slot is somehow still running. Done when: two workers racing one slot record one result, a retried alert job sends one email, and a skipped slot leaves a gap instead of a fabricated result.
Uptime percentages that admit what they don’t knowHonest math over gaps, pauses, and latency outliers.
Build the statistics layer for an uptime monitor: the 24-hour and 30-day uptime percentages and the latency chart. Uptime math sounds trivial until the data has holes. Compute uptime as up-time over observed-time, where observed excludes paused periods and scheduling gaps — a monitor paused for a week did not have 100 percent uptime, it has seven days of no data, and the two must render differently. Derive downtime from incident spans (first failure in the streak to recovery), not by counting failed checks, so irregular check cadence cannot skew the ratio. Decide and document the boundary cases: an incident spanning the window edge contributes only its in-window portion. For latency, store per-check response times and render a chart that survives outliers: percentiles (p50, p95) over time buckets rather than a mean that one 30-second timeout drags into fiction. Bucket by hour for the 24-hour view and by day for 30 days, computing each bucket from raw checks. Done when: pausing a monitor affects observed time rather than faking uptime, a boundary-spanning incident is prorated correctly, and one timeout outlier barely moves the p50 line.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to build your own UptimeRobot?
A basic version — cron http checks, email alerts — takes about 6 hours. Roughly 2 days gets you a solid v1 with failure thresholds, incidents, latency charts, uptime stats. Matching everything UptimeRobot really does (global probe regions, phone alerts, synthetic browser tests) is closer to 1 month+, which is exactly why you should scope down instead.
How much does UptimeRobot cost if I keep subscribing?
UptimeRobot runs $24–$69 per month on public paid plans, which is $288–$828 per year. A focused self-built replacement costs your build time plus close-to-zero hosting.
What stack should I use to build a UptimeRobot alternative?
The build prompt on this page ships in four flavors: the AHA stack (Astro, HTMX, Alpine.js), Next.js, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails. The capability context for this product is Workers, D1, Astro. Pick the stack you already know — the scope matters more than the framework.
What features does a minimal UptimeRobot replacement need?
A useful v1 needs: HTTP monitors with method, URL, expected status, timeout, and interval; consecutive-failure threshold before opening an incident; recovery detection and incident duration; latency chart, uptime percentage, and recent check log; email alerts with failure reason and recovery follow-up. Everything else is scope creep until you personally miss it.
What should I deliberately not build?
Do not build global probe regions, phone calls, synthetic browser tests, or infrastructure monitoring.
Does this build also replace Checkly, Better Stack and Pingdom?
Yes. UptimeRobot, Checkly, Better Stack and Pingdom all solve the same core job — check endpoints on a schedule and send useful alerts when failures persist. The scoped v1 on this page covers what most people use any of them for, so one focused build replaces whichever you currently pay for.