Uptime monitoring for startups that can't afford false alarms
FourSight's Free plan allows commercial use: 5 HTTP or Ping monitors checked from 3 regions with quorum consensus and email alerts at $0 forever. Upgrade to Starter ($16/mo) for 1-minute checks, Slack, all 4 regions and a hosted status page, or Growth ($40/mo) for all 8 monitor types and a multi-user team — flat prices, no per-seat fees.
What actually matters in monitoring before product-market fit?
Not dashboards. Two things: knowing the moment your product is really down, and not being woken when it isn't. A five-person team has no on-call rotation to absorb false pages — every 3 AM alert lands on a founder, and after the second false one, alerts start getting snoozed. That's how real outages get missed.
FourSight's answer is architectural: every check runs from multiple regions in parallel (3 on Free, all four on paid plans), and an incident opens only when a majority of regions independently agree the endpoint is down. A routing blip near one probe is recorded as the regional degradation it is — not paged as an outage.
The second thing that matters is cost honesty. The Free plan allows commercial use — you can run a revenue-producing product on it indefinitely. When you outgrow it, the upgrade is a flat $16 or $40 a month, not a per-seat negotiation.
Free → Starter → Growth
Built for the team that is also the on-call rotation
Quorum checks on every plan
Free checks run from 3 global regions, paid plans from all 4, with majority consensus before an incident opens. False pages are a tax small teams can't afford — the architecture removes them instead of asking you to tune them away.
Alerts a tiny team can live with
Email on Free; Slack and webhooks from Starter; escalation policies from Growth. Alerts fire when a majority of regions agree something is really down — not when one probe hiccups.
A public status page from your first paid month
Hosted, auto-updating status pages from Starter ($16/mo), driven by the same checks that alert you. Early customers see transparency; you skip building one by hand the first time something breaks.
Grows without a migration
Start at $0, add 1-minute checks and Slack at $16/mo, add SSL/DNS/domain/heartbeat coverage and teammates at $40/mo. Monitors and history carry through every upgrade.
History when investors or customers ask
Uptime percentages, incident timelines, and response-time trends accumulate from the day you start — the raw material for the reliability question in due diligence or an enterprise security review.
Incident comms built in
Incident timelines, subscriber notifications, and maintenance windows live in the same product — no separate status-page vendor to buy the week of your first outage.
The honest upgrade path
| Plan | Price | Monitors | Check types | Interval | Regions | Hosted status pages | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 5 | HTTP, Ping | 5 min | 3 of 4 | None | Launch week onward — commercial use allowed |
| Starter | $16/mo | 50 | HTTP, Ping | 1 min | All 4 | 2 | Faster detection, Slack & webhook alerts, status page |
| Growth | $40/mo | 100 | All 8 incl. SSL, DNS, Domain, Heartbeat | 30 sec | All 4 | 5 | Certificate/domain coverage + a real team |
The pattern most small SaaS teams follow: launch on Free, move to Starter when 5-minute detection starts feeling slow, move to Growth the first time an SSL certificate or domain renewal nearly bites — that's when the other six monitor types stop being optional.
FAQ
Startup questions, answered
Is the FourSight free plan really usable for a commercial startup?
Yes — commercial use is allowed on the Free plan, which is genuinely unusual in this category. You get 5 monitors (HTTP and Ping), 5-minute checks validated from 3 regions with quorum consensus, and email alerts, at $0 forever. Competitors' free tiers are typically positioned for personal or non-commercial projects.
What doesn't the free plan include?
The honest list: Free covers HTTP and Ping checks only, at 5-minute intervals, from 3 of the 4 probe regions, with email alerts and 24-hour history — no hosted status page. Starter ($16/mo) adds 1-minute checks, Slack and webhook alerts, the fourth region, and 2 hosted status pages. SSL, DNS, domain-expiry, keyword, port, and heartbeat monitor types start on Growth ($40/mo).
Why does quorum checking matter for a two-person team?
Because a false page costs a startup proportionally more than anyone else — there's no on-call rotation to absorb it, just a founder losing sleep. Every FourSight check runs from multiple regions in parallel (3 on Free, all 4 on paid plans), and an incident opens only when a majority agree the endpoint is down. A network blip near one probe doesn't wake you at 3 AM.
When should a startup upgrade from Free?
Three common triggers: you want a hosted status page or the fourth probe region (Starter, $16/mo), you want faster detection and Slack alerts (also Starter — 1-minute checks with 50 monitors), or you want SSL and domain-expiry coverage before a certificate quietly lapses (Growth, $40/mo, adds all 8 monitor types). Upgrading keeps all monitors and history.
Do we get a status page on the free plan?
Not on Free — hosted status pages start on Starter ($16/mo, up to 2 pages), auto-updating from the same quorum checks that alert you. For an early-stage product, a live status page is a cheap trust signal: prospects see operational transparency before they've signed anything.
How does FourSight pricing behave as we grow?
Flat plan prices with no per-seat fees: Free → Starter ($16/mo) → Growth ($40/mo, adds multi-user orgs with roles) → Pro and Scale for larger fleets. Monitor capacity is expandable in blocks, so you never re-platform because headcount or monitor count grew.
How does the free plan compare to UptimeRobot's and Better Stack's?
As published (mid-2026, verify with the vendors): UptimeRobot's free tier offers more monitors (50) but is positioned for non-commercial use and checks from a single location. Better Stack's free tier is generous on check frequency (up to 30 seconds) but is aimed at personal projects. FourSight Free is smaller (5 monitors) but allows commercial use and validates every check from 3 regions. The comparison table on our pricing page lays this out.
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Monitor your startup free — for real
5 monitors, 3-region quorum checks, email alerts, and commercial use allowed. No credit card.