In November 2023, we launched Tethered with a simple idea: every business, no matter how small, deserves to know when their website goes down, without having to pay for the privilege.
Almost three years on, that idea has grown into a platform actively monitoring uptime, ports, keywords, and SSL certificates for nearly 2,800 businesses. We wanted to mark the milestone by talking honestly about why we started, what’s changed under the hood recently, and how we manage to keep offering all of this for free.
Why we built a free uptime monitor in the first place
Our mission hasn’t changed since day one: create a landscape where small businesses can thrive online without the fear of the unknown. Knowing your website is up, and being notified almost immediately if it isn’t, means you can focus on what you actually do best: running your business.
Most of the uptime monitoring space has historically been priced for enterprises, with generous trials that funnel into per-monitor billing the moment you actually rely on the tool. We didn’t think a small business running a handful of sites should have to make that trade-off. So instead of gating the core product, we built Tethered around a genuinely free-forever plan, funding the business through optional add-ons for teams that want extra bells and whistles, never by limiting the monitoring itself. (If you’re curious how that compares to the rest of the market, we broke down five of the most popular alternatives in a separate post.)
We recognize that when your business succeeds, we succeed. By keeping the core service free, we’re investing in the collective health of the small business web: a more reliable internet is good for everyone building on it, including us.
Where we are today
Since that first signup in November 2023, Tethered has grown to serve close to 2,800 real businesses (a number we’re careful to report honestly: we exclude placeholder accounts that were never actually claimed, because we’d rather show you a number we actually stand behind). Every one of those accounts gets the same unlimited monitors, unlimited integrations, and free-forever core plan as the very first user did.
What’s new
A few things we’ve shipped recently that we’re particularly glad about:
- Smarter downtime confirmation. Before we mark a site as actually down, we now cross-check it from a completely independent network location, not just the same server that flagged it in the first place. If your site is genuinely unreachable, we confirm it fast. If it was a blip specific to how our own infrastructure reached you, we catch that and don’t cry wolf. We wrote a full breakdown of why this matters and how it works if you want the details.
- Expanded notification channels. Beyond email, SMS, and phone calls, we’ve continued to round out our integrations so you can get alerted wherever your team actually looks: Slack, Discord, and a growing list of others.
- Deeper visibility for our own team. Behind the scenes, we’ve invested in better monitoring of our monitoring: tighter tracking of send reliability and check throughput so we catch problems on our end before they ever become a problem on yours.
How we keep it free
This is the question we get asked most, so we want to be straightforward about it. Keeping a monitoring platform free forever only works if you’re deliberate about cost at every layer, and that’s shaped a lot of our engineering decisions:
- We only pay for infrastructure that’s actually working. Our newest reliability check (the independent confirmation system mentioned above) runs as an on-demand cloud function rather than a second server running 24/7. It only spins up the moment it’s actually needed, which means we get a meaningfully more reliable check without meaningfully more cost. That philosophy runs through most of our infrastructure decisions: pay for what you use, not for idle capacity “just in case.”
- We tune constantly, not just at launch. Our check-processing pipeline is built to be adjusted live: throughput, timeouts, and retry behavior can all be tuned without downtime, so we can squeeze more monitoring out of the same infrastructure instead of just throwing more servers at growth.
- Revenue comes from opt-in add-ons, never from limiting the core product. Teams that want extra features can pick them up individually in our add-on directory. Everyone else keeps unlimited monitors, unlimited integrations, and a free plan that was never designed to nudge you toward upgrading.
None of this is about cutting corners. It’s about being deliberate enough with cost that “free” is actually sustainable, not a loss-leader that quietly disappears in a few years. That’s the plan for the next three years too.
If you’re not already monitoring with us, get started for free. And if you are, thank you for being part of the first almost-three years.
Frequently asked questions
Is Tethered really free forever, or will you eventually start charging?
The core monitoring plan is, and stays, free: unlimited monitors, unlimited integrations, no credit card, no trial period that expires. We fund the business through optional add-ons, not by limiting or eventually charging for the core product.
How many websites can I monitor for free?
As many as you need. There’s no monitor cap on the free plan, whether you’re watching one site or several hundred.
How does Tethered make money if the core product is free?
Through an add-on directory of optional extra features that some teams want. The free monitoring itself is never limited to push you toward paying.
How many businesses currently use Tethered?
Close to 2,800 real, active users as of this post, counting only genuine signups and accounts that have been claimed, not placeholder or unclaimed accounts.
What changed recently with how Tethered detects downtime?
We added an independent, cross-region confirmation check before any downtime alert goes out, which catches false alarms caused by local network issues rather than an actual outage. We wrote up the full details in why most uptime monitors cry wolf.