This just made my day... send 'em all to me. :)

Subject: (URGENT) Netwhistle Ending Free Monitoring Service


===8<==============Original message text===============


Dear Netwhistle Customer,


It has been our pleasure to offer free monitoring services to the
Internet community for the past 1.5 years. The success of our
service has lead to tremendous functionality and scalability
improvements over the past 6 months.


In order to offer this enhanced premium performance and
availability monitoring service on a cost-effective basis,
Netwhistle will, on May 1, 2001, replace the free service
offering with a fee-for-service offering. Please see
the revised Netwhistle pricing below.


On March 10th, Netwhistle expanded its services to include an
impressive set of new value-add features to the current monitoring
solutions, including:


* ADDITIONAL MONITORS - The ability to monitor IMAP, FTP,
TELNET, SSH and Website Performance.


* TIME-BASED NOTIFICATIONS - The ability to specify who
should receive notification based on the time of
day and day of the week that an alert event occurs
(e.g., if an alert occurs over the weekend, an
automatic notification can be sent to the person
responsible for weekend activities).


* PROBLEM-BASED NOTIFICATIONS - The ability to specify who
should receive a notification based on the nature of
the problem (i.e., Application error, Connection error,
DNS error, or Any error).


* PHONE AND FAX NOTIFICATION CHANNELS - The ability to send
alerts by telephone (via text to speech conversion) and fax.


* UPGRADED DAILY, WEEKLY AND MONTHLY REPORTS - The ability
to receive reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
All (HTML) reports include graphs of down time, as well as
a total period downtime summary. The Website Performance
Reports include a detailed line graph of DNS lookup time,
connect time, and total page download time.



EFFECTIVE MAY 1, 2001
---------------------
New pricing for Netwhistle services will be in effect starting
May 1, 2001. During the first week in April 2001, you will
receive an email-based invoice for the month of May. To
continue receiving our services, payment for May service must
be received by April 30, 2001. The invoice will contain detailed
payment instructions. (NOTE: Current Business Whistle Customers
that are also using our free monitoring services should follow
the timeline and instructions in the Netwhistle Pricing Changes
notice for your account.)


If you do not wish to receive the invoice, you can remove your
account by either:


1. Logging into your account (see end of email for instructions)
and clicking "Remove Account", OR


2. Click on the following URL (or copy it into your browser) -
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
and your account (XXXXXXXXX) will be
de-activated on May 1, 2001.


ACCOUNTS IN WHICH PAYMENTS FOR MAY ARE NOT RECEIVED BY MAY 1ST
WILL BE DE-ACTIVATED.


==================================================================
REVISED NETWHISTLE PRICING (per target, per month basis)
[Effective May 1, 2001]

Target Interval Availability Targets Website Performance
-------------------------------------------------------------------
5 Minutes Interval $58.90/month/target $154.90/month/target
15 Minute Interval $38.90/month/target $108.90/month/target
30 Minute Interval $30.90/month/target $ 87.90/month/target
1 Hour Interval $19.90/month/target $ 65.90/month/target
6 or 24 Hour Int. $ 9.90/month/target $ 54.90/month/target
==================================================================


Take advantage of the following new promotion:


* 10% Discount when you pay 6 months in advance (semi-annually)


We appreciate the opportunity to be of service to you, and hope
that you continue to use the new and improved Netwhistle service.
Any questions may be directed to support at support@netwhistle.com.


Thank you for your patronage. The Netwhistle Team looks forward
to serving you in the future.


Best Regards,
Peter D. Fox
VP, Services Delivery
support@netwhistle.com


[Edited by Travis on 03-27-2001 at 03:52 AM]

Thanks Travis. My usual e-mail account set to receive Netwhistle mailings is stuffed, so I'm glad I know about it *now* than later.

Looks like it's time to switch to another free monitoring service ;)

they suck! :( any other services anyone?

kunal,

Did you see Travis' signature :D


Free monitoring for your web site - http://www.qwkmon.com


One other service you might want to check out:

http://www.tracert.com/

Although, to be honest, I have not been as impressed with their service as I have with Qwk.Mon's.

Look like you'll be picking up my business this week

thanx for pointing that out uuallan... i dunno why but i thought the qwk thing was paid... :emlaugh:

Travis was trying out paid, but regardless (thread topic), I never thought NetWhistle was all that wonderful, and I wouldn't pay for it.

Originally posted by Chicken
Travis was trying out paid, but regardless (thread topic), I never thought NetWhistle was all that wonderful, and I wouldn't pay for it.

I agree. We contacted them when they first started up about the possibility of reselling their services to our then DSL customers. They didn't want to talk to us unless we had at least 5,000 DSL customers.

Their service really is not as good as the QWK.MON service. However, it would be nice to have a third monitoring vendor...it sounds sooo cool to be able to tell customers you triangulate your monitoring :).

Ohh...
Kick butt!! I just realized I'm an Aspiring Evangelist :D! Hah...who needs a life!

Originally posted by uuallan
Ohh...
Kick butt!! I just realized I'm an Aspiring Evangelist :D! Hah...who needs a life!

Hehe, welcome to the jungle :) Just wait till you're a 900 post, personally tagged freak like me...

I like to use Netwhistle in press statements as it always makes us look fantastic. The recent Alabanza slowdown didn't show up in Netwhistle at all QWKmon tagged us as down briefly on occasion (albeit 'down' is anything that's not reachable however short the period) Usually it was little more than minutes, based on the 5 minute checks. I wouldn't pay for Netwhistle in a blue fit. I'll be seriously looking at QWKmon in the future though... My personal opinion is the interface and site design could use some TLC before it's a viable commercial resource though. It's sensitive - maybe too much so... Tagging a site in the red at 2 seconds might not be good for confidence levels... people like to feel good...

Yes I *know* what you're thinking, but there is real quality reporting, and then there's commercial viability. The graphs are a little hard to read as the top of them is a heartbeat in real time from the bottom... A good example of a great graph is Netcraft.. The server reboot and uptime one. Something like that built by someone who knows what a Pantone color chart is and I think you're on a winner. :)

Greg Moore

Greg,

I appreciate your comments.

I suppose much of this is a matter of opinion, and also who the service is marketed at. As a user, I want to know when it's taking more than two seconds to receive a reply to an HTTP request on my server - that's quite a long time. Of course, as a host, I would rather that the occasional and inevitable brief moment of slow response go unnoticed. :)

In the end, though, I don't know that I'm doing users any favors by making things appear to be better than they are. What could certainly be open for discussion is whether two seconds is really an excessive amount of time to wait for an HTTP response - any comments are welcome.

Overall, the system has definitely erred on the "sensitive" side. I'm tuning that down in some respects based on real-world operation and feedback. There is a fine line between too sensitive (i.e. false alarms) and not sensitive enough. There are some easy things that can be done, though, like having the system do a second check a few minutes later before pronouncing something down - that helps deal with small "hiccups."

In regard to site functionality - user interface, etc., I'm certainly open to specific suggestions. It is definitely more "functional" than "smooth" in many places. As far as the raw aesthetics, I have a designer on tap that will take care of that soon. :) I don't want to weigh the site down too much, though, as I've had many positive comments on the "lean" nature of the pages.

Graphing isn't my strong point, and what you see on QWK.Mon is just a first and quick attempt to provide some visual feedback. I recognize that graphing is important in seeing overall trends, and that information can be just as useful as raw downtime reports. So, expect dramatically better graphing capabilities before too long.

If only you guys could see the "to do" list... it's about a mile long. :)

(By the way, I know what Pantone color is, but I'm not sure what you're getting at. If it's my choice of colors... well, that's what I'm bringing the designer in for.)