When we shipped Trace Warrior v1 in March, the model was straightforward: 18 network diagnostic tools, gated by daily runs per plan. Free users got 10 runs per tool per day. Starter ($19/mo) lifted that to 100. Professional ($49/mo) to 500. Enterprise ($99/mo) was unlimited. We thought we'd built a clear ladder.
Two months in, we're rewriting it. As of v1.1, all 18 tools are free and unlimited for any signed-in user, every account — including Free — gets continuous monitoring with alerting, and paid plans buy more of it: more monitors, faster checks, more alert channels. Not more tool runs.
This is a non-trivial change. Below: why, what it actually means, and what's preserved.
The problem with metered tool runs
The buyer here is an IT professional. They have free alternatives. MxToolbox is free with ads. dig and openssl s_client are free with nothing. DNSChecker is free. The only reason to pay for an on-demand DNS lookup is if the free options are unusable, slow, noisy, broken, and even then, the bar to charge $19/month is high.
We charged $19/month for a higher daily quota. But the daily quota wasn't the thing buyers wanted. Buyers wanted answers to a different question: not "can I run more tools," but "can I find out when something breaks before my customers do?"
That's a different product. And we already had every piece needed to build it.
What we built
Five monitor types, each wrapping a tool you already use on demand:
| Monitor | What it watches |
|---|---|
| SSL expiry | Days to expiry of a TLS cert. Alerts at 30 / 7 / 0. |
| DNS record drift | A/AAAA/MX/TXT/CNAME/NS records. Alerts when the set changes from baseline. |
| TCP port reachability | Whether a port is open. Alerts when it stops being. |
| HTTP status | Response code (and optional body match). Alerts on unexpected status. |
| WHOIS expiry | Domain registration expiry. Alerts at 30 / 7 / 0. |
Each runs on a schedule. When state changes from healthy to unhealthy, you get an email, and on Starter and up, a webhook (HMAC-signed JSON) you can pipe into Slack / Discord / PagerDuty / your own listener. When state recovers, you get a recovery alert. Re-alerts are deduped within 24 hours so a flapping check doesn't carpet-bomb your inbox.
Detail pages show a 24-hour sparkline, the recent 20 checks, the recent 10 alerts. On Starter and up, you can toggle a public status page at /status/<slug> and share that URL with customers.
The whole thing runs on a one-minute Vercel cron that atomically claims due monitors with SELECT FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED so concurrent runs don't double-process. Cost-wise, even at 1000 active monitors with 5-minute cadence, we're talking ~half a million function-seconds per day, well within Vercel Pro tier.
The new pricing, plainly
| Plan | Monitors | Channels | Min interval | History | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 3 | 10 min | 3 days | n/a | |
| Starter $9/mo | 15 | email + webhook | 5 min | 14 days | 14 days |
| Professional $29/mo | 50 | email + webhook | 1 min | 30 days | 14 days |
| Enterprise $99/mo | unlimited | email + webhook + SMS* | 1 min | 90 days | 14 days |
*SMS via Twilio lands in v1.1.x.
All four tiers include unlimited use of all 18 tools, account-backed history, and the ad-free experience. Free is fully usable for diagnostic work and covers a handful of monitors. Starter adds webhooks and public status pages; Professional adds 1-minute checks, API access, and priority support. Annual billing is roughly two months free ($90 / $290 / $950 per year).
The pricing isn't different math; it's a different thing. We're no longer asking "do you need more DNS lookups than 10 per day?" We're asking "do you want to know when an SSL cert is about to expire, or when a DNS record changes, without you having to remember to check?" That's a question with a clear yes / no for each buyer.
What didn't change
The tools. All 18 of them, DNS lookup, WHOIS, reverse DNS, SSL checker, port checker, ping, HTTP header inspector, IP geolocation, what's-my-IP, MAC vendor lookup, Base64, URL encoder, binary-to-text, JSON / YAML formatter, hash generator, subnet calculator, cron generator, Cisco Type 7 decryptor, work exactly the same. Same speed, same UI, same shareable URLs, same account history.
The site stays ad-free at every level. The tools work without an account.
What this means if you were already paying us
You're better off. The old Starter at $19/mo gave you 100 tool runs per day per tool. The new Starter at $9/mo gives you unlimited tool runs and 15 active monitors with email and webhook alerts and public status pages. Less than half the price, more product. Same story for Professional, now $29/mo instead of $49.
If you downgrade, monitors over your new tier's limit auto-pause oldest-first. You're never blocked from downgrading. Your data stays, you can selectively unpause within the new limit, or upgrade back.
What's next
Things we cut from v1.1 that land in v1.1.x:
- SMS alerts via Twilio (Enterprise)
- 3-strikes confirmation on port-tcp and http-status monitors to reduce noise from flaky targets
- REST API for programmatic monitor CRUD (Pro+)
- CLI tool (
tw monitors create ssl-expiry api.example.com) - Burst-throttle on alert email volume per user
- Quiet hours per-monitor
Bigger ideas for v1.2. Team workspaces, SSO via Supabase identity providers, monitor templates, audit log, Slack-native OAuth integration.
If you want any of these prioritised, tell us. The roadmap is shaped by paying users, not by guesses.
Try it
If you've already got a Trace Warrior account, head to /dashboard/monitors — your first 3 monitors are free. New users, /login?signup=1 gets you in. Paid plans come with a 14-day trial, no card required.
If you only ever need on-demand diagnostics, the tool index is more useful than it was yesterday. Same tools, no daily limit. That's an honest free tier we're glad to ship.
Thanks for using the thing. We'll keep telling you when we change it.