Meet Konrad
Hi, my name is Konrad Caban. For over 20 years, I’ve been running a small digital agency in Warsaw.
In the late 1990s, I published one of the first (if not the first) e-zines in Poland—”WebKurier”—and managed an internet café in the center of Warsaw. That’s when I also started building my first websites for clients.
I launched my first SaaS in 2005, before I even knew the term “SaaS.” 😉
Here’s how it looked back then: https://web.archive.org/web/20050605021025/http://www.daty.pl/
Since then, I’ve undertaken similar ventures multiple times as side projects.
I managed to sell a few SaaS solutions, though most ended in failure at various stages.
The one that has undoubtedly been successful is Super Monitoring.
Can you give us an overview of Super Monitoring and what inspired its creation?
“Website-Monitoring”, as the service was initially called in 2010, was created to leverage the client portfolio I had from my interactive services. Every client had a commercial website, and for each, any downtime translated into financial losses—or at least lost opportunities.
This led to the development of a service that monitors website availability—or more precisely, detects outages.
Here’s the original version: https://web.archive.org/web/20100225065640/http://www.website-monitoring.com/
From the start, I relied on content marketing, and at that time, infographics worked exceptionally well. One infographic, in particular, drew a significant audience. It was created in collaboration with YouTube’s then-PR head to celebrate YouTube’s 10th anniversary: https://www.supermonitoring.com/blog/youtube-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/
In 2013, Website-Monitoring underwent rebranding and became Super Monitoring. It also began offering monitoring for more aspects of websites, including content, loading speed, functionality, processes, domain expiration, SSL certificates, and more.
Super Monitoring in 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20131124141609/http://www.supermonitoring.com/
What sets Super Monitoring apart from other website monitoring tools on the market?
Not everyone realizes how competitive this market is. Currently, there are over 200 website monitoring tools, but even more—over 350—have disappeared from the market!
We’ve been sustaining and slowly growing for 15 years.
Competition in this market is highly diverse, so we compete differently with each player—some on price, others on service scope, and others on customer support quality.
What truly sets us apart is our visual communication based on comic book superheroes. It’s unconventional for a B2B market and somewhat risky. In some markets, it may lead to us not being taken seriously. But it certainly makes us noticeable and memorable.
Another thing our clients appreciate, which isn’t very common among competitors, is that we evolve based on user needs. These aren’t just empty words. We regularly conduct surveys on new features and changes and then implement what matters most to our clients—and have been doing so for years.
How does Super Monitoring handle incident alerts, and what channels do you use to notify users?
Email alerts are the foundation, with SMS alerts also being very popular. In some markets, we offer automated voice calls (a bot calls a specified number and reports the incident).
Our clients can notify their users about incidents through customized status pages.
Additionally, we offer various integrations (e.g., webhooks, APIs) that allow alerts to be sent to client systems (e.g., ERPs) or communication platforms (e.g., Slack).
The alerting scheme and alert content can be fully customized.
How do you ensure the reliability and accuracy of your monitoring data?
We monitor clients’ websites and applications using a world-wide network of servers located across five continents.
We only log and report outages that have been confirmed by at least three servers in different locations. This eliminates false alarms caused by local or inter-operator connectivity issues.
The monitoring frequency can be set by users, but the available options and defaults are tailored to the type of monitor. For instance, availability is checked every minute by default, forms every 5 minutes, loading times and processes every 10 minutes, and metrics like Core Web Vitals once every 24 hours.
Over 15 years, we’ve encountered many highly specific situations and exceptions, and this accumulated knowledge is embedded in Super Monitoring’s code.
Of course, we also monitor ourselves. One mechanism generates various types of failures, and another checks if they were detected and reported correctly.
How do you see the website monitoring space evolving over the next few years?
The need to ensure continuity of operations, particularly for commercial websites and applications, will remain. Some will continue to implement their own solutions, only to realize later that external monitoring, which doesn’t require in-house resources, is more effective.
New monitoring tools will keep emerging because, to the untrained eye, it seems like simple software that can be quickly deployed and easily sold. 🙂
As a result, many brands will also disappear from the market after failing to achieve product-market fit.
On the technical side, website monitoring will continue to follow developments in web technology and current trends (e.g., interest in Core Web Vitals).
This industry, too, will be impacted by the AI revolution.
What role does AI play in SaaS, and do you have plans to incorporate it into your product?
AI has a significant impact on SaaS. On one hand, it makes building and developing applications much easier and faster. On the other hand, AI models are embedded in applications, expanding their functionality or at least changing how they’re used.
In Super Monitoring, we’re exploring the potential of AI to detect and analyze patterns in incidents over medium and long periods.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs in the SaaS space?
At the start of your journey, it’s too early to rely on intuition. It’s like an AI model that has just begun training. 😉
Making decisions without data is too risky. If you feel something will sell but don’t have data to back up its market potential (research, an MVP), don’t act on it.
If you lack a huge budget or extensive reach, you won’t create demand for something entirely new. Instead, focus on something with existing demand.
Lastly, don’t give up and don’t be afraid to change direction—even drastically (pivot).
How can businesses improve their website performance beyond just monitoring?
The key is understanding that websites can be optimized in many ways – and that even small changes can significantly boost revenue. This mindset encourages investment in audits, changes, and A/B testing.
Monitoring can help identify issues that need fixing (e.g., malfunctioning processes or slow-loading pages) rather than uncovering potential areas for improvement.
Did you enjoy our interview? Do you have anything to say to our community?
Of course – thank you for the interesting questions! Thanks to them, I realized that this year marks the 15th anniversary of our service.
Maybe it’s time for a special anniversary offer. 😉
