--- title: "Monitoring for Freelance Developers — Lemwatch" description: "API-first monitoring for freelance developers. Webhooks, MCP server, status pages, CWV, uptime — covers every project you ship, $0 to $19/mo." canonical: "https://lemwatch.com/for/freelance-developers" source: "https://lemwatch.com" --- # Website Monitoring for Freelance Developers > Monitor every project you ship — your portfolio, client work, side projects, MVPs. Webhooks, MCP server, public API, and a Free tier generous enough to actually use. Freelance developers ship more projects than they can monitor manually. Your portfolio site, the client work from last year, the MVP you spun up last weekend, the side project that's quietly making $200/month — every one of them needs an uptime check, but no one is going to pay for SaaS-grade monitoring on a side project. Lemwatch's Free tier covers 10 sites with the full check suite; Pro ($19/month) covers 50. Webhooks plug into your existing on-call setup, the MCP server lets your AI assistant query monitoring data directly, and the public API means you can build the monitoring readout straight into your own dashboards. The pitch isn't 'replace your existing stack' — it's 'cover the dozen projects you can't justify Datadog for'. ## Why it matters The freelance/indie-dev workflow is fundamentally different from a corporate ops one. You don't have a runbook. You don't have an on-call rotation. You don't want to wake up at 3am because someone's MVP is throwing 500s. You want monitoring that's quiet by default, alerts only on real signal, plays nicely with your existing stack (Slack, Discord, webhooks, Cursor/Claude via MCP), and doesn't cost more than the projects make. Lemwatch is built around that. The Free tier is genuinely usable (not a 14-day trial); the Pro tier covers a freelancer's typical 20-50 project portfolio; the API and MCP integration let you wire the data into wherever you already look. ## Problems this solves ### Datadog costs more than my side project makes Free tier covers 10 sites; Pro is $19/mo for 50 — less than a billable hour ### Alerts wake me up for things that aren't real outages Multi-region confirmation + retry logic before alerting ### I want monitoring data in my own dashboard / Claude / Cursor Public API + MCP server expose every metric programmatically ### Status pages for paying customers without building one Public status page per project, your branding, your subdomain ### CWV regression on a portfolio piece kills referrals Per-page CWV tracking with regression alerts ### Webhook integrations for existing on-call (PagerDuty, Discord) Webhook alerts with full payload — drop into any system ## What you get ### Generous Free tier 10 sites, full check suite, no time limit, no credit card. Enough to monitor your portfolio + 3-4 client projects without ever opening a billing screen. ### Webhook + MCP integrations Native webhook delivery means alerts plug into PagerDuty, Discord, custom Slack apps, or whatever you've already built. MCP server lets Claude or Cursor query monitoring state directly from your editor. ### Public API Every check result, incident, and metric is readable via REST API with rate limits scaled to plan tier. Build the monitoring readout into your own dashboard. ### Heartbeat / cron monitoring Inverse-uptime checks for cron jobs and scheduled tasks. Get alerted when the cron you set up 6 months ago silently stops running. ### Status page per project Each project gets a public status page on a subdomain (status.yourproject.com). When paying customers ask 'is it down?', send a URL. ### Per-project alert routing Different projects can alert different channels — side projects go to Discord, paying clients page via SMS-via-webhook, portfolio sites email weekly digests. ## A typical week - Monday: Weekly digest hits inbox — every project's uptime %, response time trend, and any incidents from the week. - Tuesday: A new client API endpoint launches; you point a Heartbeat monitor at the cron that powers it and wire the webhook to Discord. - Wednesday: Cursor pulls live monitoring state via MCP while you debug a regression — incident timestamps, response times, and recent deploys all in context. - Thursday: A paying customer asks 'is it down?'; you reply with status.yourproject.com instead of typing an investigation. - Friday: Side project picks up a CWV regression after a dependency upgrade; alert fires before any user notices, you fix on Monday. ## Frequently asked questions ### What does MCP integration actually let me do? The Lemwatch MCP server lets Claude, Cursor, or any other MCP-compatible AI assistant query your monitoring state directly — current uptime, recent incidents, response times, etc. Means you can ask 'why is project X slow?' inside your editor and get real data, not a guess. ### Is the Free tier actually free, or a trial? Actually free. 10 sites, no credit card, no time limit. The check suite is the same one Pro and Agency users get — just capped at 10 sites and lower check frequency. ### Can I integrate with PagerDuty / Discord / Telegram? Yes — Webhook alerts deliver a full JSON payload to any HTTPS endpoint, so any system that accepts webhooks works. Native integrations exist for Slack and Discord; everything else is one webhook URL away. ### Do you have a public API? Yes. REST API with rate limits scaled to plan tier — Free gets enough to power a dashboard widget; Pro and Agency get bulk export and historical queries. API keys live under Settings → API. ### Can I monitor cron jobs? Yes. Heartbeat monitoring is inverse-uptime: instead of pinging your URL, your cron pings ours. If the ping doesn't arrive on schedule, you get an alert. Works for any scheduled task. ### Is there an open-source self-hosted option? No — Lemwatch is a SaaS. If self-hosting is a hard requirement, see our open-source-monitoring comparison page for alternatives. For most freelancers, the Free tier removes the cost concern that drives self-hosting. ### How are paying side projects best monitored? Pro plan ($19/mo, 50 sites) + Heartbeat for any cron + Public Status Page for the customer-facing SLA. Total monitoring cost: less than the first month's revenue on most indie projects. ## Related - [Website Monitoring for Agencies](https://lemwatch.com/for/agencies) - [Website Monitoring for Freelancers](https://lemwatch.com/for/freelancers) - [Website Monitoring for Ecommerce](https://lemwatch.com/for/ecommerce) - [Lemwatch pricing](https://lemwatch.com/pricing) - [All monitoring checks](https://lemwatch.com/features) - [Monitoring use cases](https://lemwatch.com/use-cases)