Built by a developer and a sysadmin

Oh Dear started in 2018 with two people. One builds websites; the other keeps servers running. Put those two views together and you cover the whole site, not just the half you think about.

Freek Van der Herten

The Dev

Freek Van der Herten

Agency owner and prolific open-source developer. He cares about what visitors see: every feature, link, and page.

freek.dev
Mattias Geniar

The Ops

Mattias Geniar

Sysadmin with fifteen years in infrastructure and security. He thinks about what breaks a site with no code involved: servers, certificates, DNS.

ma.ttias.be

We build every feature together. These two instincts just shape what we reach for next. Here's how it grew.

2018

Uptime monitoring

Checked from multiple locations, so you know the second your site goes down.

Broken links

We crawl every page and flag the links that lead nowhere.

Certificate monitoring

We warn you long before an SSL certificate expires.

Mixed content

We catch assets loading over HTTP, so your padlock stays intact.
2019

Status pages

Hosted pages that keep users in the loop when something breaks.
2020

Scheduled task monitoring

Know when a cron job runs late, fails, or stops running.

Performance monitoring

Track how fast pages load and catch slowdowns early.
2021

Monthly site reports

A clean monthly summary, delivered to your inbox.

DNS record monitoring

Get notified the moment a DNS record changes.

Application health monitoring

Watch CPU, memory, disk, and custom metrics from inside your app.
2022

Domain expiry monitoring

We watch your domain's expiry date so it never slips by.
2023

Lighthouse & SEO monitoring

Automated audits track performance, accessibility, and SEO over time.
2024

Sitemap monitoring

We read your sitemap and check every page in it is reachable.
2025

Ping monitoring

Check any host answers a ping, from locations worldwide.

TCP port monitoring

Monitor any TCP port to confirm your services are reachable.
2026

AI-powered monitoring

Describe what working looks like in plain English; AI verifies it.

DNS blocklist monitoring

We check whether your domain or IP lands on major blocklists.
••• More to come

These are the highlights, the milestones we're proudest of. We ship smaller features and fixes all the time; you'll find those in our changelog and on the blog.

Two perspectives, one tool that watches everything

Monitor your site the way both a developer and a sysadmin would.