Feedback on a new app to monitor domain/SSL expiry - expirify.com

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#1

Domain registrars and SSL cert providers do send error/renewal reminder emails but only to the person that registered the domain or cert.

We needed more members of our team to be able to monitor these notices, so we created Expirify. It allows us to setup reminders for domains and SSL certs to multiple email accounts on a schedule that we dictate.

We’re putting it out as a free tool for other companies to benefit from. All we ask is that we have your feedback on how it could be improved or added to, create a free account here:

Thanks all :slight_smile:

#2

Anyone? Anybody at all? :slight_smile: Come on don’t be shy…

#3

I think this has potential. There have been a few times where a cert of ours almost expired, because our admin was just getting too many emails and he thought he had already forwarded to us to update.

I also just started using LetsEncrypt on a few sites, and would like an extra layer of comfort to know for sure that the cronjob is updating the certs in time.

I’m not sure if I’d whip out my credit card for something like this - but - this is ripe for being an affiliate of registrars. In the email where you tell me I’m about to expire, it’d be super easy to convince me to use another registrar or cert company if you show me they’re much cheaper / better than what I’m currently using you could earn some referral cash.

Signed up. Keep us posted how it goes.

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#4

Hey thanks for the feedback.

Yeah i doubt I’d set this up as a paid app, i agree with you we would simply make money on an affiliate setup with domain providers.

I still think there’s work to do on adding more value for customers. What this does it does well but I’m sure there’s missing functionality I’ve not yet identified.

Thanks again.

#5

I signed up and tried it out. This is clearly built by people with experience in creating web apps - all the basic stuff seems to be done correctly.

Small things:

  • you have a “Features” navigation item, but the marketing mantra is you sell on benefits, not features. That is not a huge problem for a free service though.
  • “copyright 2015” in the page footers make this look like an abandoned project.
  • https://expirify.com/ makes Chrome show me a privacy error message.

I’m interested in your rationale for choosing using WordPress for the marketing site, and hosting the app on a subdomain. That’s because I’m currently trying to decide for myself to what degree I’ll separate our marketing site from our app site.

#6

Hi Steve, thanks for kicking the tyres.

I will tweak the features landing page text. As you rightly point out we’ve not invested heavily in copy (or anything for that matter) until we’ve proven that people get some use out of this app

Gah - out of date copyright dates on websites is one of my pet peeves. Fixed.

Added SSL to the marketing website which should be live in a few hours, I do love Let’s Encrypt :slight_smile:

Our rationale is quite specific to our setup and based on a bit of history. Our main app www.staffsquared.com is built using the same tech as the app. It’s a static website, no CMS, so every time I want to make even the slightest change I need to submit a scheduling request. I know, the irony, you wouldn’t think I own this business but processes are created for a reason :slight_smile:

Given I can’t always rely on our busy developers to be at my beck and call for marketing development, and to give me some autonomy, I chose Wordpress as the marketing website. It means I can do things like fix out of date copyright dates in footers and this makes me happy. It also means I can run entirely separate marketing processes (for the most part) without reliance on our dev team. This also makes me happy as I’m not a patient man but more importantly my marketing team have got their own deadlines and I want to avoid situations where one internal team (marketing) is over relent on another (dev/testing) to get their work done.

I’m not sure if that answers, but hopefully at least a bit of insight in to how we got to that decision.