The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Product decision · 2022–2024
Bernard bets web teams pay for managed link checks; Show HN launch drew 104 points
Bernard is a solo-built daily crawler for broken links and missing redirects; its 2024-01-23 Show HN free beta drew 104 points and 73 comments.
Bernard
What the business is
Bernard is a managed web service that crawls a website daily and reports broken internal and external links plus missing redirects after redesigns or URL moves; it launched as a free open beta with usage-based paid plans from about $10 per month planned for February 2024.
How it started
The developer behind the HN handle sph started Bernard in November 2022 and spent months planning, coding and interviewing a small number of potential users before launching. His stated reason: web agencies ship fast and let non-technical staff create pages, so links break and stay broken for months, while only large companies run automated link tests — 'my bet is that someone wants to pay me to deal with all that nonsense.' The stack was Elixir with Phoenix Live View on PostgreSQL, run as Podman containers on a single dedicated Hetzner server.
What happened
Bernard went out as a free open beta via Show HN on 2024-01-23. Testers that day found real broken links on their own sites — 46 on one blog, and 316 issues on another after hitting the 2,500-link limit — and surfaced exactly the edge cases that define the product: recursive relative links that trap naive crawlers, URL-encoded backslashes, and false 403s from Cloudflare, NYT and Reuters that forced a HEAD-to-GET retry rule. The author answered the thread, logged fixes and laid out the roadmap — CSV export, ignore patterns, CSS/JS link parsing, Cloudflare 'good bot' registration — plus a free tier for small sites, a usage-based plan from about $10 per month, and a REST API for links-checker-as-a-service.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Bernard is a managed web service that crawls a website daily and flags broken internal and external links, plus missing redirects after a redesign or URL change. One solo developer, the HN user sph, started it in November 2022 and launched it as a free open beta on Hacker News on 2024-01-23, where the Show HN post drew 104 points and 73 comments.
The bet was that teams will pay for managed link checking. In the thread the author argued that web agencies and small/medium companies ship fast, let non-technical people publish pages, and never run automated link tests: 'my bet is that someone wants to pay me to deal with all that nonsense.' Skeptics called the product a 50-line Python script, while one commenter said a government entity already budgets $2,000 a year for exactly this service.
Launch-day testing validated the complexity thesis: users found 46 broken links on one blog and 316 issues on another, and false positives on Cloudflare, NYT and Reuters pushed the author to add HEAD-to-GET retries and ignore 403s from Cloudflare-served domains. The roadmap covered CSV export, CSS/JS link parsing and a REST API, with paid plans from about $10 per month planned for February 2024.
The material record ends at the launch thread: bernard.app was live in free beta on a single Hetzner server as of 2024-01-23, but nothing in the record confirms whether the February paid plans shipped or how many customers followed.
What has to be true
- Verifiable attention: the Show HN of 2024-01-23 reached 104 points and 73 comments, and commenters ran their own sites through the beta the same day.
- The bet is explicit — the author wrote it in the thread: someone will pay him to handle link-checking edge cases instead of running DIY scripts.
- The launch thread tests the thesis in public: skeptics call it a 50-line script while a government buyer says they budget $2,000 a year, and both appear in the same comment section.
- It is a clean solo-SaaS wedge: one operator, one Hetzner box, an Elixir stack and usage pricing from $10 per month — an indie launch recorded before the outcome is known.
What can be applied
If the job looks like a 50-line script, sell the part that is not: the endless edge cases of a hostile web, to teams who will never maintain a checker themselves.
Aftermath
As of the 2024-01-23 record, Bernard was live as a free open beta at bernard.app — an Elixir/Phoenix Live View app on PostgreSQL, running as Podman containers on a single dedicated Hetzner server. Launch-day fixes were in progress (URL-encoding handling, recursive-link detection, Cloudflare 403 suppression, CSV export), paid plans were planned for February 2024 from about $10 per month, and a REST API was floated for a links-checker-as-a-service product. The material ends there, so nothing in this case confirms whether paid plans launched or how the product fared afterward.
Sources
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