Introduction
Running is-pro.dev as a free service means we are naturally biased toward free and open-source tools. But this is not ideology — it is pragmatism. The free tier of most modern SaaS products is genuinely good enough for a huge range of tasks. Over the years, we have replaced dozens of paid tools with free alternatives that do the job just as well, often better. This post shares the specific tools we use to run is-pro.dev, categorized by function, with honest assessments of where each free tool excels and where it falls short.
DNS Management and Monitoring
This one is obvious: Cloudflare powers all of is-pro.dev's DNS infrastructure. Cloudflare's free tier includes authoritative DNS with instant propagation, DDoS protection, SSL certificates, and DNS analytics. For monitoring, we use UptimeRobot (50 monitors on the free tier) and Better Stack (10 monitors free with status pages). UptimeRobot handles basic uptime checks at 5-minute intervals, while Better Stack provides more sophisticated incident management. For DNS-specific debugging, we built our own DNS Checker tool that queries authoritative nameservers directly — it is free and available to everyone on is-pro.dev. The combination of Cloudflare DNS plus these free monitoring tools provides enterprise-grade DNS observability at zero cost.
CI/CD and Deployment
GitHub Actions is our primary CI/CD platform. The free tier includes 2,000 minutes per month, which covers our build pipelines, automated testing, and deployment scripts. For static site hosting, we use a combination of GitHub Pages (free for public repositories), Cloudflare Pages (unlimited bandwidth, 500 builds/month), and Vercel (100 GB bandwidth, 6000 build minutes/month). Each platform has strengths: GitHub Pages for simplicity, Cloudflare Pages for Cloudflare integration, and Vercel for framework auto-detection. By distributing our projects across these free platforms, we never hit any single provider's limits. Deployment is fully automated — a push to the main branch triggers a build and deploy through GitHub Actions to the appropriate hosting platform.
Error Tracking and Performance Monitoring
Sentry's free tier gives us 5,000 error events per month across unlimited projects. This covers our backend error tracking for the is-pro.dev dashboard API. For frontend performance monitoring, we use Cloudflare Web Analytics (free, privacy-first, no cookie consent needed) and Google Analytics (free tier, adequate for understanding traffic patterns). Lighthouse CI integrated into our GitHub Actions gives us performance budgets and regression detection on every deployment. For server monitoring, Netdata's free community edition provides real-time metrics on CPU, memory, disk, and network for our VPS instances. The combination covers error tracking, performance monitoring, and server observability without a single paid subscription.
Communication and Collaboration
Slack's free tier is adequate for small teams — 90-day message history and 10 app integrations cover our needs. We supplement it with Discord for community discussions (free, unlimited message history). For documentation, we use Notion's free tier (unlimited pages and blocks for personal use) and GitHub Wikis for project-specific documentation. Diagrams and whiteboarding use Excalidraw (open source, free). Video calls use Google Meet (free for 1-hour calls with up to 100 participants). The main paid gap we feel is the Slack message history limit — but for a small team, 90 days is usually enough to address active discussions before they scroll into irrelevance.
Design and Content Creation
Figma's free tier (unlimited files, 3 projects, unlimited editors) handles all our UI design needs. For social media images and blog graphics, Canva's free tier provides templates and basic editing. Screenshot capture uses ShareX (open source, Windows) and Flameshot (open source, Linux). For logo and icon design, we use Inkscape (vector graphics) and the Feather Icons library (open source icons). The is-pro.dev brand assets were created entirely with free tools. The only design tool we would consider paying for is Figma — if we outgrew the three-project limit, the professional tier is worth the investment.
Database and Backend Services
Our primary database is SQLite (embedded, zero-configuration, perfectly adequate for our scale). For the is-pro.dev dashboard, we use better-sqlite3 (a fast SQLite binding for Node.js). For caching and rate limiting, we use in-memory data structures rather than Redis — simpler, zero cost, and sufficient for our traffic levels. For the future, we are evaluating Cloudflare D1 (serverless SQLite at the edge, free tier includes 5 GB storage and 1 million reads/day). The key insight: many projects over-engineer their database infrastructure. SQLite handles millions of reads per second on modern hardware. You likely do not need a separate database server until you have more traffic than a typical side project generates.
What We Still Pay For
Not everything has a viable free alternative. We pay for: VPS hosting ($6/month at Hetzner for services that need server-side processing), domain registration for internal tools (a few .com domains for our team's internal services), and a code signing certificate (needed for platform-specific distribution). That is under $200/year total — a fraction of what comparable infrastructure would cost with paid SaaS tools. The lesson: free tools can cover 90% of your needs, and the remaining 10% is inexpensive if you choose your paid tools strategically.
Conclusion
The free tier ecosystem for developer tools has matured dramatically in the past five years. Cloudflare, GitHub, Vercel, Sentry, Figma, and others offer genuinely useful free tiers that cover most needs for small teams and individual developers. By combining these tools strategically, we run is-pro.dev with near-zero infrastructure costs, letting us focus our budget on the few areas where paid tools actually matter. The free tool mindset is not about being cheap — it is about allocating resources to what matters most.
Key Takeaways
- Cloudflare's free tier covers DNS, CDN, SSL, DDoS protection, and analytics
- GitHub Actions + Cloudflare Pages/Vercel provides free CI/CD and hosting
- Sentry free tier handles error tracking for small to medium projects
- SQLite with better-sqlite3 replaces expensive database servers for many use cases
- Total infrastructure cost for is-pro.dev is under $200/year
- Most developers overestimate their need for paid tools — evaluate free tiers carefully before upgrading
Frequently Asked Questions
Is is-pro.dev really free to use?
Yes, is-pro.dev provides free subdomains for developers with no hidden fees.
What can I host on an is-pro.dev subdomain?
Any legitimate project — portfolios, SaaS apps, game servers, APIs, and more.