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Hosted logging services quickly become expensive

#webdev #programming

Hosted logging services quickly become expensive. Most charge monthly subscription fees based on ingestion volume or retention windows. For smaller projects or simple server setups, paying a recurring monthly bill just to grep through application logs or receive an alert when errors spike is hard to justify. On the other hand, self-hosting complex observability stacks often requires running dedicated database clusters that consume significant memory and compute resources.

I built LogFloor because I wanted basic log search and threshold alerting on my own servers without paying a subscription. It is a lightweight, self-hosted application that ships directly as source code for a one-time cost of $49.

LogFloor uses SQLite as its backend database, which means there are no managed database services to pay for or separate database servers to maintain. Interacting with the system centers on three core components: a single HTTP ingest endpoint, a search UI, and webhook alerts.

Usage Example

To ship logs from your application or system scripts, send an HTTP POST request to LogFloor's ingest endpoint:

curl -X POST https://your-logfloor-instance.com/ingest \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "message": "ERROR: Database connection failed",
    "service": "api-gateway"
  }'
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From the LogFloor user interface, you can work with your stored logs:

  1. Keyword and time-range search: Filter your log history by entering search terms and specifying start and end time boundaries.
  2. Threshold alerting: Set up alerts that monitor incoming logs against defined thresholds. When a specific rule triggers—such as a keyword exceeding a set count within a designated time window—LogFloor sends a payload to the webhook URL you provided.

What It Does Not Do

LogFloor is designed for basic requirements and omits many features found in larger logging platforms:

  • It is not a hosted SaaS: There is no cloud dashboard provided by us. You are responsible for provisioning the server, running the application, and securing the instance.
  • It does not support distributed storage or clustering: Storage is backed entirely by a single SQLite database file, making performance and capacity dependent on single-disk write speeds and SQLite's concurrency limits.
  • It does not perform complex log parsing or distributed tracing: There are no built-in log parsing pipelines, trace aggregations, or visualization dashboards beyond time-range and keyword searches.
  • It offers no native third-party notification integrations: Alerts are strictly delivered via HTTP POST requests to a configurable webhook URL. Integrations with services like Slack, Email, or PagerDuty must be handled via custom webhook endpoints or middleware.

LogFloor is available for $49 as a self-hosted package with full source code included.

Get it here

Disclosure: I built this and it is a paid product.

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