Pingdom
The world's biggest website monitoring company. From startup to Fortune 500 essential in 8 years of iterative marketing.
When I joined Pingdom in 2011, we were still small enough to share a taxi to lunch. Yet the developer community was already talking about the product. My mandate was to fan that early flame without letting the brand lose its handcrafted quality.
Success meant adding users, not complexity. We kept the freemium model front and center, held prices low, and let the product’s stickiness handle conversions. Every pixel and line of copy had to feel world-class, so we studied the breakout SaaS stars of the day and matched their polish. A lean budget and a promise never to sacrifice free users for quick revenue forced us to stay sharp and inventive.
What we built, shaped, and launched
We overhauled the visual identity, evolving from a startup aesthetic to a polished look developers could proudly display on a laptop sticker. I assembled a 15-person marketing team spanning Västerås, Stockholm, and Austin. We worked in brisk two-week cycles and treated campaigns the way engineers treat code deploys. Our tight feedback loops kept us grounded in our users’ reality.
Podcast sponsorships, Hacker News AMAs, and honest “from-the-trenches” emails maintained our credibility with the developer community. I also wrote and directed a series of playful product videos and built a live Internet Health Map that turned uptime data from nearly a million sites into real-time insights the tech press couldn’t resist.
In 2015, SolarWinds acquired Pingdom, and I guided the brand through the transition and all the way to SolarWinds’ debut on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SWI.
Company
Role
CMO, 2011–2019
Milestones
Built a developer-favorite uptime tool into a global SaaS brand with 800,000 users.
Customers included 85% of all Fortune 500 companies.
Increased revenue from 50 million SEK (2014) to 142 million (2018)
The Pingdom website went through many iterations over the years.
Highlights and wins
Over 8 years we grew from 30,000 users to 900,000 users. Revenue climbed from 50 million SEK in 2014 to 142 million SEK in 2018, a 184% increase. By the time I left, 85% of the Fortune 500 relied on Pingdom, with names like Twitter, Dropbox, Apple, Spotify, and Pinterest on the roster. Alexa counted us among the world’s 1,000 most visited websites.
Our work hit the front page of Hacker News, Techmeme, and The Verge, then crossed into mainstream outlets like the New York Times and the BBC.
Reflections
Pingdom proved that clever, iterative marketing can outperform brands with significantly larger budgets. Small, fast feedback loops tighten alignment and close the gap between expectation and reality. The live uptime map started as a quick experiment and became an overnight press magnet that drove substantial user acquisition.
If I could replay the experience, I would still double down on community because developer loyalty compounds over time.
Oh, and I would hire a data analyst sooner to sharpen every experiment. This story still anchors my playbook: clear narrative, trackable metrics, and relentless iteration.
There are so many stories to tell from the Pingdom offices. We were born to hack.
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“Not only is he a man of class and wit, but also a great designer and collaborator. When Jonas managed our marketing team, his skill and guidance consistently helped elevate our work to the next level. In short, Jonas knows what he’s doing!”
John Karlsson, Lead Designer
