The problem we wanted to solve
We work with small ISPs. Many of their sites have no public IP: residential Starlink, 4G/5G uplinks, and CGNAT in general. You can't reach those routers from outside. When something breaks, you either drive there or ask someone on site to read you values over the phone.
The usual fix is a VPN you build and maintain yourself. That works, but you end up managing addressing, credentials and tunnels for every site. MoniTik does that part for you.
What it is
MoniTik is a web platform that monitors MikroTik devices and gives you remote access to them. Each router opens an outbound tunnel to the platform, so you don't open any inbound port on the router.
How it works (for the curious)
- The router connects out to our servers, so it works behind CGNAT, Starlink and double NAT.
- Each device gets its own private tunnel address and API credentials.
- The platform talks to the router over the RouterOS API through that tunnel.
- Remote WinBox is tunneled through the platform. You don't publish port 8291 to the internet.
- Onboarding is a single generated .rsc script. You paste it in the terminal and it does the setup. It is plain text, so you can read it before running it.
What you get
- Live device status. The dashboard shows what is up and what is down.
- Email alerts when a device goes down and when it comes back. A down alert is only sent after the outage passes a time threshold, so brief flaps don't flood you.
- CPU and memory, interface traffic, and latency graphs.
- Connection history: when each device went down, came back, or changed state.
- Remote WinBox without exposing it. You don't have to publish port 8291 to the internet. Access goes through the platform, behind your Monitik login, so it's one more layer between your router and the open internet. It also works on devices with no public IP (CGNAT, Starlink, 4G/5G).
- Starlink data cap meter (optional, per device). It tracks usage over a rolling 30-day window and emails you at 80%, 95% and 100%. Some Starlink plans are now capped, and a site that runs out of data goes dark. This gives you warning before that happens.
- Read-only sub-accounts, so a client can see their own devices without being able to change anything.
- English, Spanish and Portuguese.
What it doesn't do
- It doesn't change anything on your router by itself. Any action that could cut access, such as installing an update, needs an explicit click from you.
- It isn't a replacement for The Dude or for a full NMS if you already run one for a big network.
Pricing
There is a Free plan with 1 device. Paid plans start at $9/month for 5 devices, and all paid plans have a 7-day trial. I'm not pasting the full price table here, so check the site for current plans.
What I'd like to hear from you
- What would you want to see on a RouterOS monitoring dashboard that you can't get easily today?
- Is there anything in the tunnel and API design you would do differently?
- If you manage sites behind CGNAT or Starlink, how do you reach them today?
Link: https://monitik.com
We'll try to answer every question and every criticism in this thread.