f5bot.com

F5Bot sends you an email when your chosen keywords appear in a new post or comment on Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters. Setup takes three steps — create a free account with just an email address, add your keywords, and wait for alerts — and the site says you can be up and running in under a minute. No credit card or payment information is required to sign up.

Before You Start

You only need two things:

• An email address you check regularly (this is where alerts arrive).
• A list of keywords — brand names, product names, or topics you want to track. Think about the exact phrases people would type when discussing you, and note any common misspellings or variants worth including.

Step-by-Step Setup

1. Create your free account

Sign up with just an email address. No credit card or payment information is needed. The site's signup flow is at the top of the homepage ("Sign Up Free").

Expected result: You have an account tied to your email, ready to accept keywords.

2. Add your keywords

Enter the brand names, products, or topics you want to track. F5Bot monitors all three platforms at once — Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters — and tracks mentions across posts and comments in every subreddit.

Expected result: Your keywords are saved and monitoring begins.

3. Receive alerts

When a keyword appears in a new post or comment, F5Bot emails you. The site says it monitors every few minutes, so alerts arrive shortly after a mention is posted.

Expected result: An email alert containing the mention and a link to view it on the source platform (for example, "View on Reddit →").

Verify It's Working

The simplest check is to post a test mention containing one of your keywords in a low-traffic community, or wait for a real mention to appear. If no alert arrives, confirm that:

• Your keyword is spelled exactly as it appears in posts (matching is keyword-based by default).
• The mention is a new post or comment — F5Bot alerts on new content, not edits to old content.
• Your email provider isn't filtering F5Bot messages into spam.

Tightening Your Alerts

Once the basics work, F5Bot offers ways to cut noise:

Common Stumbling Points

• Too many alerts on generic keywords. Start with specific brand or product names, then broaden only if you're missing conversations.
• Expecting coverage beyond the three platforms. F5Bot monitors Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters — not the wider web.
• Assuming alerts are instant by default. Delivery timing is configurable; if timeliness matters, choose instant delivery rather than a digest.

What You Get

F5Bot has run since 2017 and reports delivering 430,000+ alerts daily. Beyond brand monitoring, the same setup supports competitor tracking, lead generation (finding people actively asking for what you offer), and tracking shares of your blog posts, open-source tools, or press coverage. The site also publishes guides if you want use-case-specific advice.

F5Bot lets you start monitoring Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters for free — no credit card required — and the site maintains a separate pricing page for comparing paid options. The practical decision comes down to how many keywords you track, how often you need alerts, and whether you need integrations like Slack, Discord, RSS, JSON, or API access. The free tier is a reasonable starting point for a single brand name or a small set of topics; paid plans make more sense once monitoring becomes a team workflow or you need delivery routed beyond email.

What the free account covers

According to the site, signing up requires only an email address — no payment information. From there you add keywords and receive an email when those keywords appear in a new post or comment across the three monitored platforms. The homepage also states the service is "free to use," and the setup flow is described as taking under a minute across three steps: create an account, add keywords, get alerted.

That makes the free tier well suited to a first test: confirm that your brand name or product actually gets discussed on these platforms before committing to anything more.

What to check on the pricing page

The site links to a dedicated Pricing page from both the header and the homepage, but the plan-by-plan feature breakdown isn't included in the material available here. Before choosing, open that page and compare plans on these dimensions — each maps to a feature the site advertises:

Treat the free/paid boundary on each row as something to verify on the pricing page rather than assume — the homepage markets these capabilities without stating which tier includes them.

Match the plan to your actual use case

The site frames four use cases, and they imply different monitoring loads:

• Brand monitoring — watching your company or product name. Usually a handful of keywords; a good fit for starting free.
• Competitor intelligence — tracking competitor names and products. Multiplies your keyword count and often benefits from exclusion filters to cut noise.
• Lead generation — finding people actively asking for what you offer. This tends to need broader topic coverage and faster delivery, since intent is time-sensitive.
• Content and PR tracking — seeing when your posts, open-source tools, or press coverage get shared. Works well with digest-style delivery rather than instant pings.

If your needs sit in the first or fourth category, the free account likely covers the job. If you're running competitor tracking or lead generation across a team, weigh the paid tiers against the cost of missed or delayed mentions.

A sensible way to decide

1. Start free with your highest-value keyword — typically your brand or product name — and confirm mentions actually appear on Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters.
2. Add keywords until noise becomes a problem. Then look at advanced filtering (subreddit limits, excluded terms) and check whether those controls are available on your current plan.
3. Ask whether email is enough. If alerts need to reach a team channel or another system, the Slack/Discord and RSS/JSON/API features become the deciding factor.
4. Compare the pricing page against your keyword count and delivery needs, not against the longest feature list.

The site notes it has operated since 2017 and delivers 430,000+ alerts daily, which speaks to reliability but says nothing about plan limits — so the pricing page remains the authoritative source for what each tier includes.

F5Bot is a keyword monitoring tool that watches Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters for terms you specify and emails you when they appear in a new post or comment. It fits anyone who needs to catch mentions of a brand, product, competitor, or topic as they happen—solo developers, PR and marketing teams, and community managers. Sign-up requires only an email address, and the site states no credit card is needed.

How it works

The setup follows three steps described on the site:

1. Create an account — sign up with an email address.
2. Add keywords — enter the brand names, products, or topics you want tracked across all three platforms.
3. Receive alerts — get an email when a keyword appears in a new post or comment.

Monitoring covers posts and comments in every subreddit on Reddit, plus Hacker News and Lobsters. The site says platforms are checked every few minutes and that it has operated since 2017, delivering 430,000+ alerts daily.

What you can control

Beyond plain keyword matching, F5Bot offers several ways to cut noise and route alerts:

Who it's for

The site names four use cases:

• Brand monitoring — know when your company or product is discussed so you can respond early.
• Competitor intelligence — track competitor names and products to see how they're perceived and spot trends.
• Lead generation — find people actively asking for what you offer, at the moment of intent.
• Content & PR tracking — see when your blog posts, open-source tools, or press coverage are shared.

Deciding whether to use it

F5Bot is a good fit if your audience or market talks on Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters and you want email or channel alerts without building your own scraper. It is less suited to monitoring platforms outside those three, or to needs that require real-time streaming rather than checks every few minutes.

The site advertises both a free tier and paid plans ("Simple plans for every need," with a Pricing page linked), but the supplied material does not list prices or what each plan includes—check the Pricing page before committing to a paid tier.

F5Bot reduces noise in two stages: it filters which Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters discussions trigger an alert, then lets you choose how and when that alert reaches you. You can combine exact keyword matching with AI filtering and advanced rules (subreddit limits, excluded terms, required co-occurring keywords), and receive matches by email instantly, in batches, or as a daily digest—or route them to Slack or Discord via webhooks. This suits anyone tracking brand mentions, competitors, or leads who wants fewer, more relevant alerts rather than every keyword hit.

What triggers an alert

F5Bot monitors Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters at once, covering both posts and comments across every subreddit, and checks for new activity every few minutes. You control what counts as a match through three layers:

• Exact keywords: the brand names, products, or topics you enter are matched against new posts and comments.
• AI filtering: instead of relying only on exact terms, you describe what you're looking for in natural language and let AI evaluate each new discussion against that description.
• Advanced filtering: narrow results by subreddit, exclude unwanted terms, require co-occurring keywords, and otherwise control exactly what triggers an alert.

A practical example: tracking "Acme" alone will catch every unrelated use of the word. Adding an excluded term for a common unrelated meaning, restricting to relevant subreddits, and requiring a co-occurring word like a product name narrows the stream to discussions actually about your product.

How alerts are delivered

Once a discussion passes your filters, delivery is configurable:

The right choice depends on urgency. Instant email or a Slack webhook fits community engagement and lead response, where acting at the moment of intent matters. A daily digest fits lower-urgency tracking such as PR coverage or trend spotting, where a single summary is easier to scan than a stream of individual emails.

Getting set up

1. Create a free account with just an email address—no credit card or payment information is needed.
2. Add your keywords and, if needed, your AI description and advanced filters.
3. Choose your delivery method and start receiving alerts.

The site states setup takes under a minute, and F5Bot has been running since 2017, delivering 430,000+ alerts daily.

Common pitfalls

• Starting too broad: begin with exact keywords, then add exclusions and subreddit limits once you see what's noisy.
• Mismatching delivery to urgency: instant alerts for low-priority topics create fatigue; use digests for those.
• Forgetting team routing: if others need the alerts, set up Slack or Discord webhooks rather than forwarding emails manually.

Pricing details for paid plans are not covered in the available page content; the site describes a free tier and separate pricing page, so check that page directly for current plan terms.

F5Bot monitors Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters at the same time, covering both posts and comments across every subreddit. Alerts can reach you by email, through Slack and Discord webhooks, or as RSS, JSON, or API feeds for your own tools. All three platforms are included in a single account, so you don't need separate setups per source.

Monitoring coverage

F5Bot checks these platforms every few minutes and emails you when a keyword appears in a new post or comment. The site states it has run since 2017 and delivers 430,000+ alerts daily.

Narrowing what triggers an alert

Monitoring all subreddits at once can produce noise, so F5Bot offers filtering on top of exact keyword matching:

• Subreddit filters — restrict alerts to specific communities.
• Excluded terms — suppress alerts containing words you don't want.
• Co-occurring keywords — require a second term to appear alongside the first.
• AI filtering — describe what you're looking for in natural language and let the system evaluate each new discussion, rather than matching only literal keywords.

These filters matter most on Reddit, where the same brand name can appear in unrelated contexts. For example, if you track a product called "Acme," requiring a co-occurring term like "pricing" or "deployment" keeps alerts focused on buying-intent discussions.

Delivery and integration options

Email

Email is the default channel. You can choose instant delivery, batched delivery on a delay, or a daily digest at a time you pick. Instant is best for time-sensitive engagement (replying to a complaint early); a digest suits low-volume tracking where you'd rather review mentions once a day.

Slack and Discord

Alerts can be routed into team channels via webhooks, so the right people see mentions without anyone checking an inbox. This is the usual choice for marketing or support teams that already work in chat.

RSS, JSON, and API

For existing workflows, F5Bot exposes alerts as RSS feeds, JSON feeds, or through programmatic API access. Use these when you want mentions to flow into a dashboard, a data pipeline, or a custom notification system rather than a chat app or inbox.

Choosing the right setup

• Solo developer or small project: email with instant or daily delivery, plus subreddit filters to cut noise.
• Marketing or PR team: Slack or Discord webhooks so mentions land where the team already communicates.
• Data or engineering use: RSS/JSON feeds or the API to integrate mentions into your own tooling.
• Broad brand tracking: AI filtering or co-occurring keywords to separate genuine discussion from passing references.

Getting started

Setup takes under a minute per the site: create a free account with just an email address (no credit card or payment information required), add your keywords, and alerts begin arriving by email. Integrations such as Slack, Discord, RSS, JSON, and API access are configured from within the account after signup. For current plan details and any limits on keywords or integrations, check the Pricing page, since the homepage does not specify them.