Cron job monitoringPRO

Cron job monitoring: find out when a job silently stops

Backups, invoices and data syncs fail quietly. With a heartbeat monitor, your job calls a private URL each time it finishes. If the call doesn't arrive on time, Spot Downtime alerts you.

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0 2 * * * /opt/backup.sh && curl -fsS -m 10 https://…/ping/a8Kq…

✓ Last ping 02:00:41 · expected every 1 day (+30 min grace)

A nightly backup that pings when it succeeds

One line to add

Add a curl to the end of your script or crontab entry. No agent or library to install.

Grace periods

Allow for jobs that run long. You're only alerted once the expected time plus the grace period has passed.

Report failures directly

Call the URL with /fail at the end to mark the job down immediately when it errors.

How to set it up

1Click Add monitor and choose Heartbeat.
2Name it and choose how often the job runs, from every minute to once a week, plus a grace period.
3Copy the ping URL from the monitor's page.
4Add a call to it at the end of your job.

The details

Expected interval: 1 minute to 7 days
Grace period: None up to 24 hours
Ping methods: GET, POST or HEAD to the ping URL; /fail to report a failure
Counts as down: No ping within the interval plus grace, or a /fail call
Plan: Pro

Questions

Is the ping URL secret?: Yes. It contains a random token, so only someone with the URL can ping it. Treat it like a password.
What if my job pings very often?: Repeated successful pings within a few seconds just move the deadline forward; they don't flood your history.

API monitoringSend real requests and assert on the JSON that comes back.AlertsSlack, Discord, email and webhooks, the moment something breaks.Incident historyEvery outage recorded, with charts and uptime figures.

Set up cron job monitoring in under a minute

Available on Pro. Start free and upgrade when you need it.

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