Cron job monitoring, know when your scheduled database backups fail silently
Last updated: 2026-07-19
Heartbeat Monitoring
Catch silent cron job and background task failures.
Traditional monitoring checks if your service is reachable. Heartbeat monitoring checks if your background jobs and scheduled tasks are actually running. Send a ping from your cron job, if it doesn't arrive on time, we alert you.
How it works
Create a heartbeat monitor, you get a unique URL with a secret token
Configure your cron job or background task to ping that URL when it runs
Set the expected interval, e.g., ping every 5 minutes
If the heartbeat doesn't arrive within the expected window, we create an incident and alert you
Common use cases
Background worker monitoring, catch when your queue processor stalls
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from uptime monitoring?
Uptime monitoring checks if a service responds to requests. Heartbeat monitoring checks if a scheduled task actually ran. Your server can be "up" while your nightly database backup has been failing for a week.
What if my cron job runs irregularly?
Set a grace period. If you expect a heartbeat every 5 minutes but allow a 2-minute margin, we alert only if nothing arrives within 7 minutes.
How many heartbeat monitors can I have?
3 on Free, 10 on Solo, and 25 on Team plans. Heartbeat monitors have a separate limit from regular monitors.