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Healthchecks.io can tell you when a scheduled job stops checking in: your cron job sends a ping after successful work, and the service alerts if that ping is late. It is a dead man’s switch for scheduled tasks—not backup software, a website uptime checker, or proof that a backup can be restored.
How Healthchecks.io detects a missed cron job
Each check has a unique ping URL and an expected schedule. The job sends an HTTP request to that URL when it reaches the chosen point in its run. If the expected ping does not arrive, Healthchecks changes the check’s state and can notify you through configured integrations. The service describes its model as listening for pings from cron jobs and scheduled tasks; it does not independently inspect your server or the job’s output. Healthchecks.io documentation
This makes it useful for cron jobs, nightly backups, synchronization, reports, periodic scans, and similar work that should happen on a predictable schedule. It answers “Did this task check in?” rather than “Is my website responding?” or “What do my application logs and performance metrics show?”
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Set up a check that only reports real success
- Create a check for the job. In Healthchecks.io, create a check, set its expected period or cron schedule and grace time, and copy its unique ping URL. A separate check for each important job makes missed runs easier to identify. Healthchecks.io documentation
- Put the success ping after the work. Run the command or script first, then send the success request only if it exits successfully. The official example uses
/home/me/backup.sh && curl ...; the&&prevents the ping from running when the backup command fails. Healthchecks.io cron monitoring guide - Allow for real-world timing. Choose a schedule matching when the job should run, then set grace time long enough to cover ordinary schedule variation and run duration. There is no universal grace period: too short can produce alerts for harmless delays, while too long postpones notice of a genuine failure. Healthchecks.io documentation
- Choose alert destinations. The documentation lists email, webhooks, SMS, chat, and incident-management integrations. For an important job, consider more than one notification channel so a problem with one route does not leave you unaware. Confirm the integrations available to your account in the service. Healthchecks.io documentation Healthchecks.io cron monitoring guide
- Add start and failure signals when you need context. A start event helps distinguish a job that never began from one that started but did not finish. If a start arrives without a success before grace time expires, Healthchecks treats the check as failed and alerts. A failure signal can provide additional information about an unsuccessful run. Healthchecks.io documentation
The cron guide’s sample request sets a 10-second maximum request time and retries, and its sample check uses a 30-minute grace period. Those are examples in the guide, not defaults or recommendations for every job. Healthchecks.io cron monitoring guide
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What New, Up, Late, Down, and Paused mean
- New: The check has been created but has not yet received its first expected signal.
- Up: The expected signal has arrived.
- Late: The next expected signal has not arrived on time, but the grace period is still running.
- Down: The grace period has expired without the expected signal; this is the transition that triggers configured notifications.
- Paused: Monitoring for the check is paused.
For a simple hourly check with five minutes of grace, the documentation illustrates a success at 12:00, a Late state at 13:00, and Down with an alert at 13:05. With a cron schedule, lateness is measured against the next expected wall-clock run time. Healthchecks.io documentation
What a missed heartbeat can—and cannot—tell you
Because the ping comes from the scheduled job, a missing success can reveal several problems: the machine went down, the cron daemon stopped or was misconfigured, the task exited unsuccessfully, or the job took abnormally long. Start and success signals can also expose a run that began but became stuck. Healthchecks.io cron monitoring guide
A received ping only shows that the job reached the ping step. For a backup, it does not establish that the copy is complete, intact, retained for the required period, or restorable. Keep backup verification, restore tests, and storage monitoring as separate controls.
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Hosted Healthchecks.io or self-hosting?
The hosted homepage currently says users can monitor 20 cron jobs for free without a credit card. Treat that as the homepage’s current offer, not a permanent limit; check the service for plan details before relying on them. Healthchecks.io homepage
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Healthchecks is open-source and BSD-licensed, and its FAQ says it can be self-hosted. Self-hosting also makes you responsible for upgrades, reliable alert delivery, backups, and service recovery. The FAQ cautions that operating production-grade monitoring takes ongoing work and says the hosted service may be more reliable and cost-effective for many users. Healthchecks.io documentation Healthchecks.io FAQ
The FAQ identifies the operator as SIA Monkey See Monkey Do and names Pēteris Caune. It says the service uses a hot database standby and daily encrypted S3 backups, while failover is manual and the operations team is one person. These are the operator’s own descriptions, not an independent audit; the FAQ acknowledges that multi-hour or multi-day outages are possible. Healthchecks.io FAQ
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- power input connectorthe power input connector of the raspberry pi 4 has been changed to usb type c. it is easier to use than micro usb and can supply a larger current reliably.the power requirement of raspberry pi 4 model b is 5v 3.0a, which is higher than the previous model.
What the operator reports about scale and availability
Healthchecks.io’s About page says its figures were manually updated on October 2, 2026. The operator reported 11 years in business, 143,000 free accounts, 106 open-source and nonprofit accounts, 1,236 paying accounts, USD 26,000 in monthly recurring revenue, 477,000 monitored checks, 102,000,000 pings processed per day, and 173,000 notifications sent per day. These are vendor-published figures, not independently verified. Healthchecks.io About page
The same page describes availability as best effort and claims it has exceeded 99.9% since the public launch in July 2015. That is the operator’s claim, not a service-level guarantee. Healthchecks.io About page
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When this monitoring approach fits
- Choose a heartbeat check when a scheduled task should run on a known cadence and you need an alert if it does not report back.
- Use start and completion signals when knowing that a run began, or detecting a run that never finished, matters.
- Keep separate monitoring for website availability, application performance, logs, backup integrity, restore success, and storage capacity; a cron ping does not replace those checks.
- Compare hosted and self-hosted operations based on who will maintain the monitor and keep its notifications and recovery process working.
Healthchecks.io’s third-party resources directory lists backup workflow integrations and related tools, including backrest, restic-tools, borgmatic, and emborg. These are examples for people who already need backup tooling; the monitoring service itself does not create backups. Healthchecks.io third-party resources
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