Cron Monitor
Dead man's switch for cron jobs — get alerted when your scheduled tasks stop running
Heartbeat Monitor — dead-man's-switch for cron jobs and scheduled tasks. Your cron shells into an Enterno URL on every run; if pings stop for longer than the configured grace period — alert in Telegram/Slack. Simple and reliable.
How it works
Create a monitor
Set check type to "Heartbeat" in your dashboard. Choose the expected interval (e.g. every 5 minutes).
Ping the URL
Add a simple HTTP request at the end of your cron job, script, or pipeline. Any method (GET/POST/HEAD) works.
Get alerted
If a ping is missed, you'll get instant alerts via Telegram, email, Slack, or webhook.
Integration examples
Crontab
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/backup.sh && curl -fsS --retry 3 https://enterno.io/api/heartbeat/YOUR_TOKENBash script
#!/bin/bash
# Your task here
python3 /app/etl.py
# Report success
curl -fsS https://enterno.io/api/heartbeat/YOUR_TOKENPHP
// After your task completes:
file_get_contents('https://enterno.io/api/heartbeat/YOUR_TOKEN');Python
import requests
# After your task completes:
requests.get('https://enterno.io/api/heartbeat/YOUR_TOKEN')Docker / CI/CD
# At the end of your pipeline step:
wget -q -O /dev/null https://enterno.io/api/heartbeat/YOUR_TOKENUse cases
Cron jobs
Backups, cleanups, data sync, report generation
CI/CD pipelines
Build, test, and deploy pipelines
ETL & data jobs
Data pipelines, imports, exports, transformations
Background workers
Queue processors, daemon health checks
Why teams trust us
How it works
Create heartbeat
Ping URL from cron
Get alert on miss
What is Heartbeat Monitoring?
A heartbeat monitor is a "reverse monitor": instead of us polling the service, the service signals us that it's alive. If no signal arrives within the set interval — we send an alert.
Simple Integration
One GET request to a unique URL — and the monitor knows the job completed.
Grace Period
Set an acceptable ping delay to avoid false alerts.
Smart Notifications
Email and Telegram on missed ping. Repeated alert if silence continues.
Execution History
Full ping log with timestamps — see every job execution.
Who uses this
DevOps
cron job monitoring
Developers
background worker check
Sysadmins
dead man's switch
Business
payment queue monitoring
Common Mistakes
Best Practices
curl -s https://enterno.io/api/heartbeat/TOKEN — simple and reliable.Start monitoring cron for free
Heartbeat monitor: 5 tasks free, Telegram and email alerts on missed runs.
Sign up freeWebsite Uptime Monitoring
Heartbeat is an uptime monitoring service that regularly checks your website and instantly notifies you of outages. Monitoring runs every 1-5 minutes from our server in Russia. When downtime is detected, you receive a notification via Telegram or email.
Monitor your websites 24/7 with checks every 1 to 60 minutes. Supports HTTP/HTTPS (with status code and keyword validation), TCP port checks, and ICMP ping. Receive instant alerts via Telegram bot and email when your site goes down or recovers.
Create public status pages with embeddable badges to show uptime to your customers. Combine with SSL monitoring to get alerts before certificates expire, and health scoring for comprehensive website analysis. All monitoring runs from a server in Russia.
Learn more
How-to
Frequently Asked Questions
What is heartbeat monitoring?
Heartbeat monitoring is a way to check cron jobs and background processes using a "dead man's switch" principle. Your service periodically sends a signal (heartbeat). If the signal does not arrive on time, you receive a notification.
What is a Dead Man's Switch?
A Dead Man's Switch is a mechanism that triggers on inactivity. In monitoring: if your cron script stops sending heartbeat signals within a set time, the system considers it down and sends an alert.
How to monitor cron jobs?
Create a heartbeat monitor in Enterno.io, get a unique URL. Add a call to this URL at the end of your cron script: curl -s URL. If the script fails to run, the heartbeat will not arrive and you will receive a notification.
What heartbeat interval to choose?
The interval should match the cron job schedule plus a buffer (grace period). Example: cron every 5 minutes — heartbeat 5 minutes + grace 2 minutes. Cron hourly — heartbeat 60 minutes + grace 10 minutes.
What is a grace period?
Grace period is additional wait time after a missed heartbeat before sending an alert. It prevents false alarms during brief delays in cron job execution.
How does heartbeat differ from uptime monitoring?
Uptime monitoring checks server availability externally (our server pings yours). Heartbeat monitoring waits for an internal signal (your server reports to us). Heartbeat is ideal for cron jobs, workers, backups — processes without an external URL.
Related guides
Longer-form reading on this topic from the knowledge base.
Dead man's switch for cron
Each job pings a URL — if it stops, you get alerted. Works for backups, cron, CI pipelines.