Healthchecks.io pioneered cron monitoring, but if you want instant SMS & WhatsApp alerts, a real-time dashboard and execution-time tracking out of the box, CronGuard is the modern alternative.
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| Feature | CronGuard | Healthchecks.io |
|---|---|---|
| HTTP ping (dead man's switch) | ||
| Email alerts | ||
| SMS & WhatsApp alerts | Limited | |
| Real-time WebSocket dashboard | ||
| Execution-time / performance tracking | Partial | |
| Public status pages | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Paid plan entry price | $8/mo unlimited | $20/mo |
Both CronGuard and Healthchecks.io use the same proven approach: a simple HTTP ping at the end of your job acts as a dead man's switch. If the ping does not arrive on schedule, you get alerted. There is no agent to install and nothing that dies along with your server.
Where CronGuard goes further is in how it reaches you when something breaks. A 3am backup failure is useless if the alert sits in an unread inbox. CronGuard delivers instant alerts over SMS, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram and email, and tracks execution time so you catch a job that "succeeds" but is silently degrading from 20 minutes to 6 hours.
CronGuard also ships a real-time WebSocket dashboard and public status pages, so you can prove reliability to your customers without bolting on a second tool. Setup still takes about 30 seconds.
Yes. The core concept is identical — you swap the ping URL in your cron jobs for a CronGuard URL. Migration is usually a find-and-replace across your crontab and deploy scripts.
You add a unique ping URL to the end of your cron job or scheduled script. Each time the job runs successfully it calls that URL. If CronGuard does not receive the expected ping within your defined schedule and grace period, it alerts you instantly. This is known as a "dead man's switch" — it catches silent failures that traditional monitoring misses.
No. CronGuard works with a single HTTP request (curl, wget, or any HTTP client). There is nothing to install on your server, which means it keeps working even if your entire host goes down.
Yes. CronGuard has a free Developer plan with email notifications and no credit card required, so you can start monitoring a critical job in under a minute.