Healthchecks

Healthchecks.io works on a dead man's switch model: your job pings a unique URL each time it runs, and if a ping doesn't arrive within the expected window, you get an alert. No agent to install, no complex config. Just add an HTTP request to your existing script and you're covered.

It's built for developers and small teams who run scheduled tasks and want to know immediately when something silently fails. A missed backup or a broken import job often leaves no visible trace until the damage is done.

What you can monitor:

• Cron jobs and systemd timers on Linux, including database backups, report emails, SSL renewals, and data sync jobs
• Windows Scheduled Tasks, Kubernetes CronJobs, GitHub Actions workflows, Heroku Scheduler, and similar platforms
• Processes and services, by pairing a health-check script with a recurring ping (useful for confirming a Docker container or database replication is healthy)
• IoT devices and servers, sending simple "I'm alive" pings from a Raspberry Pi, NAS, or router

Each check has a configurable Period (how often you expect a ping) and Grace Time (how late a ping can arrive before triggering an alert). Checks move through four states: New, Up, Late, and Down. You're only notified when a check transitions from Late to Down, so you won't get flooded with alerts for brief delays.

For more complex schedules, you can define expected run times using a standard cron expression instead of a fixed period.

The dashboard lists all your checks at a glance. You can tag checks, toggle notification integrations per check, and review a full event log of pings and alerts. Each check also supports a free-form description for notes your team might need during an incident.

Notification integrations include: Email, webhooks, PagerDuty-style tools like Opsgenie and Spike.sh, chat platforms (Discord, Signal, WhatsApp, Matrix, Zulip, Microsoft Teams), push services (Pushbullet, ntfy, Gotify), SMS, phone calls, and GitHub Issues.

Status badges are available per tag and for your whole account, with hard-to-guess public URLs suitable for READMEs or internal dashboards. Up to 20 checks are free with no credit card required. For teams needing more, it's self-hostable as an open source alternative to UptimeRobot and similar services, with the full source available for private deployment.