CronBeatCronBeat

Quick Start

Get your first monitor running in under 5 minutes. We'll set up both a heartbeat monitor (for cron jobs) and an HTTP monitor (for web services).

Create an Account

  1. Sign up for a free account
  2. Verify your email address
  3. You'll land on the dashboard — ready to create monitors

Option A: Monitor a Cron Job (Heartbeat)

Step 1: Create a Heartbeat Monitor

  1. Click "New Monitor" in the dashboard
  2. Select Heartbeat as the monitor type
  3. Configure:
    • Name: e.g., "Daily Backup"
    • Schedule: Set the expected cron expression or interval
    • Grace Period: How long to wait before alerting (default: 5 minutes)
  4. Click Create

You'll see your unique Ping Key and the full ping URL.

Your Ping Key looks like this: V1StGXR8_Z5jdHi6B-myT — copy it from the monitor's detail page.

Step 2: Add the Ping to Your Job

Add a curl command after your job succeeds:

bash

The && ensures the ping is only sent when the job exits successfully. If the backup script fails, no ping is sent, and CronBeat will alert you after the grace period.

The -fsS flags make curl fail silently on HTTP errors, show errors on failures, and keep the output clean. --retry 3 adds resilience against transient network issues.

Step 3: Verify

Trigger a test ping manually:

bash

Check your dashboard — you should see the ping recorded and the monitor status change to Up.

Option B: Monitor a Web Service (HTTP)

Step 1: Create an HTTP Monitor

  1. Click "New Monitor" in the dashboard
  2. Select HTTP as the monitor type
  3. Configure:
    • Name: e.g., "Production API"
    • URL: https://api.example.com/health
    • Method: GET (default)
    • Check Interval: How often to check (e.g., every 5 minutes)
  4. Optionally add Alert Rules:
    • Response time > 3000ms
    • Status code not in 2xx
  5. Click Create

CronBeat will immediately start checking your endpoint.

Step 2: Verify

The monitor will show its first check result within the configured interval. Go to the monitor detail page to see:

  • Current status (Up / Down)
  • Response time
  • Check history

Configure Alert Channels

  1. Go to Settings > Alert Channels

  2. Add your preferred notification channels:

    • Email — Uses your account email by default
    • Slack — Paste your incoming webhook URL
    • Webhook — Any HTTP endpoint that accepts POST
    • Telegram — Connect via bot token and chat ID (coming soon)
    • WeChat — Connect via WeChat bot (coming soon)

  3. Assign channels to your monitors when creating or editing them

Use the Test button on any alert channel to verify notifications are working before relying on them.

What's Next?