# Healthchecks — Cron Job Monitoring with Smart Alerts

> Healthchecks is a self-hosted cron job and scheduled task monitor that alerts you when your periodic jobs fail to run on time.

## Install

Save as a script file and run:

# Healthchecks — Cron Job Monitoring with Smart Alerts

## Quick Use
```bash
docker run -d --name healthchecks 
  -p 8000:8000 
  -v /path/to/data:/data 
  -e SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key 
  -e ALLOWED_HOSTS=* 
  healthchecks/healthchecks:latest
# Add to cron: curl -fsS -m 10 --retry 5 http://localhost:8000/ping/<uuid>
```

## Introduction
Healthchecks is a cron job monitoring service that listens for HTTP pings from your scheduled tasks and alerts you when pings are overdue. Each check gets a unique URL that your cron jobs hit upon completion. If a ping does not arrive within the expected interval, Healthchecks sends alerts through email, Slack, PagerDuty, or 25+ other integrations.

## What Healthchecks Does
- Monitors cron jobs and scheduled tasks by tracking periodic HTTP or email pings
- Sends alerts via email, Slack, Telegram, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and 25+ channels
- Supports cron expression schedules with grace periods for flexible timing
- Provides a dashboard showing check status with uptime history and response times
- Measures job execution duration when start and success pings are both sent

## Architecture Overview
Healthchecks is a Django application with a PostgreSQL or MySQL database backend. A background worker process monitors check deadlines and dispatches alert notifications. The ping endpoint is optimized for high throughput with minimal overhead. The web dashboard uses server-side rendering with progressive JavaScript enhancements for real-time status updates.

## Self-Hosting & Configuration
- Deploy via Docker with environment variables for SECRET_KEY and database connection
- Configure SMTP settings for email alerts and add integration webhooks in the UI
- Set ALLOWED_HOSTS and SITE_ROOT for proper URL generation behind a reverse proxy
- Use PostgreSQL for production or SQLite for small deployments
- Enable Prometheus metrics endpoint for monitoring Healthchecks itself

## Key Features
- 25+ notification channels including Slack, Telegram, Discord, PagerDuty, and webhooks
- Cron expression and interval-based scheduling with configurable grace periods
- Job duration measurement by tracking start and completion pings
- Badge API for embedding status indicators in README files and dashboards
- Team management with projects and read-only access for stakeholders

## Comparison with Similar Tools
- **Uptime Kuma** — Monitors service availability; Healthchecks monitors job execution schedules
- **Cronitor** — Commercial SaaS; Healthchecks is fully open source and self-hostable
- **Dead Man's Snitch** — SaaS cron monitor; Healthchecks offers the same model for free self-hosted
- **Grafana Alerting** — Metric-based alerts; Healthchecks uses a simpler ping-based dead man's switch
- **Gatus** — HTTP endpoint monitoring; Healthchecks focuses on periodic job completion tracking

## FAQ
**Q: How do I integrate with an existing cron job?**
A: Append a curl command to your cron entry: `&& curl -fsS http://hc-host/ping/uuid`. The check turns red if the ping stops arriving.

**Q: Can it monitor jobs that run on different servers?**
A: Yes. Each check has a unique ping URL accessible from anywhere. Jobs on any server can ping the same Healthchecks instance.

**Q: Does it support measuring how long a job takes?**
A: Yes. Send a start ping before the job and a success ping after. Healthchecks calculates and displays the duration.

**Q: What happens during Healthchecks downtime?**
A: Missed pings are not recorded. When Healthchecks comes back, overdue checks will trigger alerts based on their last known ping time.

## Sources
- https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks
- https://healthchecks.io/docs/

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Source: https://tokrepo.com/en/workflows/58bfd180-39f2-11f1-9bc6-00163e2b0d79
Author: Script Depot