TL;DR — Quick Summary

Deploy Healthchecks for self-hosted cron job monitoring with dead man's switch alerting. Docker setup, integrations, and notification channel support included.

What Is Healthchecks?

Healthchecks monitors your cron jobs and scheduled tasks using the dead man’s switch pattern — it alerts you when jobs don’t run, not when they fail with an error.

services:
  healthchecks:
    image: healthchecks/healthchecks:latest
    container_name: healthchecks
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    environment:
      - ALLOWED_HOSTS=*
      - DB=postgres
      - DB_HOST=db
      - DB_NAME=healthchecks
      - DB_USER=healthchecks
      - DB_PASSWORD=healthchecks
      - SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
      - SITE_ROOT=https://hc.yourdomain.com
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: healthchecks
      POSTGRES_USER: healthchecks
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: healthchecks
    volumes:
      - hc-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

volumes:
  hc-data:

How It Works

Your Cron Job → completes → pings URL → ✅ Healthchecks records success
Your Cron Job → fails/hangs → no ping → ⏰ Grace period → 🚨 Alert sent

Usage Examples

# Add to end of any cron job
0 * * * * /usr/bin/backup.sh && curl -fsS https://hc.yourdomain.com/ping/UUID

# Report success/failure separately
/usr/bin/backup.sh && curl https://hc.../ping/UUID || curl https://hc.../ping/UUID/fail

# Measure execution time (start + finish)
curl https://hc.../ping/UUID/start && /usr/bin/backup.sh && curl https://hc.../ping/UUID

Healthchecks vs Alternatives

FeatureHealthchecksUptime KumaCronitor
PatternDead man’s switchActive pollingBoth
Self-hosted✅✅❌
Cron monitoring✅ Native❌✅
HTTP monitoring❌✅ Native✅
CostFreeFree$20+/mo