Heartbeat Monitoring

Never let a cron job fail silently again.

Heartbeat monitoring alerts you when scheduled jobs, automations, and background tasks stop running—before your users notice.

Setup takes 30 seconds. No credit card required.

Why heartbeat monitoring matters

Background jobs fail quietly. Most issues go unnoticed until it's too late. Heartbeat monitoring gives you visibility when no news actually means trouble.

Silent failures are the worst

Your backups, data syncs, and reports might be failing right now—and you wouldn't know.

Data loss happens slowly

A failed backup job goes unnoticed. Weeks later, you need it—and it's not there.

Scheduled tasks drift

Jobs can stop running due to server restarts, config changes, or resource limits.

You need a safety net

Heartbeat monitoring ensures critical automations run on schedule—or you get alerted.

Monitor any background job, any language

From Linux cron to AWS Lambda—if it runs on a schedule, you can monitor it.

Real-time status tracking

See which jobs are healthy, late, or missing at a glance. Visual timeline of all pings.

Ping timeline & history

Visual timeline showing on-time, late, and missed pings. Spot patterns instantly.

Smart alerts for failures

Get notified when jobs are late or don't run. No noise, just signal.

Universal integration

Works with any language, server, cloud function, or CI pipeline. Just ping a URL.

Heartbeat Dashboard

Instant visibility into all your jobs

See which jobs are running healthy and which are silently failing. Each monitor shows status, reliability percentage, last ping time, and expected interval.

Status badges

Visual indicators: Healthy, Late, Missing, or Paused. Know the state instantly.

Reliability metrics

30-day success rate shows how consistently each job runs.

Quick info

Last ping time, expected interval, and grace period—all visible at a glance.

Your Heartbeats
4 monitors
Nightly Database Backup
Healthy
Every 24 hours 2 hours ago
98% reliability
Report Generation
Healthy
Every Monday 9am 3 minutes ago
100% reliability
Data Sync Pipeline
Late
Every hour 1h 15m ago (expected 1h)
92% reliability
Nightly Database Backup
Runs every 24 hours with 30 min grace period
Heartbeat URL
https://api.perkydash.com/h/abc123def456
Reliability
98.2%
Total Pings
723
Missed
13
Avg Duration
3.2m
Recent Pings
2 hours ago
On time
1 day ago
On time
2 days ago
Late
3 days ago
On time
Monitor Detail

Deep insights for every heartbeat

Track reliability, view ping history, and understand job performance with detailed metrics and visual timelines.

Unique heartbeat URL

Copy the endpoint and have your job ping it when complete. Works with any language.

Reliability stats

See success rate, total pings, missed executions, and average job duration.

Visual ping timeline

See on-time pings, late arrivals, and missed executions. Spot patterns instantly.

Custom metadata support

Send status, messages, duration, and custom metrics with each ping.

Integrate with anything

Your script pings PerkyDash when it runs. If the ping doesn't arrive on time, you get alerted. Simple as that.

Simple GET request

The easiest integration—just ping the URL when your job completes.

cURL
curl https://api.perkydash.com/h/abc123

POST with metadata

Send additional data: status, messages, duration, custom metrics.

Python
requests.post(url, json={
  "status": "success",
  "duration": 142
})

Node.js & JavaScript

Perfect for serverless functions, Lambda, and Cloud Functions.

Node.js
await fetch(url, {
  method: 'POST'
})

PowerShell (Windows)

Monitor Windows Scheduled Tasks and enterprise scripts.

PowerShell
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url

Create a heartbeat in three steps

User-friendly wizard guides you through setup. Get your heartbeat URL and start monitoring in under a minute.

1

Name & describe

Give your heartbeat a clear name like "Nightly Database Backup" or "Weekly Report Generator". Optionally add a description.

Name
Nightly Database Backup
Description
Backs up production DB to S3
2

Set schedule

Choose from presets (every minute, hourly, daily) or set a custom schedule. Add a grace period—how late before it's considered missing.

Schedule
Every 24 hours
Grace period
30 minutes
3

Optional security

Add HMAC signature verification to ensure pings are authentic. Whitelist IPs to accept pings only from trusted sources.

HMAC signature
Disabled
IP whitelist
All IPs allowed

Success! Your heartbeat is ready

Copy your unique URL and add it to your script. That's all there is to it.

Your Heartbeat URL
https://api.perkydash.com/h/abc123def456

What can you monitor?

Any scheduled job, automation, or background task that runs on a predictable schedule.

Linux Cron Jobs

Monitor backups, cleanup scripts, data ingestion tasks, and automated reports. Add a curl at the end of your cron job and you're done.

  • Database backups
  • Log rotation & cleanup
  • Data sync scripts

Windows Scheduled Tasks

Verify PowerShell scripts, maintenance routines, and enterprise automations run on time. Works perfectly with Windows Task Scheduler.

  • PowerShell maintenance
  • System health checks
  • File processing jobs

AWS Lambda & Serverless

Make sure serverless functions triggered on schedules actually run. Perfect for CloudWatch Events, EventBridge, and scheduled Lambda functions.

  • Scheduled Lambda functions
  • Google Cloud Functions
  • Azure Functions

Kubernetes CronJobs

Monitor batch jobs and scheduled workloads in Kubernetes clusters. Know when pods fail or jobs don't complete.

  • Batch processing jobs
  • ETL pipelines
  • Distributed workloads

CI/CD Pipelines

Ensure scheduled deployments, tests, and build jobs complete successfully. Monitor GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, and more.

  • Nightly builds
  • Automated deployments
  • Test suite runs

Database Maintenance

Monitor database backups, vacuum operations, index rebuilds, and data archival tasks. Never miss a critical maintenance window.

  • Automated backups
  • Index optimization
  • Data archival

Frequently asked questions

Everything you need to know about heartbeat monitoring

Instead of PerkyDash calling your server, your job calls PerkyDash. When your script or automation completes, it pings a unique URL we give you. If the expected ping doesn't arrive on schedule, we alert you immediately. It's a reverse check—perfect for scheduled tasks that PerkyDash can't actively reach.
If a ping doesn't arrive within the expected schedule plus your grace period, PerkyDash marks the job as missing and sends an alert via your configured channels. For example, if your job runs daily with a 30-minute grace period and doesn't ping within 24 hours and 30 minutes, you'll be alerted.
Absolutely. Heartbeat monitoring is perfect for AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and any other serverless platform. Just add a simple HTTP request to your function code to ping PerkyDash when execution completes. Works with scheduled triggers, EventBridge, CloudWatch Events, and more.
Yes. While a simple GET request works fine, you can also POST JSON data with each ping. Include status messages, execution duration, number of records processed, error counts, or any custom metrics. This turns PerkyDash into both a monitoring tool and a lightweight reporting dashboard for your jobs.
The grace period is extra time allowed before marking a job as missing. If your job runs every hour but sometimes takes 5-10 minutes longer than expected, set a 15-minute grace period. This prevents false alerts while still catching real failures. It's the buffer between expected arrival and actual concern.
Yes. Monitor nightly builds, scheduled deployments, automated test runs, and any CI/CD job that runs on a schedule. Works with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins, and any other pipeline tool. Add a final step to ping PerkyDash when the job completes. If the pipeline breaks or doesn't run, you'll know immediately.
Your heartbeat URL is already randomly generated and difficult to guess. For additional security, enable HMAC signature verification to ensure only authenticated pings are accepted. You can also whitelist specific IP addresses to accept pings only from your servers. Both features are optional and can be configured in the heartbeat settings.

Give your background tasks a safety net.

Simple setup. Smart alerts. Peace of mind for your automations.