What does Lemwatch monitor?

Lemwatch runs 20+ automated checks per site: uptime, response time, SSL/TLS expiry, domain expiry, DNS changes, sitemap health, broken links, content changes, SEO audits, mobile usability, security headers, and more.

Yes. The free tier monitors up to 5 sites. Pro is $19/month for 50 sites and Agency is $59/month for 100 sites, both with full feature access.

How is Lemwatch different from UptimeRobot or Pingdom?

Lemwatch bundles uptime, change detection, SEO audits, security scans, and a public API in one platform — features competitors charge separately for. It also includes team workspaces, white-labelled status pages, and a webhook system out of the box.

Does Lemwatch send alerts?

Yes. Lemwatch supports email, browser push, webhooks, and per-site notification routing so the right person hears about the right incident.

Is there a public API?

Yes. Pro and Agency plans get a public REST API with webhooks for sites, checks, incidents, and reports.

What is heartbeat monitoring and how does it work?

Heartbeat monitoring flips the traditional model: instead of us checking your service, your service pings us. You add a simple HTTP request (curl) to the end of your cron job or script. If that ping stops arriving on schedule, we know the job has failed, stalled, or crashed — and we alert you immediately. It works for any process that runs on a schedule: backups, data syncs, report generators, queue workers, ETL pipelines, and more.

How do I add a heartbeat ping to my cron job?

Add one line at the end of your cron script: `curl -fsS --retry 3 https://lemwatch.com/api/heartbeat/your-slug > /dev/null`. The -f flag makes curl return a non-zero exit code on HTTP errors, -sS suppresses progress but shows errors, and --retry 3 handles transient network issues. That's the entire setup — no SDK, no agent, no dependencies.

What happens if my job runs a few seconds late?

Grace periods handle natural timing variance. If your job is expected every 5 minutes with a 2-minute grace period, we wait 7 minutes total before alerting. This prevents false alarms from minor scheduling jitter, server load spikes, or network latency. You can set grace periods from 0 seconds to 60 minutes depending on your tolerance.

Can I monitor multiple cron jobs independently?

Yes. Create as many heartbeat monitors as you need — each gets its own unique ping URL, independent interval settings, and separate alert rules. You can monitor your database backup, email queue processor, sitemap generator, and cache warmer all separately with different schedules and notification channels.

Does it work with Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD?

Yes. Any system that can make an HTTP GET request works with Lemwatch heartbeats. Kubernetes liveness/readiness probes, Docker health checks, GitHub Actions, Jenkins post-build steps, GitLab CI after_script blocks, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions — if it can run curl or make an HTTP call, it works.

What's the difference between heartbeat and uptime monitoring?

Uptime monitoring is outbound — we check your website or API by sending requests to it. Heartbeat monitoring is inbound — your scheduled tasks send pings to us. Use uptime monitoring for websites and APIs. Use heartbeat monitoring for cron jobs, background workers, data pipelines, and any process that runs on a schedule but isn't publicly accessible.

Can I track job duration and success/failure?

Yes. Send a start ping at the beginning of your job and a completion ping at the end to track duration. If the job fails, send a /fail ping instead — we'll record it as a failure and alert you. This gives you execution time trends and failure rate tracking over time.

Which plans include heartbeat monitoring?

Heartbeat monitoring is available on Pro ($19/mo) and above. Each plan includes generous monitor limits. Free plans include uptime monitoring for basic website checking — upgrade to Pro when you need cron job and background task monitoring.

Heartbeat Monitoring

Know When Your Cron Jobs Stop Running

Get a unique ping URL for every background task. If we don't hear from it on time, we alert you instantly. One curl command to set up. No agents, no SDKs, no complexity.

60s

Minimum Interval

Check as frequently as every minute

1 line

Setup Required

One curl command, that's it

<30s

Alert Speed

From missed ping to notification

∞

Monitors

No limit on heartbeat monitors

The Silent Killer: Jobs That Fail Without Anyone Knowing

Without Heartbeat Monitoring

✗Your nightly backup stopped 3 weeks ago — you discover this during a disaster recovery
✗A queue worker crashed at 2am. By morning, 50,000 jobs are backed up
✗Your data sync silently stopped. Dashboards show stale data for days before anyone notices
✗A cron job ran but returned errors — the process exited cleanly so nobody was alerted

With Lemwatch Heartbeats

Know within minutes when any scheduled job stops running
Get alerted before queue backlogs become customer-facing incidents
Track job duration trends — catch slowdowns before they become timeouts
Distinguish between "job didn't run" and "job ran but failed" with exit code reporting

Complete Heartbeat Monitoring Features

Everything you need to monitor scheduled tasks, background workers, and pipelines

Unique Ping URLs

Each monitor gets a unique URL. Your cron job or script sends a GET request to it on completion. That's the entire setup — one curl command.

Configurable Intervals

Set expected intervals from 1 minute to 24 hours. Whether it's a backup running every 6 hours or a sync running every 30 seconds, we adapt to your schedule.

Missed Ping Alerts

If we don't receive a ping within your interval + grace period, we alert immediately via email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, or webhook. You know in seconds.

Grace Periods

Jobs run late sometimes. Set a grace period so you only get alerted when something is genuinely wrong — not when a job takes 10 seconds longer than usual.

Status Dashboard

See all your heartbeat monitors at a glance — up, down, or pending first ping. Color-coded status, last ping time, and time since last successful run.

Auto-Retry Notifications

If a webhook notification fails (Slack rate-limited, Discord timeout), we retry 3 times with exponential backoff. No silent alert failures.

Exit Code Reporting

Send success or failure signals. Append /fail to your ping URL when a job errors — we'll alert on failures even if the job technically ran.

Pipeline Integration

Works with any CI/CD pipeline — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, Bitbucket Pipelines. Add one line to your workflow file.

How Heartbeat Monitoring Works

Three steps to never miss a failed job again

Create a Monitor

Give it a name like 'Nightly Backup' or 'Data Sync'. Set the expected interval (e.g. every 5 minutes) and an optional grace period.

Add the Ping

Copy the unique URL. Add a single curl command at the end of your cron job, script, or CI/CD pipeline step.

Get Alerted Instantly

If the ping doesn't arrive on time, you're notified immediately via your preferred channels. When it resumes, we tell you that too.

Quick Setup Examples

Cron Job (Linux/Mac)

Add this to the end of any cron job or shell script:

# At the end of your backup script
./run-backup.sh && \
  curl -fsS --retry 3 https://lemwatch.com/api/heartbeat/nightly-backup > /dev/null

GitHub Actions

# Add as the last step in your workflow
- name: Ping Lemwatch
  if: success()
  run: curl -fsS https://lemwatch.com/api/heartbeat/deploy-prod

Python Script

import requests

# Your data processing logic here
process_data()

# Ping on completion
requests.get("https://lemwatch.com/api/heartbeat/data-sync")

What Teams Monitor With Heartbeats

Any scheduled process that silently failing would cause problems

Database Backups

Know immediately when your nightly MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB backup fails to complete. Never discover a failed backup during a recovery.

Queue Workers

Monitor Sidekiq, Celery, Bull, and other queue processors. If a worker crashes at 3am, find out in seconds — not when the queue backs up to 10,000 jobs.

CI/CD Pipelines

Add a ping at the end of your deployment pipeline. If a scheduled deploy fails silently, you'll know before users report broken features.

Data Pipelines & ETL

Monitor Airflow DAGs, dbt runs, and data sync jobs. Know when your analytics data stops flowing before stakeholders notice stale dashboards.

Heartbeat Monitoring FAQ

Everything you need to know about monitoring cron jobs and background tasks

Explore More

Never Miss a Failed Cron Job Again

Set up heartbeat monitoring in 60 seconds. One curl command. Instant alerts when jobs stop running.

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