How to Monitor Cron Jobs and Background Tasks

The Problem with Cron

You set up a backup script to run every night at 3 AM. How do you know if it ran last night? If it fails silently, you might not know for months—until you need that backup.

Heartbeat Monitoring (Cron Monitoring)

Instead of the monitor pinging you, your script pings the monitor. This is often called a "dead man's switch".

How it works:

1. Statzly gives you a unique URL (e.g., https://api.statzly.com/check/123).
2. You add a curl command to the end of your script: curl https://api.statzly.com/check/123.
3. If Statzly doesn't receive a ping by 3:05 AM, it alerts you.

This is the only reliable way to monitor background tasks.