Monitor cron jobs, open ports and ping

Cron job (heartbeat) checks

Instead of us visiting your server, your job tells us it ran. Add a cron job check, choose how often it should run (5 to 10,080 minutes) and a grace period (0 to 1,440 minutes). We give you a private ping address like https://owlhound.com/hb/<token>.

0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh && curl -fsS https://owlhound.com/hb/YOUR_TOKEN

Put the ping at the end of the job, after it succeeds. If no ping arrives within the schedule plus the grace period, we confirm and alert you; when the next ping arrives we send the recovery. Creating the check counts as the first ping, so the clock starts immediately.

Port checks

A port check opens a TCP connection to a host and port, for example db.example.com:5432 or mail.example.com:587. It uses the same confirmation rules as website checks: a failure must repeat before you are alerted, and we verify our own network first so a problem on our side never wakes you.

Only public hosts can be checked. Internal and private addresses are refused.

Ping checks

A ping check sends ICMP echo requests to a host (a name or a public IPv4 address) and counts it up when any of three requests gets a reply. It follows the same confirmation rules as every other check. Many cloud hosts and firewalls ignore ping on purpose, so a ping check can fail for a healthy server; a website or port check is usually the better signal, and ping is best for routers, VPN endpoints and other network gear.

Limits

• Each heartbeat, port or ping check counts as one site on your plan.
• Ping addresses are secret: anyone who has one can mark the job as alive, so keep it out of public repositories.