Monitoring for Developers

You already know something is going to break

A cleanup job that crontab quietly dropped during an Ubuntu upgrade keeps not running, and nobody notices because there's no exception to catch. An SSL certificate expires over a long weekend and takes down HTTPS before anyone checks the calendar. A database backup script exits 0 despite a failed upload and keeps “succeeding” for weeks until you actually need the backup.

WatchCron handles these problems without the overhead. No enterprise sales calls, no agent to install on your server. Set up checks through the dashboard or the REST API, point alerts at Slack or email, and the monitoring runs itself.

Cron jobs with real cron expressions

Most monitoring tools give you interval-based scheduling: “check every 5 minutes.” That works for uptime pings, but cron jobs don't run on intervals. They run on schedules like 0 3 * * * or */15 9-17 * * 1-5, and the monitoring tool needs to understand the same syntax to know when a job is late.

WatchCron supports full cron expression syntax. When you enter an expression, the dashboard shows the next five scheduled runs so you can verify the schedule before saving. If a job misses its window past the grace period (default is configurable per check, most people start with 5 minutes), the alert fires.

For simpler setups, there's also a plain interval mode: every N minutes, hours, or days. Both modes work with the same ping URL. Your job hits the endpoint when it finishes, and if the next expected ping doesn't arrive within the grace window, you hear about it.

One HTTP request, any language

The setup screen generates ready-to-paste code for cURL, PHP, Python, Node.js, wget, and PowerShell. Copy the snippet into your cron entry or your task scheduler, and monitoring is live. You don't need an SDK or a client library. Here's what a basic ping looks like:

curl -fsS --retry 3 https://ping.watchcron.com/p/your-check-uuid

If you need to create or manage checks programmatically, the REST API covers everything the dashboard does: create and manage checks, pull ping history, or export data as CSV or JSON. Useful when you're spinning up environments with Terraform or Ansible and want checks created alongside the infrastructure.

Uptime, SSL, ports, domains, and blocklists

Developers care about more than “is the site up.” Here's what WatchCron covers:

• Cron jobs with ping-based monitoring, cron expression or interval scheduling, grace periods, and consecutive-miss thresholds
• HTTP/HTTPS uptime: response codes, response time tracking, SSL info in the same view
• SSL certificates — expiry alerts at the interval you choose, so renewals don't slip
• TCP ports: check that your database, Redis, or mail server is reachable (unlimited port checks, not counted against your plan limit)
• Domain expiration with WHOIS-based alerts so renewals don't get missed
• Blocklist monitoring — find out if your IP or domain ends up on a spam list before deliverability tanks

Checks run every 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 minutes depending on your plan.

Slack, webhook, and PagerDuty alerts

Alerts need to land where you're already looking, not in a dashboard you have to remember to check. WatchCron sends to Slack, Telegram, Discord, Microsoft Teams, email, or a webhook endpoint. Higher-tier plans add SMS, voice calls, PagerDuty, and OpsGenie for on-call escalation.

Every down/fail notification includes a one-click acknowledge link. Click it from the email or Slack message, and repeat notifications stop for 24 hours. You don't have to log in and hunt for the check while your phone keeps buzzing.

Maintenance windows

Deploying at 2 AM on Tuesday? Set a maintenance window for that slot. WatchCron pauses alerting during the window so a planned restart doesn't page the on-call engineer. Pick the days and time range per check, and alerting pauses automatically. When the window ends, monitoring resumes.

Status pages and incidents

When something does go down, a public status page saves you from answering “is it just me?” in every support channel. WatchCron hosts the page, updates it based on your incident posts, and notifies subscribers on each status change.

Pricing for side projects and teams

The free plan covers 20 checks with email and webhook alerts. That's enough for a side project or a small production app. If you need Slack or Telegram, the Starter plan is $7/month (or $5/month billed yearly). Port and domain monitors are unlimited on every plan and don't count against check limits.

Pricing is based on monitoring capacity, not headcount. The Starter plan includes 3 team members, Pro includes 10, and Business has no member cap. Works the same way in staging: set up separate checks per environment and keep alerting rules independent.

The uptime calculator, SSL checker, and DNS lookup tools work without an account if you want to try things before signing up.