Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers to common questions about CronRabbit.
CronRabbit Alerting Logic
Everything you need to know about how CronRabbit keeps watch.
How does CronRabbit detect if my job has failed?
We use a "dead man's switch" mechanism. When your cron job completes successfully, it sends a "ping" to our system. We continually calculate the next expected ping time based on your schedule. If we don't hear from your job by that time (plus your configured grace period), we automatically mark the monitor as "DOWN" and trigger an alert.
What happens if my job reports a failure explicitly?
If your job catches an error and pings us with a "fail" signal, we don't wait for a timeout. We bypass the schedule and trigger an immediate alert so you can investigate right away.
What is a "Grace Period"?
The Grace Period is a buffer time you can add to your schedule to account for normal variance in job execution time.
- Formula:
Next Expectation = Last Ping Time + Schedule + Grace Period - Example: If your job runs every hour (3600s) and takes up to 5 minutes to finish, you might set a grace period of 10 minutes. We won't alert you until 1 hour and 10 minutes have passed since the last ping.
How quickly will I be alerted?
Our "Sentry" service checks for overdue monitors every 10 seconds. Once a monitor is detected as overdue (or signals an explicit failure), the alert is dispatched immediately to our messaging queue for processing.
Will I get spammed with alerts if a job stays down?
No. We have built-in noise reduction:
- State-Based Alerting: We only alert when the status changes to "DOWN". We won't keep emailing you while it stays down.
- Deduplication: Our dispatcher has a strict lock mechanism that prevents duplicate alerts for the same event from being sent within a short window.
What notification channels do you support?
- Slack
- Discord
- Pushover
- Generic Webhooks (connect to PagerDuty, OpsGenie, or internal tools)
How reliable is the alert delivery?
We built our alerting system on a distributed architecture using Redis Streams. If an integration provider (like Slack) is temporarily having issues, our Dispatcher uses a robust retry policy with exponential backoff to ensure your alert gets delivered as soon as the service recovers.
Getting Started
How to set up and integrate CronRabbit with your jobs.
How do I integrate CronRabbit with my cron job?
Add a simple HTTP request at the end of your script. For example:
curl https://ping.cronrabbit.com/YOUR_MONITOR_IDYou can also use our /start endpoint before your job begins to track job duration.
What languages/platforms are supported?
CronRabbit works with anything that can make HTTP requests - bash scripts, Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, Go, or any cron scheduler including Kubernetes CronJobs, AWS EventBridge, and GitHub Actions.
Do I need to modify my existing cron job?
Minimally - just add a single HTTP call (1 line of code) at the end of your job to ping CronRabbit. No SDK or agent installation required.
Monitoring Features
Advanced monitoring capabilities and configuration options.
Can I track how long my jobs take?
Yes! Use the
/start endpoint before your job begins and the regular ping when it completes. We'll calculate and display the duration, with historical trends.What schedule formats do you support?
We support standard cron expressions (e.g.,
0 * * * *), interval-based schedules (e.g., "every 30 minutes"), and custom schedules for irregular jobs.Can I pause monitoring temporarily?
Yes, you can pause any monitor from the dashboard. Paused monitors won't trigger alerts until you resume them.
How do I monitor jobs that run on-demand?
Use a "heartbeat" monitor type without a fixed schedule. These only alert on explicit failure signals, not missed pings.
Pricing & Plans
Questions about billing, plans, and usage limits.
Is there a free tier?
Yes! Our free tier includes up to 5 monitors with email alerts - perfect for personal projects or testing.
How are monitors counted?
Each unique job you monitor counts as one monitor. Pings and alerts are unlimited on all plans.
Can I upgrade or downgrade anytime?
Yes, you can change plans at any time. Changes take effect immediately and billing is prorated.
Security & Privacy
How we protect your data and privacy.
Is my data secure?
Yes. All communications use HTTPS/TLS encryption. We only store minimal metadata about your pings - no sensitive payload data.
What data do you store?
We store ping timestamps, durations, and metadata you explicitly send (like exit codes). We don't access your server or job outputs.
Can I use CronRabbit in air-gapped environments?
For outbound-only networks, yes - your servers only need to make outbound HTTPS requests to our ping endpoint.
Troubleshooting
Common issues and how to resolve them.
Why is my monitor showing as DOWN even though it ran?
Check that your ping URL is correct and your server can reach our endpoint. Also verify the ping is sent after your job completes successfully, not before.
I'm getting too many false alerts. What can I do?
Increase your grace period to account for variable job duration, or check if your server's clock is accurate (we recommend NTP sync).
My alert didn't arrive. What happened?
Check your spam folder for email alerts. For Slack/Discord, verify the integration is still authorized. View the alert history in your dashboard to confirm it was dispatched.