Alternatives to Dead Man's Snitch
A hosted monitoring service that alerts you when a cron job or scheduled task fails to run. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Dead Man's Snitch
A hosted monitoring service that alerts you when a cron job or scheduled task fails to run.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Dead Man's Snitch.
Cronitor
A hosted monitoring service for cron jobs, background workers, websites and APIs, with failure alerts.
Cronitor also catches failed, late or missing cron jobs and keeps output and metrics from every run, and adds uptime and SSL checks, but has no mobile apps listed.
Better Stack Uptime
A hosted uptime monitor that checks websites, APIs, SSL certificates and domains and sends alerts.
Better Stack Uptime includes cron heartbeat monitoring alongside website, SSL and DNS checks and a status page, but it is web only without dedicated mobile apps.
UptimeRobot
A hosted uptime monitoring service with 50 free monitors, alerts and public status pages.
UptimeRobot supports cron job monitors among many check types, with 50 free monitors, public status pages, an API, CLI and mobile app.
WebGazer
A hosted service for website, API, port and cron job monitoring with public status pages.
WebGazer provides heartbeat checks for scheduled jobs plus website and API monitoring with 50 free monitors, but free checks run only every 5 minutes.
updown.io
A hosted website monitor that checks HTTP, TCP and ICMP endpoints, certificates and cron jobs.
updown.io includes cron job monitoring along with HTTP, TCP and certificate checks, priced by usage with no free tier mentioned.
Oh Dear
A hosted website health monitor covering uptime, SSL, DNS, cron jobs, broken links and performance.
Oh Dear bundles cron checks with uptime, SSL, DNS and broken link crawling for many websites, but it has no permanent free plan.
Uptime.com
A hosted monitoring service for websites, APIs and cron jobs, with alerting and status pages.
Uptime.com is a paid hosted service adding website, API and real user monitoring to cron checks, with status pages and mobile apps.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
cron-job.org
A free hosted scheduler that calls URLs on a schedule, from once a minute to yearly.
EasyCron
A hosted cron service that calls your URLs on a schedule and logs each run.
Pushover
A notification service that delivers push messages from scripts, services and apps to phones and desktops.
Checkly
A code-first monitoring platform that runs Playwright browser checks and API tests from global locations.
