faq

pingguard is a dead-simple monitoring service for cron jobs and scheduled tasks. your job sends a ping (one http request) when it finishes. if pingguard stops receiving pings, it alerts you immediately. no agent to install, no complex setup.

you add a single curl command to the end of your cron job. when the job runs successfully, it sends an http get request to your unique ping url. pingguard records the ping and resets the timer. if the timer expires before the next ping arrives, an alert is sent.

yes. the free plan includes up to 3 monitors, email alerts, and 90 days of ping history. no credit card required to sign up.

if your job exits with a non-zero status code and you use && before curl, the ping will not be sent. pingguard will wait for interval + grace period and then alert you that the ping was missed. the alert tells you which monitor missed and when it was expected.

alerts are sent within seconds of the grace period expiring. the grace period is configurable per monitor (default: 5 minutes). the total delay is always interval + grace period — there is no additional delay from pingguard itself.

yes. pingguard supports intervals from 1 minute and up. for high-frequency jobs, we recommend a grace period of at least 30 seconds to avoid false alarms due to normal scheduling jitter.

email is available on all plans. slack, discord, and custom webhooks are available on the pro plan. see the alert channels docs for setup instructions.

go to your dashboard, click settings, and select billing. pro is $9/month and includes unlimited monitors, slack/discord/webhook alerts, 1 year of history, and api access.

yes. cancel at any time from your billing settings. your pro features remain active until the end of the current billing period, then your account downgrades to the free plan.

yes. all data is encrypted in transit (tls 1.3) and at rest. ping urls are random slugs — they cannot be guessed. we do not sell your data or share it with third parties. monitors are private to your account.