Heartbeat Monitoring

The concept

Normal uptime monitoring is active: SiteBrief checks your site. Heartbeat monitoring is passive: your task or script sends a signal ("heartbeat") to SiteBrief after each successful run. If a heartbeat doesn't arrive within the expected interval, SiteBrief alerts you.

Think of it as a "dead man's switch" — as long as your task keeps pinging, everything is fine. Silence means something went wrong.

What you can monitor

• Backup scripts — daily/weekly database or file backups
• Cron jobs — any scheduled Linux/cron task
• Queue workers — Laravel, Sidekiq, Celery, Bull, etc.
• Report generation — automated email or PDF generation tasks
• Data sync scripts — ETL pipelines, API sync jobs
• Database maintenance — vacuums, index rebuilds, integrity checks

How to set it up

When adding a monitor, select Heartbeat as the check type. SiteBrief generates a unique heartbeat URL for that monitor. Add a ping to that URL at the end of your task.

The heartbeat URL accepts any HTTP method (GET or POST). No authentication is needed — the unique URL is the secret.

Integration examples

Linux cron (bash)

# Run backup, then ping SiteBrief
0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/backup.sh && curl -fsS https://app.sitebrief.net/hb/YOUR-UUID > /dev/null

PHP / Laravel scheduler

$schedule->command('backup:run')
    ->daily()
    ->thenPing('https://app.sitebrief.net/hb/YOUR-UUID');

Python

import requests

def run_backup():
    # ... your backup logic ...
    pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    run_backup()
    requests.get('https://app.sitebrief.net/hb/YOUR-UUID')

Node.js

const https = require('https');

async function runTask() {
  // ... your task logic ...
  await fetch('https://app.sitebrief.net/hb/YOUR-UUID');
}

Grace period

The grace period is extra time added on top of the expected interval before an alert fires. For example, if your cron runs every 24 hours with a 1-hour grace period, SiteBrief will alert you only if no heartbeat arrives within 25 hours.

Set a grace period that matches how variable your task's runtime is:

Frequently asked questions