Heartbeat Monitor
Flip the direction: your system calls us. If a heartbeat goes missing, this uptime monitor tells you.
Most uptime monitoring works by polling a URL from the outside. A heartbeat monitor is the opposite: Kawze generates a unique URL, and your own system - a cron job, a background worker, a scheduled task - calls that URL on its own schedule. As long as the pings keep arriving on time, everything is silently fine. The moment a heartbeat is late by more than its grace period, this monitor flags it down and alerts your team, making it a reliable uptime monitor for jobs and processes that have no public URL to poll.
How this uptime monitor works
- Create the monitor and Kawze generates a unique heartbeat URL for it.
- Have your cron job, worker, or scheduled task send a request to that URL every time it runs successfully.
- Pick the expected frequency and a grace period - how long past the expected time a missed beat is still tolerated before it counts as down.
- If a beat doesn't arrive within the interval plus grace period, the monitor flips to down and alerts fire the same way as any other monitor.
- Optionally lock the URL down further with a required Heartbeat API key or required headers, so only pings from your own systems are accepted.
Heartbeat Monitor features
Every feature this monitor supports, and which plan it's included on.
Generated heartbeat URL
FreeA unique, unguessable URL your job or cron task pings on its own schedule - no outbound checks from Kawze at all.
Configurable grace period
FreeChoose how long past the expected interval a late heartbeat is still tolerated before it's flagged down, from 30 seconds up to 30 minutes.
Required Heartbeat API key
FreeLock the URL down so only pings authenticated with one of your Heartbeat API keys are accepted.
Required headers
FreeRequire specific header names and values on every ping, or the beat is rejected.
Tags and groups
FreeOrganize heartbeat monitors alongside your other monitors.
Email and SMS alerts
FreePer team member, per status, open and recovery alerts on every channel.
Webhooks and Slack alerts
FreeRoute missed-heartbeat alerts into Slack or any webhook endpoint.
30-second expected interval
Max+The fastest expected-frequency setting for this monitor type.
What's free and what's paywalled
- Generating a heartbeat URL, setting a grace period, and requiring an API key or headers are all available on every plan, including Free.
- The expected interval follows the same tier ladder as every other monitor: 5 minutes on Free and Entry, 30 seconds on Mid, 10 seconds on Max.
- Monitor limits scale with plan (5 to 300), and every monitor - heartbeat included - counts against the same account-wide limit.
Frequently asked questions
What is a heartbeat monitor?
It's an uptime monitor that works in reverse: instead of Kawze polling a URL, your own system calls a URL that Kawze generates. If the expected ping doesn't arrive within the interval and grace period, the monitor flags itself down and alerts fire.
What is a heartbeat monitor good for?
Anything without a public HTTP endpoint to poll: cron jobs, backup scripts, batch processes, scheduled workers - anywhere you want to know "did this actually run" rather than "is this URL reachable".
Is a heartbeat monitor free?
Yes - heartbeat monitors are included on every plan, starting with 5 monitors on Free.
Can I secure the heartbeat URL?
Yes. You can require a Heartbeat API key and/or specific headers on every ping, so a leaked URL alone isn't enough to spoof a healthy heartbeat.