{"slug": "healthchecks-io", "name": "Healthchecks.io", "category": "observability", "category_name": "Monitoring and analytics", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 4.857, "rising": 2.02, "first": "2025-12-28", "latest": "2026-09-20", "why": "I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 0, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 3, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "healthchecks.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://healthchecks.io", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Healthchecks.io", "healthchecks.io"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796418816, "item_id": 49776176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49776176", "by": "inezk", "date": "2026-09-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "healthchecks io that I personally use", "excerpt": "You are missing the biggest value offering here - service such as the one linked here (or healthchecks io that I personally use) will let you know that signal didn't arrive even when other things on your end failed (e.g. cron having a hard time sending failure email due to incorrect smtp credentials). I use those kind of healthchecks literally for everything, especially for backups - they saved my ass many times over", "context": "", "use_case": "cron and backup monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sigabrt.dev \u2013 cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI"}, {"id": 796407456, "item_id": 49775466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49775466", "by": "p2004a", "date": "2026-09-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.", "excerpt": "I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.", "context": "", "use_case": "Cron job monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sigabrt.dev \u2013 cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI"}, {"id": 792767058, "item_id": 49547941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49547941", "by": "fmajid", "date": "2026-09-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a self-hosted healthchecks.io instance to remind me if I forget", "excerpt": "My main backup server uses ZFS and I replicate (using my own https://github.com/fazalmajid/zfssnap but there are plenty of alternatives) to a 14TB USB drive using ZFS snapshot and incremental zfs send which makes it very fast, using ZFS encryption in case they get stolen. I have two of these and rotate them weekly and keep one at my work (and I have a self-hosted healthchecks.io instance to remind me if I forget).", "context": "", "use_case": "Backup reminder monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 780434337, "item_id": 48777146, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777146", "by": "jmstfv", "date": "2026-07-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "some indie makers have managed to make it work (like healthchecks.io for example)", "excerpt": "oh good luck, it's a tough space to be. some indie makers have managed to make it work (like healthchecks.io for example) but it requires patience and dedication, esp dealing with some entitled people on the free plan. btw, your docs pages look malformed; seems like markdown metadata slipping into the page content: https://boxwatch.app/docs/api/authentication", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "How many failed startups have you launched?"}, {"id": 749606593, "item_id": 46850412, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46850412", "by": "fmajid", "date": "2026-02-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance", "excerpt": "I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don\u2019t complete. Of course TimeMachine doesn\u2019t have a way to signal successful completion, unlike, say, Carbon Copy Cloner. Given Apple software quality\u2019s accelerating downward trend, I\u2019d suggest switching to rsync/rclone instead, or Borg/Kopia if you want GUI-driven restores for non-technical members of your famil", "context": "", "use_case": "Job completion monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["cron and backup monitoring", "cron job monitoring", "backup reminder monitoring", "job completion monitoring", "dead man's switch alerting"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765354", "title": "Show HN: Sigabrt.dev \u2013 cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686380", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49509606", "title": "Creating backup storage sucks", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48775562", "title": "How many failed startups have you launched?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46848699", "title": "TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46406129", "title": "The Dangers of SSL Certificates", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 3, "compare": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 796418816, "item_id": 49776176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49776176", "by": "inezk", "date": "2026-09-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "healthchecks io that I personally use", "excerpt": "You are missing the biggest value offering here - service such as the one linked here (or healthchecks io that I personally use) will let you know that signal didn't arrive even when other things on your end failed (e.g. cron having a hard time sending failure email due to incorrect smtp credentials). I use those kind of healthchecks literally for everything, especially for backups - they saved my ass many times over", "context": "", "use_case": "cron and backup monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sigabrt.dev \u2013 cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI"}, {"id": 796407456, "item_id": 49775466, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49775466", "by": "p2004a", "date": "2026-09-20", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.", "excerpt": "I'm myself very happy with https://healthchecks.io/ for this purpose.", "context": "", "use_case": "Cron job monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Sigabrt.dev \u2013 cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI"}, {"id": 795092112, "item_id": 49693257, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49693257", "by": "rozenmd", "date": "2026-09-14", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "", "excerpt": "It's a managed uptime monitoring service (with support for basic HTTP checks, cron checks, and playwright-based browser checks running across AWS regions) that wires into highly available status pages. You might want to spend time figuring out how to keep your status page online when your hosting provider goes down, thankfully for the business, others don't. There may be many others like it, but this one is built dif", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)"}, {"id": 792767058, "item_id": 49547941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49547941", "by": "fmajid", "date": "2026-09-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a self-hosted healthchecks.io instance to remind me if I forget", "excerpt": "My main backup server uses ZFS and I replicate (using my own https://github.com/fazalmajid/zfssnap but there are plenty of alternatives) to a 14TB USB drive using ZFS snapshot and incremental zfs send which makes it very fast, using ZFS encryption in case they get stolen. I have two of these and rotate them weekly and keep one at my work (and I have a self-hosted healthchecks.io instance to remind me if I forget).", "context": "", "use_case": "Backup reminder monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 780434337, "item_id": 48777146, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777146", "by": "jmstfv", "date": "2026-07-03", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "some indie makers have managed to make it work (like healthchecks.io for example)", "excerpt": "oh good luck, it's a tough space to be. some indie makers have managed to make it work (like healthchecks.io for example) but it requires patience and dedication, esp dealing with some entitled people on the free plan. btw, your docs pages look malformed; seems like markdown metadata slipping into the page content: https://boxwatch.app/docs/api/authentication", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "How many failed startups have you launched?"}, {"id": 749606593, "item_id": 46850412, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46850412", "by": "fmajid", "date": "2026-02-01", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance", "excerpt": "I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don\u2019t complete. Of course TimeMachine doesn\u2019t have a way to signal successful completion, unlike, say, Carbon Copy Cloner. Given Apple software quality\u2019s accelerating downward trend, I\u2019d suggest switching to rsync/rclone instead, or Borg/Kopia if you want GUI-driven restores for non-technical members of your famil", "context": "", "use_case": "Job completion monitoring", "switched_from": "", "story": "TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe"}, {"id": 742557490, "item_id": 46409843, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46409843", "by": "jsiepkes", "date": "2025-12-28", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A service like healthchecks.io [3] can help with \"monitoring the monitors\".", "excerpt": "I wonder what the point of this blog is. It's kinda easy to rip on certificates without giving atleast one possible way of fixing this, even if it's an unrealistic one. Sure, the low-level nitty gritty of managing keys and certificates for TLS is hard if you don't have the expertise. You don't know about the hundreds of ways you can get bitten. But all the pieces for a better solution are there. Someone just needs to", "context": "", "use_case": "Dead man's switch alerting", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Dangers of SSL Certificates"}]}