Heartbeats

Heartbeats

Heartbeats monitor the opposite of other monitors: instead of Superplural Status checking if something is up, your system needs to periodically signal that it is running. If the signal does not arrive, you are alerted.

What they are for

• Cron jobs — daily backups, scheduled email sends, synchronizations
• Automation scripts — bots, scrapers, queue workers
• n8n / Make / Zapier workflows — automated flows
• Data pipelines — ETL, scheduled imports

Creating a Heartbeat

1. Go to Heartbeats → New Heartbeat
2. Set the expected interval (e.g. 24 hours for a daily job)
3. Set the grace period (delay tolerance, e.g. 15 minutes)
4. Create and copy the generated URL

Integrating with your cron job

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/backup.php && curl -s "https://status.superplural.com/heartbeat/YOUR_URL" >/dev/null 2>&1

The && ensures the heartbeat is only called if the script ran successfully. If the backup fails, the heartbeat is not triggered and you get alerted.