Dead Man’s Snitch alternative: Heartcron vs Dead Man’s Snitch
Dead Man’s Snitch is one of the original “dead man’s switch” services for cron jobs: a job checks in, and you get an alert when it doesn’t. Heartcron works the same way, with three main differences: a much larger free plan, schedules written as cron expressions in your time zone, and website, SSL and domain checks in the same account. Dead Man’s Snitch has Smart Alerts that learn when a job usually checks in, and integrations with PagerDuty and Opsgenie. The facts about Dead Man’s Snitch come from its plans page and docs.
At a glance
| Heartcron | Dead Man’s Snitch | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 20 cron jobs + 10 site checks | 1 snitch |
| Paid plans | $9: 100 jobs + 50 site checks $29: 500 + 200 $79: 2,000 + 1,000 | $5: 3 snitches $19: 100 $49: 300 |
| Schedules | Any period or cron expression, in any time zone | Fixed intervals from 1 minute to monthly; cron expressions and time zones aren’t mentioned in its docs |
| Exit codes and job output | Yes, on every plan | Yes, through the Field Agent |
| Reporting a failure right away | /fail or a non-zero exit code, every plan | Error Notices on the $49 plan |
| Learning the usual check-in time | No; you set a grace period | Smart Alerts on the $49 plan |
| Website, port, SSL and domain checks | Yes | Not mentioned in its docs |
| Public status pages | 1 on Free, up to 1,000 on paid plans | Not mentioned in its docs |
| Alert channels | Email, Telegram, Slack, Discord, webhooks on every plan | Email; Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps, ilert and webhooks from the $19 plan |
| Team members | Free on every plan | Unlimited on paid plans |
| CLI wrapper | heartcron, open source (MIT) | Field Agent (dms) |
Where Heartcron is the better fit
- Schedules that match your crontab. A job at
30 2 * * 1-5in New York time is watched exactly at that time, with daylight saving handled. With fixed intervals, a weekday-only job looks missed every weekend unless you work around it. - A free plan you can actually use. 20 cron jobs and 10 site checks instead of one snitch.
- Failures reported right away on every plan. A
/failping or a non-zero exit code alerts you immediately, with the job’s output attached. - Slack, Telegram and Discord from the free plan.
- Websites and certificates too. HTTP, TCP, SSL and domain checks, and a status page for your customers, in the same account.
When Dead Man’s Snitch is the better choice
- You want Smart Alerts that learn when a job usually checks in and tighten the deadline on their own.
- You route alerts through PagerDuty, Opsgenie, VictorOps, ilert or Microsoft Teams.
- You run jobs on Solaris or NetBSD, which its Field Agent supports.
- You want a tool that does one thing only and has done it for a long time.
Switching from Dead Man’s Snitch
| Dead Man’s Snitch | Heartcron |
|---|---|
dms <token> /srv/backup.sh | heartcron run nightly-backup -- /srv/backup.sh |
curl https://nosnch.in/<token> | curl https://ping.heartcron.com/<uuid> |
curl -d s=$? https://nosnch.in/<token> | curl https://ping.heartcron.com/<uuid>/$? |
| Interval: daily | Cron 0 3 * * * in your time zone, or a simple 1-day period |
Not sure how to write a schedule as cron? The cron expression explainer shows the next runs in plain words. The docs list every signal and limit.