PostDeploy as a Healthchecks.io alternative
PostDeploy watches the scheduled job and the URL it serves in one project: 20 cron jobs plus 20 uptime monitors on Indie, with error tracking and analytics on the same login. Healthchecks.io monitors heartbeats only, by design. Pick PostDeploy when the job is not the only thing you need watched.
What Healthchecks.io sells
Healthchecks.io sells heartbeat monitoring for cron jobs, backups and scheduled tasks: you ping a URL on success and it alerts you when the ping does not arrive. It is BSD-licensed and self-hostable.
Side by side, before you commit
Their published free tier against what you get on PostDeploy, because that is where the decision starts.
| Healthchecks.io | PostDeploy | |
|---|---|---|
| Cron and heartbeat jobs | 20 checks | 20, own allowance |
| HTTP uptime checks | Not offered | Own allowance, 20 free |
| Seats on the entry plan | No seat limit | 1 |
| Webhook and Telegram alerts | Free plan | Indie, $5 a month |
| Error tracking and analytics | Not offered | Included on every plan |
| Self-hostable | Yes, BSD 3-Clause | No |
| Next tier up | $20 / month for 100 checks | $5 a month, flat |
Why people look for a Healthchecks.io alternative
You added a website to monitor and found there is nowhere to put it. Healthchecks.io does not probe URLs; the docs list uptime monitoring under what it is deliberately not for.
You wanted a public status page. There is not one on any tier, and the request has been closed on the issue tracker.
You are running two tools already, one for jobs and one for uptime, and paying attention to both.
Errors and visitor numbers live in a third and fourth tool, each with its own login.
What Healthchecks.io does well
Healthchecks.io is the deeper pure cron monitor: ping by email, exit-code reporting, keyword filtering, systemd OnCalendar schedules, free team seats and BSD-licensed self-hosting, none of which PostDeploy has.
Where PostDeploy is different
Uptime checks exist, on their own allowance. Indie is 20 uptime and API monitors alongside 20 cron and heartbeat jobs, so one tool covers both the scheduled job and the URL it keeps alive.
Retention is time-based rather than a rolling buffer of the last 100 pings per check, so a quiet check keeps a usable history.
Projects and environments are first-class across every signal, and errors and analytics are live on the same login.
One flat plan covers the whole project, so adding an uptime monitor or an error feed never means adding a vendor.
What switching gets you
Try PostDeploy if
- You are also paying for, or meaning to set up, an uptime monitor somewhere else.
- You want the job and the endpoint it feeds to sit in one project with one alert policy.
- You want errors and visitor numbers for the same project under the same login.
- You would rather not operate the monitoring system that is supposed to tell you your systems are down.
What moving actually costs
-
1
Export your checks through the Management API (
GET /api/v3/checks/) to get names, slugs, tags, schedules, timezones and grace values in one pass instead of retyping them. -
2
Every ping URL changes.
hc-ping.com/<uuid>is embedded in crontabs, systemd units, backup scripts, Dockerfile healthchecks, CI workflows and Kubernetes CronJobs. Moving between Healthchecks projects preserves the URL; leaving does not. - 3 Translate schedules. Simple period plus grace maps over directly; cron expressions with a server timezone mostly do; systemd OnCalendar expressions have no PostDeploy equivalent and need rewriting.
- 4 Content-filtering rules do not port. Start, success and failure keyword lists are Healthchecks-specific.
- 5 Re-authorise integrations per project, not per account. Slack, Discord, Telegram and the rest each need a fresh flow.
- 6 Retire any status badge embedded in a README or dashboard; badge URLs are Healthchecks-specific.
- 7 Ping history is only extractable per check, capped at 100 entries on the free plan, and there is no documented bulk export.
Questions
Does Healthchecks.io do uptime monitoring?
No. Their documentation lists probing a website with HTTP requests under what the tool is not for. It is heartbeats only, on every tier, hosted or self-hosted. On PostDeploy uptime checks have their own allowance, 20 on Indie.
Is PostDeploy cron monitoring the same as Healthchecks.io's?
PostDeploy covers the common case: a ping on success, start and finish states for duration, and an alert when a ping is late. Healthchecks-specific features like ping by email, exit codes and OnCalendar schedules have no PostDeploy equivalent. What PostDeploy adds is uptime checks, error tracking and analytics on the same plan.
Can I keep my existing crontab entries?
The command structure stays the same; only the ping URL changes. Each
hc-ping.com
URL becomes an PostDeploy heartbeat URL, pinged the same way with curl or wget.
Other comparisons
Ship your next project with one toolkit, not three.
Start a trial, run both PostDeploy and Healthchecks.io for real, and keep whichever answers your questions faster.
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