Ping a URL every 5 minutes
Run a recurring request every 5 minutes to monitor endpoint health, validate uptime, or poll an API. SimpleCron handles retries, logs, and visibility without requiring your own cron server.
Cron expression
*/5 * * * *Use case
Health checks, API polling, webhook monitoring
Signals
Retries, logs, alerts, public status pages
Infra
No self-managed cron daemon required
Why this pattern matters
A 5-minute interval is one of the most common recurring schedules for monitoring and lightweight automation. It is frequent enough to catch outages quickly, but still simple enough to reason about.
- • Detect endpoint failures quickly
- • Confirm scheduled APIs stay healthy
- • Track repeated requests in one dashboard
- • Share service health with a status page
Common examples
How to do it with SimpleCron
1. Add the URL you want to monitor or call.
2. Set the cron expression to */5 * * * *.
3. Turn on retries and failure alerts.
4. Review execution history and share a public status page if needed.
FAQ
Is every 5 minutes a valid cron schedule?
Yes. The standard cron expression is */5 * * * *.
Can I use this for uptime monitoring?
Yes. It works well for lightweight uptime checks, internal endpoint validation, and recurring API polling.
What happens if the request fails?
SimpleCron can retry the request, log the failure, and surface alerts or public status output depending on how you configure the job.