Questions,
answered clearly.

CronEngine is an online cron job scheduler. It sends HTTP requests to any URL you configure on a schedule you define, so you can automate recurring tasks without relying on your own server's cron setup.

A cron job is a task that runs automatically at scheduled intervals. With CronEngine, a cron job works by sending an HTTP request to a URL such as https://example.com/run-task or a webhook endpoint, on the schedule you configure.

How often a job can run depends on the shared monthly allowance: Free covers a single job every 15 minutes, Starter every 5 minutes, and Pro every 2 minutes when no other jobs consume the allowance. Business and Enterprise can reserve every-minute schedules. You can use the visual schedule builder, a shortcut such as @daily, or a raw cron expression.

You can use @hourly, @daily, @midnight, @weekly, @monthly, @yearly, and @annually. They run in your account timezone. @reboot is not supported.

Yes. CronEngine runs entirely from its own servers. Your browser, local computer, and hosting server do not need to stay online for jobs to fire.

Overlap protection is enabled by default. If the same job is still running when its next scheduled time arrives, CronEngine skips that occurrence without treating it as a failure or sending an alert. You can turn this off under Execution behavior if concurrent runs are safe for that endpoint.

To stop abandoned endpoints from consuming resources and sending endless alerts, a Free job is paused after 20 consecutive failed runs. We send one email to your verified account address when this happens. Review the latest error and resume the job when the endpoint is fixed; resuming starts a fresh failure count. Paid plans are not automatically paused by this rule.

All requests are sent from 45.9.188.216. If your endpoint is protected by a firewall or allowlist, make sure to whitelist this IP address so our requests are not blocked.

No, plain HTTP endpoints also work. That said, HTTPS is strongly recommended to keep your requests and response bodies secure in transit.

Yes. When creating or editing a job, CronEngine shows you a preview of upcoming execution times based on your schedule. This helps you catch mistakes before the job goes live.

Every active job is rescheduled immediately, so its next run follows the same cron expression in the new timezone. Paused jobs remain paused and are recalculated when you resume them.

Every plan covers a number of scheduled runs per 30-day month, shared across all your active jobs. A job's cost is simply how often its schedule fires:

every minute = 43,200 runs/month
every 5 minutes = 8,640
every 15 minutes = 2,880
hourly = 720
daily = 30

The cost is reserved when you save the job, so your allowance never runs out unexpectedly in the middle of a month. Paused jobs do not count.

The free plan covers 5 active jobs, 3,000 scheduled runs a month, and a 20 second request timeout. That covers four hourly jobs, or one job every 15 minutes plus four daily jobs - plenty for personal projects and lightweight automation. A single every-minute job costs 43,200 runs a month and requires Business or Enterprise.

No - the timeout comes from your plan and is applied to every job automatically, from 20 seconds on Free up to 600 seconds on Enterprise. If a request is still running when the timeout is reached it gets cancelled and recorded as a failure. Jobs that finish sooner are unaffected. If you need longer, upgrading raises it across all your jobs at once.

Two things. Every job's request timeout drops to the lower plan's value, so any job that normally takes longer than that will start failing. And if you have more active jobs or more scheduled runs than the lower plan allows, the excess is paused automatically - oldest jobs are kept, and the most frequent schedules are paused first. Nothing is ever deleted, and we email you a summary of exactly what changed. If you upgrade again, jobs paused this way are resumed automatically.

Yes. Every run is logged with its HTTP status code and duration. Depending on the job's storage setting, CronEngine also retains up to 10 KB of the response body and marks larger responses as truncated. Per job, alerts can go to email, a generic signed webhook, Slack, Discord, or Telegram for every failure, only when health changes, after a chosen number of consecutive failures, or on every run. You can also receive a weekly or monthly email digest with run totals, success rate, average duration, and the jobs that failed most often.

Weekly digests are sent after 08:00 each Monday and cover the previous Monday through Sunday. Monthly digests are sent after 08:00 on the first day of the month and cover the previous calendar month. CronEngine uses your profile timezone, skips periods with no runs, and lets you switch cadence or turn digests off from Account settings.

Generic webhooks receive a stable version 1 JSON event with an event ID, event type, job name and URL, run ID, outcome, HTTP status, duration, error, timestamps, and a direct history link. Add a signing secret to verify HMAC-SHA256 signatures, and use the event ID to ignore duplicate deliveries. See the webhook documentation for the full contract.

Yes. You can disable any job from the dashboard and re-enable it at any time without losing its URL, schedule, or configuration.

Yes. Whenever your account is signed in to from an IP address it has not used before, we email you a heads-up with the device, IP address and time. If it was you, nothing to do. If not, the email links straight to your Security page where you can change your password and sign out every other session. You can review your active sessions there at any time.

Yes. You can switch plans from the Pricing page at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately. If a downgrade cannot fit your current usage, CronEngine warns you before the change.

Use the contact form, or email us at support@cronengine.com. We typically respond within one business day.