Question 1

What is a 'Check' in Ionhour?

Accepted Answer

A Check is a monitored task — typically a cron job, scheduled script, or recurring process. Each Check has a unique ping URL. Your job pings that URL on completion, and Ionhour alerts you if the ping is late or never arrives.

Question 2

How does Ionhour monitor my cron jobs?

Accepted Answer

You add a single HTTP GET or POST request to the end of your cron job script that hits your Check's unique ping URL. Ionhour watches the schedule you define — if a ping is overdue beyond your configured grace period, it opens an incident and fires an alert to your chosen channels within seconds.

Question 3

What notification channels are supported?

Accepted Answer

Ionhour supports Email on all plans. Pro and Business plans additionally support Slack, Discord, PagerDuty, and outbound Webhooks — so you can route alerts into any tool your team already uses.

Question 4

Can I upgrade or downgrade at any time?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Plan changes take effect immediately. When upgrading, you are charged a prorated amount for the remainder of the billing period. When downgrading, any credit is applied to your next invoice.

Question 5

What happens if I exceed my plan limits?

Accepted Answer

We will notify you by email before you hit your Check or member limits. Your existing Checks will continue to be monitored without interruption. You will need to upgrade your plan before creating additional Checks or inviting more team members.

Question 6

Do you offer discounts for open source projects?

Accepted Answer

Yes — maintainers of public open source projects can apply for a complimentary Pro plan. Reach out to us at support@ionhour.com with a link to your repository.

Question 7

Is there a limit on notification volume?

Accepted Answer

There is no cap on the number of alert notifications you receive — every incident generates the alerts you configure, regardless of plan. Signal storage history (how far back you can inspect raw pings) does vary by plan.

Question 8

Which payment methods do you accept?

Accepted Answer

We accept all major credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) processed securely through Paddle, our merchant of record. Annual plans are available at a discounted rate. For Business customers, invoiced billing is available on request.

Question 9

How does the MCP integration work?

Accepted Answer

Ionhour exposes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI agents query your monitoring data, create or pause Checks, and acknowledge incidents — all through the standard MCP tool-calling interface. Connect it to any MCP-compatible client such as Claude Desktop.

Question 10

Can I use Ionhour for health checks?

Accepted Answer

Absolutely. In addition to cron job monitoring, Ionhour supports heartbeat-style health checks for long-running services, daemons, and background workers. Configure a generous schedule and ping the URL from your process to confirm it is alive.

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