Cron vs. Webhooks vs. Event-Driven: Which One Is More Reliable?

The real question: which failures do you notice?

DevOps teams and no-code builders usually ask: “Should this be cron, a webhook, or event-driven?” In practice, the more expensive question is: Which failures become visible quickly enough?

Internal signals (logs, retries, error handlers) often disappear exactly when you need them: the host is out of disk, the worker is deadlocked, the workflow engine is stuck, or the scenario platform never started. That’s why external Heartbeat Monitoring (Healthchecks) is the baseline — if the ping doesn’t arrive, the monitor becomes Overdue and you get an alert. Absence is the signal: the Dead Man’s Switch model.

Full API documentation: /api/heartbeat/.

1) Cron: predictable schedules, predictable blind spots

Cron is great when you need deterministic timing. It’s also the easiest place to create silent failures: the job never starts, it starts but hangs, or it runs on the wrong host after a migration.

Typical cron silent failures

• Runner is down, VM is suspended, container is stuck
• Credentials expired, but the script exits 0 or errors don’t reach anyone
• Job runs, but produces a wrong result (0 rows, empty export, missing side-effects)

Cron monitoring with Heartbeat Monitoring (healthchecks)

The simplest setup is a success ping at the end of the job. If it doesn’t arrive within the interval + Grace Period, the monitor is Overdue.

Example crontab entry:

Add Payload Inspection to detect “ran, but wrong”

Many cron incidents aren’t missed runs — they’re wrong outcomes. With Payload Inspection, you can send lightweight metrics (rows exported, duration, totals) and alert on suspicious values.

2) Webhooks: real-time triggers, missing expectations

Webhooks feel “more reliable” because they’re event-based, but they have a different failure mode: you often don’t have an explicit expectation for how many events should arrive. When events stop due to auth changes or provider outages, it can be a silent failure.

Where webhook pipelines fail silently

• Upstream provider disables a webhook after too many 5xx responses
• Signature verification changes (HMAC secret rotated) and your handler rejects events
• DNS / TLS issues: upstream retries, but you never see a usable delivery
• Queueing works, but the consumer is stuck; the webhook endpoint keeps accepting

Heartbeat Monitoring for webhooks: define a minimum expected cadence

You don’t need a ping per event. Instead, define an expectation: “At least one successful processing heartbeat every 10 minutes.” If your pipeline processes nothing, the monitor turns Overdue.

Tip: set a Grace Period based on your retry/backoff

Webhooks retry. Your monitor should reflect reality. If a provider retries for 7 minutes, a Grace Period of 10 minutes prevents noise while still catching true outages.

3) Event-driven systems: resilient by design, opaque by default

Event-driven architectures (queues, streams, pub/sub) are great at decoupling and absorbing failures. But that decoupling also makes it easier to not notice when the system stops making progress.

Silent failures in event-driven pipelines

• Backlog grows slowly, but SLAs are violated
• A consumer group is alive but not processing (poison messages, deadlocks)
• Retries keep happening, but nothing reaches the “done” state

Use Heartbeat Monitoring as a progress signal (“work completed”)

Instead of monitoring “events received”, monitor “work completed”. Emit a heartbeat when a batch finishes or when progress is made. Add Payload Inspection for backlog and throughput so you can alert early.

Workflow Observability for no-code: n8n + Make.com

For no-code teams, the “trigger type” is often hidden behind a workflow platform. The monitoring requirement is the same: detect silent failures when workflows stop running, and validate outcomes when they run but do the wrong thing.

n8n (self-hosted): external Dead Man’s Switch beyond internal logs

Self-hosted n8n can fail in ways where internal error handling never executes (process stuck, host out of disk, stalled workers). Heartbeat Monitoring is the simplest external signal.

With watchflow’s native n8n integration you can add workflow observability fast, without building custom webhook glue.

Make.com: reliability when scenarios “succeed” but do nothing

Make scenarios can appear fine while still failing operationally (operations limits, timeouts, partial execution). Payload Inspection helps you detect suspicious zeros.

watchflow’s native Make integration reduces setup friction and improves workflow observability for critical scenarios.

Conclusion

Cron, webhooks, and event-driven systems can all be reliable — and all can fail silently. The differentiator is whether you get an external signal when the automation stops.

Start with Heartbeat Monitoring (Healthchecks) as a Dead Man’s Switch, tune Overdue thresholds with a realistic Grace Period, and add Payload Inspection for outcome validation.

Use /api/heartbeat/ to set up your first monitor and connect it to your cron jobs, webhook processors, or n8n/Make workflows.