What Dead Man's Snitch does

Dead Man's Snitch is a cloud-based SaaS platform that monitors scheduled tasks, cron jobs, and background processes for developers, DevOps engineers, and SaaS companies. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Holland, Michigan, the service was acquired by Collective Idea, Inc. in July 2013 and reincorporated as Dead Man's Snitch, LLC in January 2025. The platform assigns a unique check-in URL to each monitored job ('snitch') and alerts subscribers when a job fails to check in within its expected interval, preventing silent failures of backups, scheduled emails, and other automated processes. Distribution is global via self-serve sign-up, the Heroku add-on marketplace, and iOS/Android mobile apps, with no disclosed geographic restrictions.

The technology stack is centered on a JSON REST API with API-key authentication and a unique check-in URL per snitch. The platform is extended by Field Agent, a cross-platform CLI utility available for Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Solaris that wraps job execution to capture timing, exit codes, and output for debugging. Differentiated features include Smart Alerts that adapt to historical check-in patterns and Error Notices that capture non-zero exit output. The product integrates natively with Slack (including /dms slash commands), PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, Opsgenie, VictorOps, ilert, Amazon SNS, and generic HTTP webhooks, plus a Heroku buildpack and Zapier via webhooks. Stripe handles payment processing.

Revenue is generated through a freemium subscription model. A free tier offers one snitch with standard hourly/daily/weekly/monthly intervals and no credit card required; paid tiers unlock enhanced intervals down to one minute, Smart Alerts, Error Notices, unlimited team members, and integrations, with plan names spanning Lone Snitch, Little Birdy, Private Eye, and Surveillance Van. The GTM motion is product-led and API-first, with annual pre-pay billing available. Named customers include Microsoft, GoCardless, Firebase, Harvest, Betterment, Code Climate, Scout, Wave, and SocialWod, though no revenue figures, headcount, or external funding rounds are disclosed in the available data.

Name

Dead Man's Snitch

Legal name

Dead Man's Snitch, LLC

Website

https://deadmanssnitch.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Dead Man's Snitch is a cloud-based SaaS platform that monitors cron jobs and scheduled tasks for developers, DevOps teams, and SaaS companies, alerting via Slack, PagerDuty, and other channels when jobs miss check-ins. Acquired by Collective Idea in 2013.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Cron Job Monitoring Software

NAICS

Computer Facilities Management Services (541513)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Fault & Performance Monitoring (SNMP/Telemetry/APM for Networks) (HDAFAMAA)

Keywords

• Cron job monitoring
• Scheduled task monitoring
• Devops monitoring tools
• Heroku scheduler monitoring
• Job failure alerting

Headquarters

HQ city

Holland

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. SaaS Subscriptions: Monthly or annual subscription plans with tiered pricing based on number of snitches, interval types (standard vs enhanced), and feature access (Smart Alerts, Error Notices, team members, integrations). Free plan includes 1 snitch with standard intervals.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Dead Man's Snitch is a cloud-based cron job and scheduled task monitoring service. Each monitored job (a "snitch") is assigned a unique check-in URL that the job pings to confirm execution; if a check-in is missed within the expected interval, the service alerts the user via email, Slack, PagerDuty, and other channels. The platform supports intervals from 1 minute to monthly and is targeted at developers and DevOps teams who need to detect silent failures of backups, scheduled emails, and background processes.

Product overview

Dead Man's Snitch is a unified cloud-based monitoring platform for scheduled tasks and cron jobs. The core offering is the Dead Man's Snitch monitoring service, which is complemented by Field Agent (a cross-platform CLI utility for enhanced job monitoring), mobile apps for iOS and Android, webhook integrations for custom alerting workflows, and email-based check-ins. The platform supports integration with major ITSM and communication tools including Slack, PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, Opsgenie, VictorOps, and ilert.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Dead Man's Snitch Core Monitoring Service Cloud-based SaaS monitoring service that watches cron jobs, Heroku Scheduler tasks, and other scheduled processes. Each monitored job pings a unique URL on completion; if the check-in is missed within the configured interval, the service alerts the user through email, Slack, PagerDuty, Teams, Opsgenie, webhooks, and mobile push notifications. Supports intervals from 1 minute to monthly and is designed for developers, DevOps engineers, and SaaS teams.
• Field Agent CLI Utility Cross-platform command-line binary that wraps job execution, gathers timing information, exit codes, and job output, and reports results back to Dead Man's Snitch. Available for Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Solaris, and enables Error Logs and Smart Alerts features on supporting paid plans.
• iOS Mobile App iOS app for monitoring Dead Man's Snitch status and receiving push notifications on the go. Allows users to view snitch details, check-in history, timeline activity, and pause snitches directly from the device.
• Android Mobile App Android app for monitoring Dead Man's Snitch status and receiving push notifications. Provides access to snitch details, check-in history, timeline activity, and the ability to pause snitches directly from the device.

Quantifiable outcome

• Users reported reducing time to discover failed jobs from days to minutes (SocialWod case study)
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration9 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• HerokucoreTechnology or IntegrationNative Heroku integration through dedicated buildpack (heroku-buildpack-dms) and Heroku Scheduler monitoring support. Dead Man's Snitch is available as a Heroku add-on.
• SlackcoreTechnology or IntegrationFull Slack integration for alert notifications and /dms slash commands to check snitch status directly in Slack channels.
• PagerDutycoreTechnology or IntegrationPagerDuty integration for creating incidents when snitches go missing or error, with automatic resolution when jobs recover.
• Microsoft TeamscoreTechnology or IntegrationMicrosoft Teams integration via Incoming Webhook Connector for delivering alerts to Teams channels.
• OpsgeniecoreTechnology or IntegrationOpsgenie integration for alert routing with automatic acknowledgment and resolution when snitches recover.
• Amazon Web Services (SNS)coreTechnology or IntegrationAmazon SNS integration allowing monitoring of SNS topics via HTTPS subscription, with automatic subscription acknowledgment.
• StripecoreOthersStripe processes all credit card payments. Card information is transmitted directly to Stripe without touching Dead Man's Snitch servers.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Healthchecks.io: Direct competitor offering cron job and scheduled task monitoring with check-in URLs, similar alert integrations, and a freemium/self-serve model. The most comparable standalone product to Dead Man's Snitch.
• Cronitor: Direct competitor focused on cron job, scheduled task, and background job monitoring with alerting integrations to PagerDuty, Slack, and webhooks — same core product category and customer base.
• UptimeRobot: Direct peer in the uptime and scheduled-check monitoring space with a freemium tier and broad alerting integrations. Overlaps on cron-style scheduled check-ins while extending into HTTP/ping monitoring.

Emerging players

• Better Stack: An emerging player offering Uptime monitoring combined with incident management and on-call scheduling. Overlaps with Dead Man's Snitch on scheduled task monitoring and alerting destinations.
• Scout APM: Application performance monitoring tool that overlaps with Dead Man's Snitch at the customer-base level (Scout itself is a DMS customer) and in the broader application monitoring category.
• Cronhub: A smaller, focused cron job monitoring service with a similar check-in URL model. Direct niche competitor targeting developers with simpler scheduled-job monitoring needs.

Broad incumbents

• Datadog: Broad observability incumbent whose APM/synthetics products include scheduled job and synthetic monitoring — competing with Dead Man's Snitch from the enterprise platform layer.
• New Relic: Broad observability platform that includes synthetic monitoring and scheduled checks within its full-stack APM offering, competing with standalone tools at the high end of the market.
• PagerDuty: Incident management platform and one of Dead Man's Snitch's primary alert destinations; offers its own event/intelligence monitoring capabilities that overlap with the problem space.
• Opsgenie (Atlassian): Incident management and alerting platform integrated with Dead Man's Snitch; broader ITSM/operations tooling that competes for the same alerting and on-call budget.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/deadmanssnitch
• GitHubgithub.com/deadmanssnitch

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Dead Man's Snitch