adelessert

WordPress’s built in cron system is clever, but notoriously unreliable. <a href="https://deadmanssnitch.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Dead Man’s Snitch</a> is a great service for monitoring any sort of scheduled task, and is a simple way to make sure that your WordPress cron jobs are working properly. If WP-Cron isn’t working properly, WordPress might not be updating itself regularly, scheduled posts may turn up late or not at all, and other features you count on might not work.
This plugin simply allows you to store your Snitch URL in the WordPress admin, and requests it once per hour. If Dead Man’s Snitch doesn’t hear from WordPress when it expects to, it’ll send you an email notification.

WP Dead Man’s Snitch

WordPress's built in cron system is clever, but notoriously unreliable.

webheadcoder

What happens if WP-Cron stops working?
WordPress, Themes, and Plugins would never know if a new version is out. You could login to your website everyday for months, and never see any notices about updates. If you’re not careful you’ll soon have an out of date WordPress installation susceptible to hackers. Scheduled posts would never get published, auto drafts never deleted… you get the picture. Your website would crumble up and die.
Use Woocommerce? Subscriptions? Customers would never get billed again! Sessions would never be deleted. Scheduled sales would never appear. Your website would become bloated while giving away subscriptions for one time payments.
WP-Cron is important. So make sure it keeps working.
Think of this plugin as insurance, but free. WordPress, plugins, themes, and servers are all moving parts that can be updated at anytime. You can’t guarantee any of these changes won’t break your website in some way. While it’s not likely WP-Cron will stop working, if it does, you better know about it.
Every 24 hours this plugin automatically checks to see if WP-Cron is still able to run. Obviously, it does not depend on WP-Cron. Instead it sets its own transients that expire over 24 hours. Whenever the transient expires it checks to make sure WordPress can run WP-Cron. If an unexpected error occurs the you’ll get an email.
In addition to checking if WP-Cron CAN run, this plugin now logs all hooks running with WP-Cron and if they fail or complete. You’ll be able to see what ran, when it ran, how long it took, and if it completed.
For your convenience The WP-Cron Status Checker is displayed on your WordPress admin dashboard. The status page is accessible through the Tools -> WP Cron Status side menu.
Know when WP-Cron doesn’t complete
When a WP-Cron hook fails you’ll get notified soon after. A hook “fails” when it takes longer than 5 minutes to complete. You’ll get an email within 24 hours (or based on the plugin’s settings) to notify you of any failures.
Sometimes a plugin runs some code that abruptly exits the process and there is no way of knowing when it stopped. WP-Cron Status Checker does it’s best to detect this type of code. If it’s caught, the elapsed time is not recorded and you’ll see “N/A” with an “Incomplete” status. Other times when it’s caught you’ll see an “Exit” status which is considered complete. <a href="https://webheadcoder.com/wp-cron-status-checker/" rel="nofollow ugc">Please see the plugin page for more on completion statuses.</a>
PRO Version 
The PRO version removes the 3 log limit and lets you choose to keep logs longer and email more frequently. Please see more on the plugin page: <a href="https://webheadcoder.com/wp-cron-status-checker/" rel="nofollow ugc">https://webheadcoder.com/wp-cron-status-checker/</a>

WP-Cron Status Checker

I know I created this plugin, but I am also using it and it has warned me WP Cron stopped working.  I'm not sure what the error was.  WP Cron just stopped working for a short while and then started working the next day right before I contacted the web host.

Caught an error

I debug WordPress websites for a living and a stopped, paused or failed cron is often a problem. I use this plugin to help in the process. Thanks to the dev!

One request. At first, it was very hard to find where to find the status (it's a widget on the dashboard btw). It would be helpful if this was mentioned somewhere in the description of the plugin (unless its there already and I missed it). 

Cheers!

Very handy tool in my debug tool kit

This is an easy way to check if WP-cron is enabled and jobs are actually running. Don't let the relatively low number of active installations mislead you, I suspect many people may use this plugin just like I did - install it just to check WP-cron is doing ok, then remove the plugin again.

My only criticism is that I had expected to be able to view the WP-cron status on this plugin's settings page, instead I had to look for it in the Dashboard.

Good tool to check WP-cron


I installed by mistake, intending to use a simple tool to monitor and log WP-Cron activity. It appears, this is now another freemius plugin which seems to me to be a bait, because description and screenshots are not accurate and up to date.



To use this plugin is now required to give all your personnal data or to register/subscribe. This shouldn't be required for such limited functionality plugin. An unnecessary and intrusive step for something as simple as viewing cron logs



Thankfully, better alternatives exist. Installed by mistake, uninstalling by will.


Almost a bait because it requires personnal data

If WP-Cron runs important things for you, you better make sure WP-Cron always runs!

WP Dead Man’s Snitch vs WP-Cron Status Checker