Use case
Ghost for content. Crontap for the clock.
Ghost is a great content platform. It just does not ship a job scheduler. For creator backends that pair Ghost with a custom Node or Rails service, Crontap is the external clock that drives the recurring work without forcing a Redis or BullMQ rig for a handful of jobs.
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The problem
Why this is painful without the right tool
- Ghost has no native job scheduler; the only scheduling primitive is post-publishing time, not arbitrary HTTP triggers.
- Creator backends that wrap Ghost with custom Node, Rails or Go services still need a clock, and standing up Redis plus BullMQ for a handful of jobs is overkill.
- Single-line crontab on a VPS works until the VPS reboots and the line vanishes during a deploy.
- Multi-newsletter setups want different cadences per newsletter; managing that in a single in-process scheduler is fragile.
The fix
How Crontap solves it
Crontap calls your creator-backend endpoint (https://api.yourbrand.com/...) at any cadence in any IANA timezone. Your backend handles the Ghost Admin API, the email send, the database update. Crontap is the alarm clock; your backend is the work. Failures alert to email / webhook (Slack / Discord / Telegram).
* * * * *One concrete pattern from the dataset, archetyped: a creator running a minute-cadence chat-state refresh against api.yourbrand.com/api/batch/constant/run-chat-updates. The endpoint reads queue state, calls the Ghost Admin API for content metadata, and updates a side database. Crontap fires the URL on the minute; the backend handles every other concern.
For multi-newsletter setups, one Crontap schedule per newsletter per cadence gives you a tidy dashboard: a name, a cron, a timezone. When a newsletter migrates to a different cadence, the change is a save in Crontap, not a backend deploy.
FAQ
Common questions
- Does this work with Ghost Pro?
- Yes. Crontap does not run anything on the Ghost server. It calls your own creator-backend endpoint, which uses the Ghost Admin API key to talk to Ghost Pro. The auth between Crontap and your backend is your call (bearer header is the standard pattern).
- What's the shortest interval Crontap supports?
- Every 1 minute on paid plans. Free tier available for slower cadences. Creator backends in the dataset typically run at every minute, every 5 minutes, or hourly; minute cadence shows up for chat-state refreshes and constant-poll endpoints.
- How do I get notified if a creator-backend run fails?
- Wire failure alerts to email / webhook (Slack / Discord / Telegram) on the schedule's Integrations panel. The failure payload includes the run's status code, duration, and response body, so a backend that returned 500 because of a Ghost rate-limit shows up in the alert with enough context.
Related guides
Adjacent use cases
Ready to fix it?
Point Crontap at any URL. Pick any cron. Done.
WordPress, Shopify, Railway, Cloud Run, Vercel, HubSpot, Ghost, your own box. If it answers HTTP, Crontap can drive it on a clock you can read, in the timezone that actually matters, and page you when something breaks.
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/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron=1
Schedule
"every 5 minutes"
Next
in 23s