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Setting up a SuperWebMailer cronjob: calling crons.php regularly

SuperWebMailer and SuperMailingList handle all scheduled tasks through the crons.php script in the installation directory. A cronjob has to call it by address regularly. The vendor's help recommends once per minute, at least once per hour, and explicitly names an external cron job service as one way to do it. At Cronjob.de you enter the address of crons.php and choose the interval. You need no cronjob in your hosting plan for this.

Updated: · by Joscha Schultze, operator of Cronjob.de
Written with AI assistance, provider details checked against their official pages.

Why at all

Why no newsletters go out without a cronjob

According to the help, crons.php handles all scheduled tasks: among them sending from the outgoing queue, pending mailings, autoresponders, follow-up and birthday responders, checking for undeliverable emails (hard bounces) and deleting old log entries. If nobody calls the script, these tasks pile up.

The help describes four ways. The first is a cron job on the server with the full http(s):// call of crons.php. The second is an external cron job service. Calling it via JavaScript in your own website and running it by hand are both marked “not recommended”.

Interval: according to the help the call should happen once per minute, at least once per hour. For fast sending the help calls a call once per minute or more often “mandatory”. Cronjob.de calls every minute from the Plus plan and every five minutes on the free plan. Cronjob.de does not offer intervals below one minute.

Whether your hosting plan includes cron jobs and whether they can call an address depends on your host. An external service only needs the address of crons.php. The Cronjob.de call log shows every call with time, runtime and status code, and from Plus also the response.

URL to call
https://ihre-domain.de/swm/crons.php
Recommended interval
every minute (recommended in the SuperWebMailer help), at least hourly
Tested with
SuperWebMailer 9.70, SuperMailingList 9.70
Sufficient Cronjob.de plan
For the one-minute interval the help recommends you need Cronjob.de Plus (€17.88 a year). On the free plan the call runs every five minutes, which is within “at least once per hour”, but sending takes longer. New accounts get all features for 14 days.

Setup

Step by step

The AI does it faster

You do not have to transfer any of this by hand. Paste this guide – or the one for your own system – into the assistant, and Cronjob.de fills in address, method, schedule and headers. Where something is unclear it asks instead of guessing. At the end you see what was entered and create the job with one click.

Included in the free plan at no extra cost. You will find it after signing in under "Cronjobs" → "Create with AI".

  1. Find the address of crons.php

    crons.php sits in the directory where you installed SuperWebMailer or SuperMailingList. So the address is that of your installation plus /crons.php. The help uses a subdirectory swm as its example.

    https://your-domain.com/swm/crons.php

  2. Look at the scheduled tasks in the software

    Open the menu Einstellungen → Geplante Aufgaben (Settings → Scheduled tasks). There you see and change the tasks and their execution times. According to the help these settings apply to all administrators and users. crons.php runs each task at the interval set there, so the cronjob has to call at least as often as the most frequent task.

  3. Open the address in a browser once

    Open the address of crons.php in your browser. Afterwards a new entry should appear under Einstellungen → Ereignisprotokoll (Settings → Event log). If the call asks for a username and password, a directory protection sits in front of the installation. You enter those credentials in the cronjob form later.

  4. Create an account at Cronjob.de

    Registration is free, no payment details needed. For the first 14 days you have all features, including the one-minute interval. After that you need the Plus plan for it.

    Start for free 14 days of Unlimited included, no payment details

  5. Create a cronjob with that address

    Paste the address and set the interval to every minute. You can assemble the schedule by clicking, type it as a crontab expression or describe it in one sentence. You can also paste the section from the SuperWebMailer help: the AI assistant reads the address and schedule from it. The method stays GET.

    * * * * *

    You can enter this expression at Cronjob.de exactly as it is – the schedule field understands crontab notation. But you do not have to know it: simply click the schedule together instead.

  6. Set a suitable amount per call

    How many emails one call sends is set in the options on the E-Mail-Versand (email sending) tab under “Anzahl zu versendende E-Mails” (number of emails to send). The help calls 100 to 200 a normal value and warns: if the script is aborted, emails could be sent twice or never. Cronjob.de waits 45 seconds on the free plan and 60 seconds on the paid plans for the response. Better smaller amounts, every minute.

What the five fields of an expression like */5 * * * * mean is explained in the crontab reference – with examples and the most common pitfalls. You can build the expression in the crontab generator. Whether you need an outside service at all is shown in the comparison of the three ways.

Verification

Is it actually running?

Run the cronjob once by hand. The Cronjob.de call log shows the time, runtime and status code, and from Plus also the response. Status 200 means the script accepted the call. Whether the tasks ran is shown by SuperWebMailer itself under Einstellungen → Ereignisprotokoll (Settings → Event log): for every task it states whether it succeeded, had nothing to do or failed.

FAQ

Common questions about SuperWebMailer

How often does crons.php need to be called for SuperWebMailer?
According to the help once per minute, at least once per hour. For fast sending the help calls a call every minute “mandatory”. At Cronjob.de the one-minute interval is available from the Plus plan, every five minutes on the free plan.
May I use an external cron service for SuperWebMailer?
Yes. The help page on scheduled tasks and cron jobs explicitly names, as its second option, an external cron job service that calls crons.php in the script package directory regularly.
Does this apply to SuperMailingList too?
Yes. The SuperMailingList help describes crons.php and the four options in the same words. Some tasks are missing in the Basic editions, for example checking the distribution lists.
Can Cronjob.de call crons.php more than once per minute?
No, the shortest interval at Cronjob.de is one minute. For shorter gaps the SuperWebMailer help describes several staggered crontab entries with sleep on your own server.
Newsletters are not sent although the cronjob runs. What should I check?
First check in the call log that the status code is 200. Then check the software's event log to see whether the task that checks for emails to send runs and whether it fails. A permanent 401 means a directory protection: enter the credentials in the cronjob form.
Is your server rejecting our calls? Error 403 almost always comes from a firewall, a security plugin or directory protection – not from your script. All our calls carry the fixed identifier Cronjob.de in the user agent. Ask your host for an exception for it; that is more reliable than allowing IP addresses, because ours can change. Addresses and details in the FAQ. Other errors such as 401, 404 or 500 are explained in the troubleshooting guide.

Create your cronjob now

Create an account, enter the address, click the schedule. Five cronjobs are free forever, the first 14 days run on the Unlimited plan.

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More guides

Official documentation of SuperWebMailer

The details about SuperWebMailer come from their own documentation, as of October 2026. Please check there whether anything has changed since. SuperWebMailer is a trademark of its respective owner. This guide comes from Cronjob.de and has no business relationship with that provider.