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Setting up an IONOS cronjob and when a second route helps

At IONOS you create a cronjob in your IONOS account under Menu › Hosting › Cronjobs › Manage. There you enter an address and choose daily, weekly or monthly (as of October 2026). For anything beyond that, IONOS points to a server-side cronjob set up through the Linux shell. With Cronjob.de you get a five-minute or one-minute interval without a command line: enter the address, click the schedule.

Updated:

Why at all

Two routes at IONOS and their limits

Cronjob manager in the IONOS account: According to IONOS, a cronjob created there runs as a web service, that is a call to an address (field “HTTP GET”). As interval you choose monthly, weekly or daily. Each call may take at most 60 seconds. IONOS explicitly lists password protected addresses and an email report as features that require a server-side cronjob.

Server-side cronjob via SSH: Here you edit the crontab yourself, with a free schedule, email via MAILTO and calls through the PHP interpreter or curl. IONOS recommends basic Linux shell skills and advises in its help centre to let at least 5 minutes pass before a cronjob runs again. The reason: with very frequent runs, processes can overlap at times of high server load.

Cronjob.de is a third route without a shell: we call your script's address from outside on your schedule, every five minutes or, from Plus, every minute. On top you get a call log and, if you like, a message when a call fails. You do not need a different IONOS plan for this.

URL to call
https://ihre-domain.de/ihr-skript.php
Recommended interval
every 5 minutes, every minute from Plus
Tested with
IONOS Webhosting (Tarife ab 22.03.2017)
Sufficient Cronjob.de plan
The free Cronjob.de plan covers five cronjobs on a five-minute grid, no payment details needed. Every minute, a call log with the response and email error alerts start with Plus (€17.88 a year), runtime statistics with Unlimited.

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. First decide whether the IONOS route is enough

    If your task runs once a day, week or month, the cronjob manager in your IONOS account is the shortest route: Menu › Hosting, pick the contract, click Manage in the Cronjobs tile, then Create cronjob. Enter a name, put the address into the “HTTP GET” field, choose the interval. If you need a shorter interval and do not want to maintain a crontab via SSH, read on.

  2. Decide on the address and protect it

    For the call from outside you need an address that starts your script. Protect it with a long random parameter that your script checks right at the start. If the script sits in a protected folder, store the credentials (HTTP auth) at Cronjob.de instead.

    https://your-domain.com/your-script.php?key=A-LONG-SECRET

  3. Prevent overlap inside the script

    The IONOS advice about overlapping runs applies to any short interval. Set a lock in your script: a file created at the start and removed at the end, or an entry in the database. If a copy is already running, the second one exits immediately.

  4. Create an account at Cronjob.de

    Signing up is free and needs no payment details. New accounts get all features for 14 days, including the one-minute interval. After that the account continues on the free plan automatically; for every minute you then need Plus.

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

  5. Create a cronjob with that address

    Enter the address and click the schedule together. You can also describe the interval in one sentence, such as “every 5 minutes between 6 am and 10 pm”, or paste your plugin's instructions. The AI assistant picks out the address, method and schedule.

    */5 * * * *

    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. Switch on error alerts

    Enter an email address under Notifications. You will then hear when a call fails or your site does not answer at all. Failure notifications by email are included from Plus, and during the first 14 days.

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?

The Cronjob.de call log shows the time, runtime and status code of every call, and from Plus also your script's response. If you built in a lock, the runtime stays even and no call ends in an error.

Your host runs cron jobs itself? Then monitor them with a heartbeat.

One line at the end of your script reports every run to Cronjob.de. If the check-in is missing, you get a message – even if the host's cron never started. One heartbeat is free. Cron job monitoring

FAQ

Common questions about IONOS

How often can I run a cron job at IONOS?
In the cronjob manager in your IONOS account you choose daily, weekly or monthly (as of October 2026). In a server-side crontab via SSH the schedule is free, but IONOS recommends at least 5 minutes between runs there. With Cronjob.de you call every 5 minutes or, from Plus, every minute.
Is the IONOS five-minute recommendation a hard limit?
IONOS phrases it as a recommendation and explains it with processes that can overlap under high server load. A lock inside the script prevents exactly that, wherever the call comes from.
Can IONOS call scripts by address too?
Yes, on both routes. The cronjob manager in the IONOS account only calls addresses. For the crontab IONOS names curl when your script needs your own php.ini settings, because calling it directly through the PHP interpreter ignores them.
How long may an IONOS cronjob run?
According to IONOS, cronjobs from the cronjob manager in the IONOS account are aborted after 60 seconds. At Cronjob.de it is 45 seconds on the free plan and 60 seconds on the paid ones. Longer work is best split into chunks.
Should I switch off the IONOS cronjob?
If you would trigger the same task from both sides, yes. Otherwise two schedules run side by side and you can no longer tell which run came from where.
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.

Start for free See pricing

More guides

Official documentation of IONOS

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

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