DigitalOcean cron jobs

DigitalOcean App Platform cron jobs for fixed schedules

DigitalOcean App Platform supports scheduled jobs for recurring tasks that belong to infrastructure. CronCoco is a better fit when your product needs to create, update, pause, or inspect recurring webhooks as application data.

Where DigitalOcean cron jobs fit well

App Platform jobs are a good fit when your team owns a small set of known schedules. Examples include nightly cleanup, a recurring import shared by every account, or a maintenance command that should run on a defined cadence and then exit.

In that model, the schedule lives in your App Platform configuration. DigitalOcean runs the job component on the cron expression you define, and the component is treated as background work rather than a public HTTP service.

What matters about the current App Platform model

DigitalOcean currently supports scheduled jobs directly in App Platform, including cron expressions and a configured time zone in the app spec. Scheduled jobs are not routable, and the platform documentation currently sets the minimum frequency at every 15 minutes.

Good fit for fixed team-owned schedules that change rarely.
Useful when the work should run as a background component inside App Platform.
Awkward when your backend must create or update schedules one customer at a time.
Awkward when each run needs customer-specific payloads, headers, or delivery history.

Why product-owned schedules are different

SaaS scheduling usually belongs to product state, not deployment state. One customer wants a report every weekday at 7 AM in their timezone, another wants a sync every two hours, and a third pauses the workflow for a week. Those are records your app should manage directly.

Once schedules become dynamic, you typically need API-driven create, update, pause, resume, and delete operations. You also need the schedule tied to a workspace, tenant, or integration record so support can answer questions about one failed recurring workflow.

A practical pattern for DigitalOcean apps

Keep your business logic behind a protected HTTP endpoint and let CronCoco handle the clock. Your backend creates recurring webhook jobs when customers enable features, then stores the returned job id next to the relevant product record.

// app/api/run-sync/route.ts
export async function POST(request: Request) {
  if (request.headers.get("x-cron-secret") !== process.env.CRON_SECRET) {
    return new Response("Unauthorized", { status: 401 });
  }
  const payload = await request.json().catch(() => ({}));
  await runIntegrationSync(payload.integrationId);
  return Response.json({ ok: true });
}

Create the recurring webhook from your backend

When a customer turns the workflow on, your app can create the schedule through the CronCoco API and persist the job id in your own database. That keeps scheduling logic close to the product feature instead of hidden inside platform configuration.

curl -X POST https://api.croncoco.io/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer coco_YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"integration-sync-acme","cron_expression":"0 */2 * * *","webhook_url":"https://api.your-app.com/api/run-sync","headers":{"x-cron-secret":"YOUR_SECRET"},"payload":{"integrationId":"int_123"}}'

DigitalOcean cron jobs vs CronCoco

One fixed cleanup or maintenance schedule: DigitalOcean App Platform job.
One recurring workflow per customer, workspace, or integration: CronCoco.
Need API-managed lifecycle operations for schedules: CronCoco.
Need scheduled webhooks with payloads and delivery visibility: CronCoco.

When to move recurring work out of platform config

If recurring work is part of your product experience rather than infrastructure maintenance, platform cron stops being the right abstraction. CronCoco gives your app a scheduling API while DigitalOcean keeps hosting the endpoints that do the actual work.

For related reading, see serverless cron jobs, how to schedule API calls, and multi-tenant cron jobs. If you want to implement this directly, start with the Create job docs.