The solo bottleneck
Your UI looks fine while a payment or AI API is failing.
This guide is part of a free series: 50 useful automations for people running the business alone. Download the printable PDF anytime: Free PDF — Watch the APIs your product depends on.
Stack that stays small
Cron/synthetic monitor + alert.
Tools named here: Better Stack, Cron, Zapier. Prefer official docs and native features before adding another SaaS.
Ship the automation
List critical dependencies: payments, email, AI, auth.
Hit a cheap health or signed test path every few minutes.
Alert on consecutive failures, not single blips.
Runbook: failover, status copy, customer message.
Keep it honest
Dependence without monitoring is hope. Hope is not an SRE strategy.
Automations should reduce decisions and errors — not hide broken processes. If a Zap fails weekly, fix the process or delete the Zap.
Download
Grab the free PDF for this task: Download PDF. Or browse the full set from the homepage automation carousel.