diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 68c1237e..c8088a54 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -7,6 +7,9 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 - Switch from croniter to cronsim (vendored in hc.lib.cronsim)
 - Change outgoing webhook timeout to 10s, but cap the total time to 20s
 
+### Bug Fixes
+- Fix hc.api.views.ping to handle non-utf8 data in request body (#574)
+
 ## v1.23.1 - 2021-10-13
 
 ### Bug Fixes
diff --git a/hc/api/tests/test_ping.py b/hc/api/tests/test_ping.py
index bd2b6d31..01d53738 100644
--- a/hc/api/tests/test_ping.py
+++ b/hc/api/tests/test_ping.py
@@ -254,3 +254,12 @@ class PingTestCase(BaseTestCase):
     def test_it_rejects_exit_status_over_255(self):
         r = self.client.get(self.url + "/256")
         self.assertEqual(r.status_code, 400)
+
+    def test_it_handles_bad_unicode(self):
+        csrf_client = Client(enforce_csrf_checks=True)
+        r = csrf_client.post(self.url, b"Hello \xe9 World", content_type="text/plain")
+        self.assertEqual(r.status_code, 200)
+
+        ping = Ping.objects.get()
+        self.assertEqual(ping.method, "POST")
+        self.assertEqual(ping.body, "Hello � World")
diff --git a/hc/api/views.py b/hc/api/views.py
index aec09cc6..76e9ed6f 100644
--- a/hc/api/views.py
+++ b/hc/api/views.py
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ def ping(request, code, check=None, action="success", exitstatus=None):
     scheme = headers.get("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO", "http")
     method = headers["REQUEST_METHOD"]
     ua = headers.get("HTTP_USER_AGENT", "")
-    body = request.body.decode()
+    body = request.body.decode(errors="replace")
 
     if exitstatus is not None and exitstatus > 0:
         action = "fail"