The best website change monitoring software makes it simple and easy to ensure you know exactly what's happening on a website.
There are a number of reasons why monitoring webpages can be a great idea. For general consumers, it means being able to watch ecommerce websites for sales and bargain offers, by subscribing to alerts that monitor pricing.
For businesses, there are a wider number of reasons for webpage monitoring. For example, market research and competitor monitoring can allow you to adjust your pricing and sales targeting accordingly. This could involve not just monitoring prices but also brand mentions as well as consumer comments on social media websites.
Additional reason for monitoring webpages might be legal and compliance. This means being able to monitor websites that provide regulatory information in different jurisdictions, allowing you to pick this up and action it quickly.
Another option could be for general data collection, by monitoring key information sites so that you can adjust any associated data streams accordingly. You also may want to use webpage monitoring to watch for unauthorized content changes made by employees, either accidentally or on purpose, or even hacking attempts.
You might also want to monitor your business website for any changes for security purposes too, so as to ensure it's not been defaced or otherwise hacked.
But, no matter what you’re looking for, we have you covered – we’ve highlighted the best online monitoring services right here. So read on to find the website change monitoring software that best suits your needs.
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One of our pet peeves with these sort of monitoring solutions is that a lot of them look like they were designed 10 years ago. What we love about Wachete is that it is able to pack in all the functionality from its competition and implement it in a user-friendly package.
Wachete can be used for all manner of purposes, from tracking the prices of rival stores, to receiving notifications about job openings. And what really sets Wachete apart is that in addition to daily or weekly email reports, it also offers mobile apps and browser extensions so that you can keep an eye on everything in a dynamic way while on the go.
While this is definitely useful for professionals who can’t afford to be tied to a desk all day, it’s especially important for consumers who just want to buy a concert ticket before they sell out.
Watchete is free for monitoring up to 5 static pages and checking once every 24 hours, with paid-for plans offering various options according to how many pages you want to monitor and how quickly to recheck these.
Read our full Wachete review.
Sometimes you just need raw power to get the job done – sometimes you need Distill.io. Distill.io is one of the most flexible content monitoring services available right now because it allows users to do anything they need to do – even run monitors locally.
Now, while the functionality that Distill offers isn’t dramatically different from the competition, the difference that it does offer is pretty major. By allowing any user to employ a browser extension to monitor web content for free, without placing any kind of limit on it, this may just be the most affordable and sensible way to keep a watchful eye on online content. In fact, if we were going to recommend a service to a consumer who just wants to watch a few online retailers – we’d recommend Distill.
Distill.io does offer a free service, but for more frequent checks and bigger volume paid-for plans are available.
Read our full Distill.io review.
If you run a retail business, or if you’re a consumer looking to, well, support a retail business, it may be useful to check out ChangeTower. Now, while the free version will only check websites once every 12 hours – which isn’t very useful in the fast-paced world we’re living in – once you start paying for the service you’ll be able to keep up-to-date with any changes to whatever online content you’re watching.
This is particularly useful to retail businesses, as it allows them to monitor competitors and adjust pricing on-the-fly in order to stay competitive. Plus, ChangeTower will supply reports that show, in detail, any changes that were made. And, if you don’t need every change documented in your email, you can set custom alert criteria, so that you can make sure that all the information that makes its way to you (and your IT team) is relevant.
Read our full ChangeTower review.
Visualping is another competent website change monitoring platform, that like others listed above provides both a free tier as well as various paid-for options for wider ranging monitoring.
The free tier, however, is very limited, and users are restricted to monitoring just a couple of pages, though changes are monitored daily rather than monthly like some rival service providers.
As with other providers, though, paid-for plans allow for more pages to be monitored, with pricing based on the volume of pages to monitor each month.
Overall, while the page volume is quite small and probably not great for monitoring full ecommerce lists on rival websites, it does offer daily alerts which means if you need to monitor a small number of pages relatively inexpensively, then Visualping could be an option worth looking at.
Read our full Visualping review.
These days, the political landscape is a little bit crazy, and a ton of information is flying around at all times. Luckily, one of the best content monitoring services is targeted directly at politicians. And it’s actually pretty useful to anyone running a campaign – it allows the user to crawl for any information relevant to their campaign(s).
Versionista will then produce a color-coded report showing any changes made to, say, a political rival’s website – highlighting anything that has been deleted, and anything added.
There are a few different plans you can subscribe to, and like many other providers there's a free tier with limited monitoring that will probably serve best as a taster to get used to the service, and allows you to monitor a handful of pages a month.
Read our full Versionista review.
Which website change monitoring software is best for you?
When deciding which website change monitoring software to use, first consider what your actual needs are, as the cheapest options may only provide basic features, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a more expensive platform is better suited to you. Additionally, higher-end software can usually cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require from your website change monitoring software.
How we tested the best website change monitoring software
To test for the best website change monitoring software we first set up an account with the relevant platform, then we tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each website change monitoring software platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.
Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
