In 2018, the web is a crazy place. Even pages that look the same are updated constantly – so if you want to make sure you stay on top of all the changes made to your website, you’re going to need to use one of the best website monitoring services. 

Luckily, these services are useful to a wide variety of businesses, politicians and even ordinary people trying to find the best deal on those Supreme shoes. They can be used to keep an eye on your competitors, so that you can make sure you’re offering competitive pricing all the time, and if you’re a politician, you can catch your political rivals when they change their platform. You can even use some website monitoring services to make sure your site experiences minimal downtime. 

There are dozens of uses for these services. But, no matter what you’re looking for, we have you covered – we’ve created a list of the five best website monitoring services you can find. So, read on to find the one that best suits your needs. 

1. Wachete

Offers a wide variety of features 

Extremely affordable  

Free service only checks every 24 hours  

One of our pet peeves when browsing for meta web services 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 2018-friendly package. Not only will it monitor public-facing websites for any changes, but it will also keep an eye on website status, dynamic and javascript-powered pages and will even monitor password-protected pages. 

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 this information 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.    

2. Webmon

Specialized tool 

Cheap to start  

No free option  

One of the most important things to keep an eye on when you’re a web admin is the actual status of your website. If your website goes down, you’re not earning income – it’s that simple. Luckily, you don’t have to hire somebody to sit at a computer refreshing your page over and over again to make sure there’s no downtime. You can pay Webmon to do it instead. 

Now, unlike a lot of other services, Webmon won’t alert you when there’s a change in the actual content of your page, but it will send you metrics measuring your sites performance and status. And, as a bonus, it will run checks every 30 seconds, so you can rest easy knowing that if your website runs into any issues – you’ll be notified immediately so that you can fix it as soon as possible. 

The only negative thing we have to say about this service is that there isn’t a free option, but since this is such a specialized tool – it probably doesn’t really matter much.

3. Changetower

Extremely feature-rich 

Affordable  

Free version not very useful  

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 extremely useful in the fast-paced world we’re living in – once you start paying even $9 (£6.70) a month you’ll be able to keep up-to-date with any changes that your target website makes.

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 detailed change 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.

Web admins will also find Changetower useful, as it will monitor any HTML code or images on the site, and notify you if anything breaks. It will also notify you if your page goes down. 

4. Distill.io

Flexible pricing 

Local monitoring  

Not the most user-friendly  

Sometimes you just need raw power to get the job done – sometimes you need Distill.io. Distill is one of the most flexible website monitoring services available right now because it allows its users to do anything they need to do – even run monitors locally. 

Now, while the functionality that Distill offers isn’t dramatically different from its competition, the difference that it does offer is pretty major. By allowing any user to use a browser extension to monitor websites for free, without placing any kind of limit on it, this may just be the most affordable way to monitor websites. In fact, if we were going to recommend a service to a consumer who just wants to watch a few retail websites – we’d recommend Distill.io. 

However, because Distill hands the tools off to the (free) user, it requires them to be able to run it on their own, and if you’re not tech savvy, we’d recommend going elsewhere. It can get complicated, and can potentially take up a lot of resources if you’re tracking multiple websites. 

5. Versionista

Extremely customizable 

Powerful  

Very expensive  

In 2018, the political landscape is a little bit crazy, and a ton of information is flying around at all times. Luckily, one of the best website monitoring services is targeted directly to politicians. And, it’s actually pretty useful to anyone running a campaign – it allows users to crawl for any information relevant to their campaigns.

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.

However, the achilles heel of this software is its pricing. Now, we understand that since this is aimed at political campaigns, they can charge a bit more than the competition – but a starting price of $99 (£74) a month is a bit steep for smaller campaigns. Especially when the same functionality can be had from some of the other entries on this list. But, if you can afford it, specialized tools are generally the best way to go.