Remote desktop software provides an instant gateway between you, your location, and whatever computers you want access to in a pinch -- whether there’s a file or two you want to pull up remotely, or perhaps you’re quarantining at home and need access to your work PC to kickstart your daily workflow. 

Whatever the reason, you’ll want to use remote desktop software that authentically replicates the user experience of whichever devices you want to access on-th-ego. You’ll also want to make sure that the software you choose offers security features like end-to-end encryption, two-factor authentication when logging in, as well as 24/7 support.

• Interested in IDrive Remote Desktop? Check out the website here

One such remote access tool is Remote Desktop, a Windows-only desktop client offered through IDrive. We spent some time with this great software and have plenty to say about our own experience. 

• Also check out our roundup of the best help desk software

Features and user experience

It’s clear right off the bat that Remote Desktop aims to be one of the most intuitive remote desktop clients on the market. The key services on offer are bountifull, so it’s worth it to start with the basics. 

Like many competitive remote desktop clients, Remote Desktop relies on two major downloads to kick things off - a remote desktop agent to be installed on the computer(s) you wish to access, and a remote desktop viewer for the devices you’ll be using to tap into your remote PC. Do keep in mind that the desktop agent is only compatible with Windows-based computers. That being said, you can use both PCs and Mac computers to pull up your remote PC. 

Once your remote session goes live, you’ll have plenty of tools at your disposal. For starters, you’ll be able to quickly transfer files between the agent-hosted device and whatever hardware you’re using for remote viewing. This can be anything from images and documents to music and video files. Additionally, you’ll also be able to launch software that’s installed on your agent PC from your viewing device, even if some of your agent computer’s programs are Windows-only applications.

On top of that, let’s say you have accessories like printers, video-capture devices, and specific drivers installed on your agent PC. Yes, you guessed it - you’ll be able to tap into these ancillary devices from your remote viewer, too.

If you plan on using your Remote Desktop membership for business purposes, whether for individual needs or team-based workflows, you’ll be glad to know that the remote agent allows you to set up multiple users for one account. Once you’ve added one or more additional users, the agent software lets you choose what devices your teammates can tap into. And with the built-in activity log, you’ll be able to see when your companions are logged in and what applications they’re using on the agent-PC. 

Privacy and security

On top of its feature-rich palette of access tools, we love that Remote Desktop prioritizes safety for your every remote session, for both the agent and view-only computer(s). Protection starts the moment you log into the agent PC from a new device, where you’ll be required to authorize the remote-viewer as a trusted device for your Remote Desktop subscription. Only authorized computers will be able to interact with the host PC. 

Furthermore, two-factor authentication (2FA) adds another buffer between you and the host PC by requiring you to input your email address to log into your Remote Desktop account. Once a connection is established, rest assured that Remote Desktop cares just as much about the hardware-handshake. 

Employing end-to-end encryption, each session is TLS and 256-bit AES encrypted. And when it comes to working with data you want to keep under lock-and-key, you’ll be able to turn on a Lock Screen from your view-device, keeping your most vital info safe and secure.

Plans and pricing

Remote Desktop subscriptions run $9.95/month. While you can add as many agent-computers as you want to your account, do be aware that you’ll need to pay the $9.95 for every PC you want remote access to. 

If you want to try out Remote Desktop, the company offers a seven-day free trial that grants you access to every tool you would normally be able to use under a fully-paid subscription.

The competition

There are numerous remote software packages available, giving Remote Desktop a decent amount of competition. RemotePC is one of our favorite remote desktop suites, offering customizable pricing options that cover at least two computers. RemotePC operates smoothly, offers multiple ways to connect with your hardware (including a mobile app), as well as top-notch encryption and security.

Zoho Assist is another big name in the remote desktop marketplace, offering some of the most competitive prices around, a grand suite of features, solid performance, and plenty of other add-ons. The only downfall is that the standard plan doesn’t come with mobile app support. That being said, Remote Desktop is browser-based only, with not even a paywall to break to get you into a mobile app.

Final verdict

In our opinion, Remote Desktop provides all the necessities for a well-balanced remote desktop suite experience. While it’s a bit limiting to only be able to install the agent on Windows machines, being able to access your Windows content through Mac and Linux hardware (and as smoothly as Remote Desktop does so) helps to soften the blow.

If we had to zero in on a target group, we would recommend Remote Desktop to the Windows users of the world that have never used a remote-access platform before. It gives you everything you need (and more) to get a taste for what remote agents can do. Once you’ve been using it for a while though, you may have the itch to switch to another remote package with more pricing options and multi-OS support.

• We've also featured the best remote desktop software

Created by the Tor Project in 2008, the Tor Browser is a rather unique browser that was established with the intent to help people use the internet anonymously. This is quite evident through its features that resemble VPNs.

Tor, an acronym for The Onion Router, is a software that allows you to browse the web anonymously. Its goal is to prevent people from learning your location or tracking your browsing behavior.

From IP masking to triple-layer encryption, Tor will keep your online business private and lock out nosy intruders such as trackers and malware.

The Tor Browser rolls the benefits of Tor into a web browser. Our review today covers every detail of the browser, including its features, ease of use, privacy, and much more. Read on to know more about its top competitors and how different Tor is from them so that you can make the right choice.

Tor Browser: Features

The Tor Browser is available for all popular desktop operating systems including Windows, Linux, and macOS. You can also use it on your Android device, but not on iOS.

Under normal circumstances, when you visit a website, your computer establishes a direct connection between your computer and the website. The website knows your IP address and where you are coming from and your ISP (or malicious entities) knows which websites you are visiting.

Tor thwarts their surveillance by creating a network of relay nodes across the internet. When you visit a website using Tor, the data to and from your computer is bounced around these nodes before ending up at the intended website. This masks your origins from the website and no one knows where the network traffic from your computer is headed.

By default, the Tor Browser protects your security by encrypting your browsing data three times as it passes over the Tor network. You can also use the browser to disable certain web features, such as JavaScript, that nefarious users can exploit to compromise your security and anonymity.

On top of that, the Tor Browser isolates each website you visit so third-party trackers and ads can't follow you. It also thwarts any attempts to fingerprint you by making all its users look the same. The browser will also delete any cookies and your browsing history automatically when you're done browsing.

Apart from Tor, no other browser gives you access to locked or geo-restricted content, straight out of the box. This feature works a lot like VPNs. Since using the browser masks your location and IP, the target website cannot recognize that your request is coming from a banned location, and you get to access their content. On the flip side, if the ban is imposed by your home network, Tor will help you bypass that as well and access whatever content you need.

Tor Browser: Privacy

The Tor browser uses three security levels to safeguard your privacy.

It is safe to use on most device types, such as Androids and macOS, and in most cases, it does fairly well in terms of privacy.

For starters, it passes your web traffic through three layers of encryption so that no online tracker can monitor your activity or collect your data. On top of that, it's also one of the few browsers that hide your IP address by default, making it harder for spammers to target you.

The browser enables the NoScript extension by default, which blocks active content, like WebGL, Flash, Java applets, and such) for all websites until you explicitly allow it from trusted sites.

It’ll also thwart any fingerprinting attempts, and will also zap cookies automatically when you close the browser. And unlike many of its peers, it uses the privacy-respecting DuckDuckGo search engine by default.

Tor Browser: Ease of use

Tor browser is relatively easy to use. On launch, you’ll first have to ask the browser to connect to the Tor network. You can do this manually, or toggle the option on the main page to do this automatically every time you launch the browser.

The interface is quite simple, with a minimal menu and options, so you don't have to spend too much time figuring out the setup.

The layout is quite standard with no fancy dashboard. You get the address bar and tabs on the top margin of the screen. On the left side of the address bar, you’ll find the options to control navigation, where you can choose whether to load a page or go back to the previous one.

On the right side of the address bar, you’ll get buttons to switch the security level, and to get a new identity. When you click the New Identity button, the browser will restart and establish new Tor circuits for all connections. This helps ensure that subsequent browsing activity cannot be linked to what you were doing before.

Tor Browser: Competitors

Tor is unique in what it does and how it does it. While you could use the Incognito mode that's available in Google Chrome, the Private Browsing in Mozilla Firefox or the InPrivate mode in Microsoft Edge, to stop other people who share your computer from seeing your browsing history, they won't prevent your ISP from monitoring the sites you're visiting.

Its closest competitors are free VPN equipped browsers like Opera and Edge.

While Chrome has the biggest market share in the industry, it cannot beat Tor in security and user privacy.

In fact, Chrome’s quite infamous for its poor user privacy measure. The browser has also been involved in many consumer privacy rights lawsuits and is known to sell user data.

Tor, on the other hand, goes out of its way to keep all your online sessions secure and even brought in VPN-like features to keep away hackers, trackers, and malware. For example, it helps you hide your location and contact details so that any unauthorized party can neither spam you nor impersonate you.

The only downside to using Tor is that websites load slower than usual as the data to and from the website passes through so many relay nodes in the middle.

Tor Browser: Final verdict

Tor is a great browser for those who take web security and data privacy very seriously. It's one of the few well-known browsers to use multiple encryption levels to filter your online traffic and prevent trackers and malware from reaching your system.

It's also quite simple to use, lightweight, and goes easy on your battery. What’s more, it helps you bypass the site blocks imposed by your home network so that you can freely browse any content you want. In short, it's the finest example of simplicity meeting power — check it out for a taste of its full potential.

We've listed the best VPN service.

KashFlow, which is now part of the IRIS Software group, is moving with the times and has recently announced the launch of a new VAT Dashboard. As is the case with many accounting software packages that are aimed at the UK market, it’s vital to be compliant with the government’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) vision, which is now becoming a reality. So KashFlow’s software update is certainly timely. As always, KashFlow still prides itself on keeping things simple and that’s good news when you’re dealing with your accounts and anything tax-related. 

• Want to try Kashflow? Check out the website here

This cloud-based software solution can be used from anywhere and at any time, just as long as you can get connected. Launched back in 2005 focuses its online accounting software on small business owners and is now part of IRIS software. Today, KashFlow comes armed with a full suite of tools, which can not only let you tackle your accounting chores, but can also be used to take on payroll and HR duties too. There’s a lot inside KashFlow, but against that you could find yourself a little overwhelmed by it’s bulky feature set.

Other packages in this software area include QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Business Cloud Accounting, Kashoo and Zoho Books.

Pricing

Currently, KashFlow is available in three different package variants that come with the benefit of no annual contract and it’s possible to cancel at any time too. The Starter package costs £8 a month plus VAT and is aimed at sole traders, contractors and small businesses. You can send unlimited quotes and 10 invoices, along with reconciling 25 bank transactions. Although it’s only a single user account it works with bank feeds, has a mobile app along with a customizable dashboard. 

The Business edition is £16.50 per month plus VAT and is aimed at growing businesses and limited companies. This has the benefit of allowing unlimited quotes and invoices, plus you can reconcile unlimited bank transactions. It’s multi-user and lets you manage and submit VAT returns online. 

Finally, KashFlow has its Business and Payroll package, which costs £22.50 per month plus VAT, which has all of the aforementioned features along with added payroll functionality. At the time of writing KashFlow also had more competitive pricing based on an Annual payment plan, rather than the monthly costings shown above. If you’re happy to commit then that might offer savings.

Features

KashFlow is aimed primarily at UK users, and as a result comes with lots of functionality aimed specifically at small business owners with VAT to deal with as part of their obligations. Recent obvious improvements include the colour coding to highlight the status of different VAT returns and there is better navigation too. This is most notable thanks to the new VAT dashboard, but elsewhere the progress bar idea makes keeping tabs of where you are much easier. 

In addition, KashFlow also comes with a raft of tools that can handle expenses, contact management, fixed asset management as well as being able to administer payroll and HR. The latter two features can be integrated using KashFlow’s modular setup, which makes it a very versatile package. 

Central to your workflow is the Dashboard and supporting menu system, which seems to feature just about anything you could ever need during the course of any given business year. Along with the new VAT dashboard there’s another recent addition to the KashFlow feature list, one which allows you to integrate your Square payments into the system. KashFlow says that you currently get your first £1000 of card transactions and a Square Reader for free.

Performance

KashFlow comes with a lot of functionality built into it, particularly now that the VAT dashboard has been added. This feature allows firms to easily see and also separate all their MTD VAT return clients from non-MTD-clients. That’s a great practical touch, but there is also the ability to submit multiple VAT returns at once. These are great tools to aid performance. 

However, while the cloud-based nature of the software service is impressive it does tend to get hampered by a less-than-intuitive design. The rather clunky navigation tends to slow up progress, as does the need to familiarize yourself with all of the various sections. Things do improve as you become more acquainted with its many different levels though but KashFlow does tend to look more promising than it actually is during use.

Ease of use

The latest incarnation of KashFlow shows numerous improvements that help with ease of use, especially with the likes of the VAT dashboard and its ability to send clients correspondence when a return has been submitted on their behalf. This is a great time-saver even for seasoned professionals. 

That said, while KashFlow shouldn't put off users who are less familiar with the working of accountancy software and services, it does tend to take a while to become familiar with the many different faces of the interface. We found that taking a tour of the knowledge base makes a lot of sense in terms of familiarizing yourself with functions. 

However, the knowledge base in itself is quite a read, which means that becoming familiar with all of the features inside KashFlow takes time. Nevertheless, if you’re willing to put in the work then the menu system does eventually start to make sense. Be prepared to spend more time drilling down through the hierarchy of those menus though.

Support

While KashFlow does have a dedicated support infrastructure the feedback it seems to attract is mixed. To get started, if you have a fairly basic query, you have to head towards the aforementioned KashFlow knowledge base, which is a hub that does offer a wealth of information on all of the main features and functions. 

From there, you'll find there’s also a support email address, while UK users can get to speak to someone on the phone from within their account, which could be particularly useful if you’re using one of the more complex KashFlow interface options. KashFlow does also have training videos available, but these are charged as extras.

Final verdict

KashFlow really benefits from the latest tweaks to its interface and additional features that revolve around the VAT dashboard. Other new features like the colour coding and improved sorting capabilities make for a much better user experience. 

So there’s no doubt that KashFlow packs a lot into this cloud-based range of options. While the service is available in the US and elsewhere, it feels like it has a more UK-centric outlook, which is something underlined by its strong emphasis on dealing with VAT. With a lot of features to contend with the slight downside to KashFlow is its rather clunky user interface, which can be tricky to operate especially if you're a newcomer to its inner workings. 

The user experience is saved thanks to a decent main dashboard, which gets you to where you want to go, but once you’re in the menu system KashFlow can occasionally become troublesome. Nevertheless, KashFlow is packed to the hilt with features, many of which come well suited to growing small businesses. Used in its most basic edition, however, KashFlow is also great for freelancers and sole traders.

• We've also highlighted the best tax software  

In times like these, digital presence is key to any business’s success. The thought of being unnecessarily offline is daunting, as that would mean reducing your business’s visibility and potential revenue. However, running a website involves various complex components, meanings things can go haywire at times. As per an ITIC study, 98% of organizations say that even an hour of downtime can cost them up to $100,000.

This is where website change monitoring software like Site24x7 come in handy. It's a robust solution that tracks your website components and reports to you if there are any unexpected downtimes. In addition to testing various website components, you can also harness real user website interaction data to identify pain points and customer trends.

Read on as we’ll explore Site24x7 in more detail in this article, discussing its best features, pricing, interface, and more.

• Interested in Site24x7? Check out the website here

Site24x7: Plans and pricing

Site24x7 offers four plans designed for various business sizes. Startups and small businesses can opt for its Web Uptime plan at $9/month. Such a low starting price makes Site24x7 one of the cheapest options in the industry. This plan comes with 25 basic monitors with a check frequency of 1 minute.

A headline feature is that right from the first plan you can choose up to 8 locations to monitor your website – from a selection of 130+ locations worldwide. There are also 3 basic status pages and decent customer support (email and forum).

If this isn’t enough, you can switch to the Pro plan made for SMBs. That's priced at $35/month and comes with 40 basic monitors, 3 synthetic transaction monitors, 5 network monitoring interfaces, and 2 netflow analyzer interfaces.

This is also Site24x7’s first plan that offers Real User Monitoring (RUM) with 500K pageviews and 5 sites. You also get a lot of third-party integrations that allow you to build custom workflows. Chat and phone support is also available from this plan onwards.

All in all, this looks like an ideal plan for most businesses thanks to its excellent value for money. After all, it has all the features Site24x7 has to offer. However, a larger business may need to switch to the Classic plan at $89/month. This one comes with 100 basic monitors and 5 transaction checks, as well as with 1M RUM pageviews.

A good thing about Site24x7 is that you can buy a lot of add-ons, meaning you won’t have to switch to a higher plan just for more threshold limits.

For example, if you’re satisfied with the Pro plan but only need additional monitors, you can simply buy 50 add-on monitors for $18/month instead of switching to the Classic plan. Similar add-ons are available for RUM data points, advanced monitors, and so on.

Additionally, Site24x7 also offers a completely free plan with 5 basic monitors and 3 location checks. However, this plan is very limited and can only be used to test the platform’s interface and efficiency before purchasing a paid plan.

Site24x7: Features

Site24x7’s comprehensive uptime monitoring checks allow you to track the load times of your web pages from as many as 8 locations at the same time. Moreover, you can choose from over 130 global locations to run these tests from.

Unlike a majority of website monitoring tools, Site24x7 comes with defacement monitoring. Defacement refers to unauthorized hacks on your website, which can lead to outages and damaged reputations.

The platform uses a baseline document object model (DOM) mechanism during a standard check for website components like images, scripts, anchors, links, text, etc. Current DOMs are continuously matched against previous ones to identify any unauthorized changes.

Besides this, Site24x7 also runs SSL/TLS certificate expiration checks and sends you notifications well before they expire.

We found the platform’s Real User Monitoring (RUM) functions to be quite comprehensive, too. It uses real data endpoints to identify load times of various components, like CSS, scripts, and images, from different domains (first-party, third-party, and CDN networks) and summarizes the impact of each component on overall response times.

Administrators can use core web vitals and secondary metrics, as well as detailed session replays to gain more insights into how real users interact with the webpages. Site24x7’s RUM also helps identify any JavaScript code errors with details on the type of error, error message, and the exact URL, which helps in quick resolution.

Once you’ve identified key website components, you can subject them to synthetic tests with Site24x7. You can record key business transactions like web checkouts, payment pages, or button clicks with the platform’s simple web recorder and then check them with synthetic traffic.

You can also use JSONPath or XPath assertions to monitor API integrations on your website to check if they’re operational or not. For example, you can set up an API check to monitor the payment page on your e-commerce website.

Beyond digital experience monitoring, Site24x7 also offers functions like network monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and application performance monitoring, each of which will cost you extra.

Site24x7 also has the largest collection of free tools we’ve seen. You get 100+ tools you can use without having to pay a single cent to blacklist checks, monitor SSL certificates, conduct DNS analysis, and monitor aspects like website uptime. The assortment of tools also include an SLA uptime calculator and a host of converter and formatter tools.

Site24x7: Interface and in use

Site24x7’s interface is pretty clean and information loaded. You’ll see a quick summary of all your website checks at the top which are color-coded for easy identification. The platform also allows you to build custom dashboards to view key metrics from every tier of your infrastructure.

There are several pre-built reports on availability, performance, SLAs, global benchmarks, and more. You can even customize and schedule reports as per your needs. Site24x7 integrates with a lot of incident management platforms, which helps you quickly communicate outages and resolve them in almost no time at all.

There are also handy mobile apps for iOS and Android, meaning you can keep an eye on your websites on the go and ensure you do not miss any critical updates. These apps are also easy to use and set up, just like the web version of the platform.

Overall, Site24x7 is beginner-friendly and you can get a hang of it in less than a day, making it a good choice even for non-tech-savvy teams.

Site24x7: Support

Site24x7 offers comprehensive support with dedicated emails for support and sales inquiries. Depending on the plan you’re on, you get access to either basic or premium support. Basic support included email and forum access, whereas premium comes with phone and chat support on top of the previous two.

Apart from this, you get access to Site24x7’s rich collection of help documents, knowledge base, how-to’s, and training videos, so you don't have to worry about any common queries. There’s also a very active community space where you can post your questions and get them answered by fellow Site24x7 users.

Site24x7: The competition

Although Site24x7 is undoubtedly a great monitoring solution for every business need, it doesn't hurt to look at the alternatives.

Uptime.com is an enterprise-level monitoring tool ideal for large businesses. In addition to synthetic and RUM tests, you can even run group and cloud status checks. It also offers more than 20 types of basic monitors, which is more than what you get with Site24x7.

Plus, you can run checks from as many as 15 global locations simultaneously and harness 1.5M+ RUM data points for insightful user data. It also supports private location checks and internal status pages for seamless intra-team communications. The only downside is that it can be a bit expensive.

For a more affordable option, try Datadog. It offers feature-specific plans ideal for small businesses with limited needs. For instance, its RUM plan with session replays costs just $1.80/month for 1,000 sessions.

Datadog also offers a very handy Mobile Testing feature that lets you assess your app's stability, identify app crashes, and assist in resolving any glitches. Plus, it has the largest collection of third-party integrations we’ve seen, supporting 800+ applications for seamless workflows and notifications.

Site24x7: Final verdict

Site24x7 is a complete website monitoring solution that allows you to monitor various components of your website, such as APIs, load speeds, and overall uptime. Plus, the platform’s baseline document object model (DOM) mechanism detects any unauthorized changes or hacks before it gets out of hand.

We also liked its dashboards, which are fully customizable and laced with various graphs and charts. Site24x7 is also one of the few monitoring platforms that offer a plethora of free tools, allowing you to monitor websites, networks, and servers.

Paying users will find Site24x7 quite affordable, as plans start from just $9/month. Moreover, you can purchase a lot of add-ons to increase monitoring limits. To top it all off, you get a 30-day free trial, too.

• We've also featured the best webpage change monitoring software

FAQs

Content monitoring has risen in popularity in recent times - for both personal and business use. You may want to know when your favorite product is back in stock or when your job listing is updated. Similarly, businesses need a solution to monitor their competitors’ websites and execute compliance monitoring. Enter content monitoring tools like Visualping.

Visualping tracks the URLs you want and notifies you of any changes in the webpages. You even have the option to select a specific area to be tracked on the page. To top it all, there are AI features that summarize and analyze the changes for you, saving you a ton of time.

Read on as we explore Visualping, one of the best in the business, in more detail. We'll discuss its best features, pricing, interface, and customer support, as well as compare it with some of its top rivals.

• Interested in Visualping? Check out the website here

Visualping: Plans and pricing

Visualping offers two pricing tiers: Personal and Business. The Personal plan priced at $50 per month can support up to 10K checks in a month limited to a maximum of 200 pages. However, there are cheaper plans, too. For instance, if you only want 1K monthly checks of 25 pages, you’ll have to shell out just $10/month.

There’s also a free Personal plan that lets you run 150 checks a month limited to 5 pages – good enough for personal needs.

The Business plans start at $100/month and allow up to 20K checks of around 500 pages. You can scale all the way up to the $250/month plan that offers 50K checks covering 1,500 pages in a month.

Business plans also come with a host of features not offered on the Personal plans. For instance, you can get alerts via Slack, Teams, and Google Sheets. However, on the Personal plan, messages are your only alert option. Likewise, you can add up to 5 users on the Business plans as compared to just 1 on Personal.

Visualping: Features

Visualping offers a ton of handy features that make content monitoring easy. For starters, it's one of the few platforms that use AI to detect website changes. The Visualping AI saves you a ton of time through summaries, smart alerts, and mind reader features.

You can read AI-generated summaries of all the changes observed instead of skimming through them manually. The platform uses advanced AI algorithms to understand the context of the webpage. This helps to avoid meaningless changes and content shifts and generates alerts only based on contextual changes.

Visualping also offers a lot of integrations so that you can build your own business workflows. For instance, you can connect Visualping with Slack so that you don’t have to keep returning to Visualping every time there’s an alert - you can get them on Slack itself. The same goes for Microsoft Teams, Discord, and Google Sheets as well.

Plus, if you do not find an integration for your needs, you can use the Visualping API to build a custom integration for your business.

Now, if you’re a website owner, you also have the option of adding a Visualping button on your webpage to notify your users of crucial changes. This can come in pretty handy for small businesses that can notify users of price drops or sale offers. Similarly, government bodies, universities, and corporations can use it to intimate users regarding important notification uploads.

All Business accounts have a central location called Workspace where you can invite your team members to manage the changes. Teams can use labels, folders, and various filtering options to organize the observed changes.

However, Workspaces need to be purchased separately – you can do so for a specific project, team, or client. Although a handy feature for large businesses, it can quickly add up to your total subscription cost.

Visualping: Interface and in use

Visualping is extremely easy to use – even beginners can track websites effortlessly. You only have to enter the URL of the website and select a specific area on the webpage you want to track.

The dashboard is clean and easy to understand. You can see all your active jobs on the left side and the changes detected on the right. To make it easier for you, there’s a Visualping Chrome extension, which you can add to your browser. This way, you won’t have to manually add links on the dashboard – simply deploy the extension on the webpage you want to monitor.

Visualping: Support

Visualping's support options are minimal. You only get basic email support irrespective of the plan you're on – dedicated support, however, is available on the Business plans, but at an extra cost.

The Basic Support add-on costs a whopping $600/year, followed by the Advanced plan at $1,200/year and the Dedicated Support at $3,000/year. That's borderline nerve-wracking.

However, paid support executives take care of everything for you – from setting up your account to monitoring pages and guaranteed response times. Your own team can also benefit from dedicated training on how to get the best out of Visualping.

Although beneficial, the dedicated support can make your overall Visualping bundle very expensive, which may not be ideal for small businesses.

Visualping: The competition

Let's see how Visualping stacks up against the competition.

Distill.io is a more advanced and complicated content monitoring tool ideal for large businesses. You can define your tracking selections with CSS, XPATH, and regular expressions. Plus, you can even automate workflows with JavaScript.

Its free plan is also more generous than Visualping – you can run 1,000 monthly checks with 25 monitors. Even its most expensive plan costs $80/month, which is much cheaper than Visualping’s Business plans.

Change Tower is yet another affordable option starting at just $9/month for 1,500 checks. You even get 2 months free subscription with the annual plan. Users can check as many as 500 URLs with this plan without any daily check limits. Its Enterprise plan can run checks every 3 minutes and monitor 2,000+ dynamic URLs.

With that said Visualping's premium pricing is justified, seeing as it offers a handful of unique features. This includes its game-changing AI checker tool and a nifty Visualping button.

Visualping: Final verdict

Visualping is hands down one of the best content monitoring tools out there. One of the highlights is its ease of use; all you have to do is enter the target website's URL and select the area on the webpage you want to track.

Plus, it's one of the few monitoring tools that use AI to enhance monitoring results – you benefit from AI summarizing and analysis.

For businesses, Visualping offers a dedicated button to send content updates to their users. Plus, there are a lot of integrations with platforms like Slack, Teams, and Google Sheets. You can even make your custom alert software through the Visualping API.

Visualping also offers a free plan with 150 checks a month for up to 5 pages, which can be handy for personal and non-commercial use. Its paid plans start from $10/month and go all the way up to $250/month – you can pick one as per your needs.

All in all, Visualping is an excellent content monitoring tool good for both personal and business use. That said, it can be a touch expensive, especially if you wish to get the add-on for dedicated support.

FAQs

• Creating a new website? Check out our roundup of best website builders.

Versionista is one of the best website change monitoring software solutions on the market, allowing you to simply enter a site's link and find out all the changes that happen on it. You also have the option to choose which changes you want to be tracked and which you should ignore.

Its customizability is one of its biggest attractions. In addition to the plans, you can also customize how the crawling happens, when and how often, and whether they use a US-based IP address or a Europe- or Asia-based IP address to do the crawling.

Keep reading to explore Versionista in detail, including its features, detailed reports, pricing, and support, as well as how it stacks up against the competition.

• Also check out our complete list of the best website monitoring software

Versionista: Plans and pricing

Versionista hasn't listed its pricing on its site. But we did a little digging and found that its paid plans start at $99/month and go up to $379/month.

Other than this, you can reach out to the team, schedule a demo, and they will create a custom plan for you.

One good piece of news is that each paid plan comes with a free 7-day trial. So, if you feel a plan isn’t living up to your expectation, you have plenty of time to reconsider.

If you are on a small budget, you can also get started with their free forever plan, where you get 465 free monthly crawls, which is enough for personal needs.

Versionista: Features

Versionista’s core feature is that it monitors target websites or pages for changes and reports back to the customer. However, what makes it one of the best website change monitoring software is that it will create a detailed report on the changes that have been made.

Every subtle change will be recorded so that you don't miss out on anything. You will also get to know which part of the page has been modified. Plus, you can opt for a side-by-side comparison of the different versions to understand the changes better.

You’ll get these updates through email, whose frequency you can choose. Other than that, you can also opt to be instantly notified as soon as there’s a change so that you can take timely action.

Apart from change monitoring, you also get to extract all the links from a target page. If you want, you can start monitoring those, too, in just one click. This will save you a lot of time and will ensure that you don't miss out on any update related to your main target page.

One of our favorite things about Versionista is its customizability. You can configure everything as per your requirements. For example, if you want the email reports to be more frequent, you can change their frequency and time and also decide on exactly what they should contain.

Similarly, when it comes to crawling, you can rely on the tool’s algorithm to decide the best time to crawl, or you can do it yourself. Timing of crawl, frequency and location of crawl, what to look for and what to ignore – everything can be customized.

If you're managing a team, Versionista's robust team management features also come in handy. It lets you categorize the kind of content changes each team member is alerted about. For example, if you have an employee working on a client, XYZ, you can ensure that only those reports containing changes on the site about client XYZ will reach them.

Last but not least, Versionista is equally proficient in monitoring non-Latin text too, such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and more.

Versionista: Interface and in use

Versionista’s interface is very user-friendly. After a simple and guided set-up process, you get a dashboard where all the tracked pages/sites are listed on the left side and the count of how many changes took place in the different time intervals is listed on the top-right.

Once you open a tracked page, you get a more detailed overview. From there, you can also change the tracking settings, i.e., what type of content of the page is tracked and how often. Overall, it's simple, refreshing, and easy to navigate.

Versionista: Support

Versionista offers decent support. For starters, there’s a detailed tutorial page that contains guides on every issue that you might come across. Whether it's adding and managing additional accounts or using filters to narrow down your search, you will find in-depth guides on everything.

If you still need to reach out to the team, you can email them at support@versionista.com. You can expect a reply within 12 hours. What’s more, the replies are usually sent directly by the senior engineers. So basically, you are getting expert help every single time.

They also mentioned offering 24/7 support to Enterprise customers. If you are a new customer, you can also schedule a demo with them (you can choose your own date and time through the embedded meeting calendar), and they’ll guide you from there.

Versionista: The competition

While Versionista is indeed a great tool, it's not free of flaws. Two of its biggest competitors are Distill.io and Visualping.

Distill has a phenomenal free plan. You get access to 25 monitors that run 1000 checks per month, more than double what Versionista’s free plan offers. In addition to that, you can also add 2 devices (instead of one) and get email and phone notifications.

As for Visualping, it uses AI at every step so that you have a smoother experience. For example, the AI summarizes your reports, saving you a lot of time. It can also speed up setup by giving you suggestions.

You can also give feedback to the AI if you find any irrelevant alerts. In the future, all similar alerts will be blocked.

Versionista: Final verdict

Versionista is a great website monitoring tool. It's easy to use, and there are tons of customization options. Starting from the pricing to the crawl settings, everything can be tailored to fit your needs.

There’s also a decent free plan that provides 465 free crawls every month. It's not a lot but should be enough for a small business to get started. As for the rest of the pricing, you’ll have to reach out to the Versionista team.

We also loved its instant notifications that timely update you about all important changes. Plus, you have a lot of customization options. You can choose what to crawl at what time and tailor the reports content and frequency as per your needs. This is something team-centered businesses will love.

There are obviously a few flaws. For instance, there’s very little clarity about its customer support and offerings under different plans. If this is an issue for you, alternatives like Distill and Visualping are also good choices.

FAQs

• We've also featured the best webpage change monitoring software

Website monitoring has become an essential part of business strategies, be it for competition monitoring or compliance monitoring. Plus, it has several personal use cases as well. For instance, you may want to track your online job application or be the first one to know about ongoing sales on your favorite shoes. Enter Distill.io.

Distill is an easy-to-use and customizable website change monitoring tool that lets you get started for free. You can either monitor the entire webpage or choose a part of the page to keep an eye on. Plus, there are several methods for receiving notifications – SMS, emails, etc.

With more than 432K users and 99.99% standard cloud uptime, Distill.io has made a name for itself in the website monitoring field. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into this popular monitoring tool, discussing its features, pricing, and support options and comparing it with some of the other top names in the space.

• Also check out our complete list of the best website monitoring software

Distill.io: Plans and pricing

Getting started with Distill.io is absolutely free, thanks to its generous $0 plan. You can set up 25 monitors (5 in the cloud) with 1,000 checks in a month. Plus, you get 100 push alerts and the ability to run the free plan on 2 devices, making it good enough for personal uses.

You can upgrade to a paid plan at just $12/month, which comes with 30,000 monthly checks and 50 monitors. You also get 100 SMS notifications here, as well as unlimited push alerts and 2,000 email alerts. Unlike the free plan, you can check up to 10 version histories with this plan, which allows you to track all past changes.

If this plan doesn’t meet your requirements, you can move to the Professional plan at $28/month. Curated for mid-sized to large businesses, you can set up 150 monitors here and run as many as 100,000 monthly checks. You also get unlimited email alerts.

The last plan is the Flexi plan, starting from $80/month. With 200,000+ monthly checks and 500+ monitors, this plan is ideal for large businesses.

Overall, we found Distill.io more affordable than the likes of Visualping and Versionista, making it one of the best website change monitoring solutions for those on a budget.

Distill.io: Features

The core feature of Distill is website monitoring, and we love the various tracking options it offers. There's a visual selector where you can choose the exact elements on the page you want to track. There are also options to refine your selections with CSS, XPATH, and regular expressions.

Distill also lets you choose whether you want to run the scan on the cloud or on your local monitor. Cloud scans render updates 24/7, while you can run scans on your local monitor at intervals as low as 5 seconds.

Now, a lot of times, tracking a page isn’t as straightforward. Some pages do not display content unless you perform an action. This could be clicking a button, scrolling, filling out a form, setting up a filter, or simply logging in.

These actions change the view of the page, but the URL remains the same. Distillo solves this issue through macros, which record a sequence of actions on a webpage. Simply paste the URL of the webpage on the Macro section of your Distill dashboard.

The webpage will load within Distill itself, after which you’d need to perform and record the desired set of actions. Once done, save the macro, return to the main dashboard, and add a monitor. You can edit, add, or delete the steps later on too.

You can get alerts through various modes with Distill – phone push notifications, email alerts, and SMS notifications. However, Distill doesn’t stop here. It even allows you to customize these notifications based on various conditions.

For example, if you’re tracking the price of your favorite shoes, a small $2 drop in price may not be significant. You wouldn’t want to be bombarded with notifications that do not serve your purpose.

With Distill, you can set an alert when the price falls by, let’s say, $50. Now, instead of getting alerts for any price change, you will only be sent a notification if the price is reduced by $50. This helps you filter out a lot of clutter and only render useful and actionable information.

Distill.io: Interface and in use

We found Distill.io easy to use and navigate. The dashboard is clutter-free, as all the actions can be performed from a single hamburger icon on the ‘Watchlist’ tab.

All you have to do is paste the link of the page you want to track and choose whether you want to monitor parts of the page or the entire page.

Next, you’ll see an ‘Options – Add Monitor’ screen where you can customize your search – rename the monitor, select the device, choose an interval, and so on. Once done, click ‘Save’ and you’re done.

Distill also offers apps for both Android and iOS. This makes it easy to track websites on the go – you don’t have to sit in front of your desktop all day. You can even add browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera.

Overall, Distill.io is beginner-friendly and easy to get a hang of.

Distill.io: Support

Distill offers a dedicated forum where you can post any queries you might have. The forum is pretty active and divided into various categories. Chances are you wouldn’t need to punch in your query, as you’ll already find a rich collection of common queries.

Besides this, there are a lot of blogs and ‘how to’ articles that help you learn the ropes of the platform.

If you need further assistance, you can drop the Distill team an email at support@distill.io. Paid customers can expect a response within the next business day.

We would have loved to see support options via call or live chat too. That said, the email support should get the job done.

Distill.io: The competition

Distill is certainly one of the best website monitoring tools. However, it isn’t your only option. Here are some alternatives you can look at.

Visualping is one of the few website monitoring tools that use AI for content change detection. This saves you a lot of time as you can access ready-made summaries and analysis of key changes.

Its AI algorithm understands the context of the monitored webpage and only generates alerts in case of contextual changes and ignores content shifts. It is ideal for large businesses that need to monitor 1,000+ pages in a month. That said, it can be a bit expensive, with business plans starting from $100/month.

If you’re looking for a more customizable solution, you can consider Versionista. You can choose aspects like the time and location of the crawl along with the frequency. You can even predefine what the algorithm should exactly look for and what it can ignore. The frequency of reports can also be customized.

Distill.io: Final verdict

Distill.io is an excellent website monitoring tool ideal for small and large businesses alike. The paid plans start at just $12/month with 50 monitors and 30,000 checks in a month – more than enough for any mid-sized business.

Plus, we loved the number of notification options you get. You can choose to be notified through email, SMS, or phone push notifications. Distill also offers the option to add conditions to these notifications, and you’ll only be sent an alert if the condition is met.

Plus, Distill simplifies setting up complex monitors by recording macros. These come in handy when the website to be tracked requires users to perform certain actions to display the content.

It also has a generous free plan where you can run 1,000 free monthly checks, which is enough for personal needs. Overall, Distill is easy to use, isn’t as expensive as some other website monitors, and offers advanced features.

FAQs

• We've also featured the best webpage change monitoring software

Website content monitoring is essential for businesses, especially those that rely heavily on their online presence. For instance, you may want to keep an eye on your competitor’s websites, check for news and updates, and monitor compliance-related websites.

ChangeTower is a cloud-based website content monitoring platform that helps you monitor third-party sites. Founded in 2016, it's the go-to monitoring solution for many big brands such as KPMG, Disney, IBM, The Wall Street Journal, etc.

Using it is pretty easy, too. You can just enter the URL of the page that you want to track, and it will notify you about every small change that takes place henceforth. Each change notification is supported by a snapshot of the same, which you can archive in your account for up to 12 months.

Read till the end to know everything about ChangeTower, including its best features, pricing, and interface, as well as how it compares to the rest of the competition.

• Also check out our complete list of the best website monitoring software

ChangeTower: Plans and pricing

ChangeTower has three plans: two paid and one completely free. The free plan is ideal for those who are just getting started. It allows you to monitor up to 3 URLs with 6 daily checks. What's more, you can archive up to one month of data.

The first paid subscription is the Power User plan, starting at $9/month (billed monthly). Under this, you get tracking for 500 URLs, 1,500 checks per month, Zapier integration, and up to 3 months of content archive. Additionally, you get to simulate user actions, monitor websites that require a login, and enjoy full-page visual snapshots.

The best part is this is a flexible plan. This means you can change the number of monthly checks, the number of users, and the number of months your data is archived. All these things are customizable, and your plan's price will change accordingly.

Next is the Enterprise plan, which starts at $299/month (billed monthly). Here you can monitor a page every three minutes, track over 2000 URLs, monitor text-based files and PDFs, receive advanced support and setup assistance, and much more.

Plus, you get 1 Enterprise seat that allows you to create your own monitors, view the comments and notifications for each of them, and then share them with your colleagues. We found this plan ideal for large businesses with constant monitoring needs.

It's worth noting that the prices mentioned above are for monthly billing. If you choose the annual plan, you get a two-month subscription for free. For instance, the Power User plan will cost you $90 for the whole year.

ChangeTower: Features

ChangeTower’s core feature is very simple – it tracks a given URL and notifies you about the changes on it. The change can range from textual and image changes to code changes. Text-based pages such as .CSS, .txt, and .js and PDFs can also be monitored.

You can decide what kind of changes you want to be notified about from the settings page and set up unlimited conditional alerts. For instance, you can choose to be notified only when certain keywords appear in the changes.

You can also add various user actions. For instance, if the website you want to monitor requires a few clicks before displaying the content, you can configure ChangeTower to perform it before running the checks.

We also liked ChangeTower’s collaboration tools. For instance, if multiple people from your team are using this platform, you can choose who gets notified about the changes and who doesn't. They will have read-only access and won't be able to make any changes to the monitor. This is ideal for businesses that have defined teams with assigned roles.

All the update reports you get will be stored in ChangeTower’s own archive. Depending on the plan you choose, you can archive a report for up to 12 months. This helps you pin down the exact time when the changes took place.

To further simplify managing updates, ChangeTower lets you assign tags and categorize them accordingly. There’s also a one-week timeline on the dashboard in case you want to filter the updated reports as per date.

If its native features are falling short, you can always integrate your account with Zapier to set up a seamless workflow.

ChangeTower’s Domain Scanner is a lifesaver for large organizations that need to ensure complete coverage of a domain. It scans an entire domain to discover any newly published URLs and sets up monitors on them. This way, you don’t have to manually look for new pages on domains you already track.

Going a step ahead, there’s also a new KW Discovery tool that actually extracts & examines the content of each page it discovers. It can come in handy when you’re hunting for specific keywords or phrases. ChangeTower will not only identify new URLs but also generate reports of pages containing these keywords.

ChangeTower: Interface and in use

The interface of ChangeTower is extremely simple and beginner-friendly. Once you create an account (which only takes a minute, by the way), you’ll be directly led to your all-in-one dashboard.

You get various options while adding a monitor: single URL, multiple URLs, or entire domain. This is further drilled down into categories like visual monitor, SEO monitor, HTML monitor, and so on.

On the left side of the dashboard, you’ll see a menu where you can choose between different options such as Monitors, Recent Notifications, Settings, Billing, and more.

In the center, you’ll have an overview of all your active and paused monitors, notifications, and a timeline of the past week.

Here you’ll also find a filter menu where you can assign tags such as “important” and “reviewed” to different updates and organize them accordingly.

Overall, the interface is simple, compact, and navigable—everything you need in monitoring software. There’s also an iOS app that helps you keep track of the changes on the go, which is fairly simple to use.

ChangeTower: Support

ChangeTower has a detailed knowledge base where you’ll find information about almost everything – whether that's setting up your account, managing your plans, or integrating with Zapier.

Apart from that, they also have a contact form on their website where you can submit your issues. There’s space to fill in your email ID, subject, a detailed explanation of the problem, and an attachment in case you need to explain it properly.

ChangeTower: The competition

ChangeTower is a great option for monitoring websites. But if you're looking for alternatives, Versionista and Visualping are equally good.

Verionista lets you customize things like the timing of the crawl, frequency and location of the crawl, what to look for, and what to ignore. Along with a knowledge base, Versionista also offers email support with a guaranteed response time of 12 hours. What’s more, these responses come directly from their senior engineers. However, it can be a bit more expensive than ChangeTower.

Similarly, Visualping outperforms ChangeTower with its wide array of AI features. There’s an AI tool to summarize change reports, saving you the hassle of going through it manually. It also has an AI to give you suggestions throughout the setup process to speed it up.

In addition to that, if you find a certain update alert irrelevant, you can give that feedback to the AI, and it will block all similar types of alerts in the future.

ChangeTower: Final verdict

ChangeTower is a great pick for businesses looking for a competent monitoring tool. Its free plan and customizable pricing make it perfect for budding businesses. Depending on the plan you choose, you can monitor more than 2,000 URLs, which should be enough for most businesses. In addition to live pages, you can also monitor PDFs, .txt, and .CSS files.

If you have a team-oriented organization, you can choose which team gets the change notifications. There’s an option to provide read-only access so that no unauthorized changes can be made.

ChangeTower’s interface is very simple and easy to navigate, making it beginner-friendly. The dashboard is compact, bringing everything you need on one page.

Overall, it is a good business content monitoring tool, delivering excellent value for money. However, its AI features are still a work in progress. If that’s a concern, you can consider alternatives like Visualping and Versionista.

• We've also featured the best webpage change monitoring software

FAQs