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

Need a browser to handle sensitive information? A secure and encrypted browser like Vivaldi might just be what you’re looking for.

Vivaldi might not be one of the most popular browsers, but if you’re after a feature-loaded option, it's a must-try. The browser is created by former Opera developers, and aims to add unique features and functionality on top of its Chromium-base.

It's also fast, responsive, and incredibly light on your system. Read till the end to find out more about Vivaldi and see if it's the best browser for you.

Vivaldi browser: Features

The best thing about Vivaldi is its tag management features. For starters, you can put inactive tabs on hibernation mode to save battery and free up more space. For managing multiple tabs, Vivaldi offers a separate set of features. You can open them in a split-screen view to see multiple pages at once. Or, you can also group similar tabs together in a two-way stack, keeping your workspace clean and clutter-free.

Say you want to access all the tabs you opened in one particular session — Vivaldi allows that by giving you the option to name each session. Once done, all you have to do later is type in a particular session’s name, and the tabs will be in front of you. It's the perfect feature for both students and working professionals who work on the same topic on a long-term basis.

Vivaldi comes with a built-in ad blocker, so it offers a calm and peaceful “Reader View.” This basically means that you can cut through all the unnecessary notifications, ads, and floating windows to concentrate on your work and enjoy nothing but the content you’re looking for online. It can also hide the irritating cookie banners and popups on most websites.

You can also use its “Break mode” that fades content and pauses any playing media to help you take your eyes off the screen, and relax. It also includes a mail client, calendar, and a feed reader. They are disabled by default, but you can enable them from the settings.

If you want to watch a video as you work or browse the internet, Vivaldi will put that on a floating window. Of course, you’ll be able to adjust the position of this small window so that you can look at it and still see what’s playing on the screen behind it. This facilitates multi-tasking too.

Vivaldi’s installation sharing is another benefit of using this browser. No need for multiple installations for different users — after you create a user profile, you can share the installation with other users.

If you want to check social media feeds or chat with someone as you work, you can add additional web panels on the side of the screen. If not, this space will be occupied by the default menu that lets you manage your bookmarks, downloads, and more.

The sidebar also includes a Notes feature, as well as a Translate tool. Like any modern browser, Vivaldi also has a Sync feature that allows you to synchronize bookmarks, history, passwords, open tabs, and more with other Vivaldi installations.

Another interesting feature is its support for mouse gestures. Thanks to this feature you can perform common tasks such as open and close tabs, open a link in a new tab, reload page, and more with a flick of the mouse. The browser ships with several default gestures, and you can also define your own.

Vivaldi browser: Privacy

Vivaldi does pretty well in terms of privacy and security. It doesn't track your browsing history, and according to its privacy policy, it doesn't profile and track users, nor does it collect and sell user data.

If you use the Sync option, your download history and other browser data will be synced to other devices via an encrypted channel. As already mentioned, there’s also a built-in tracker and ad blocker, plus the ability to disable all cookies from third-party sites. Also, like most of its peers, Vivaldi supports private browsing and has a very capable password manager as well.

Together, these features protect you from trackers and potential hackers who might want to break into your system.

Vivaldi browser: Ease of use

Vivaldi is quite easy to use. It’s Chromium-based and made using the latest algorithms, so the user interface won't take too long for you to master. The same goes for the Vivaldi mobile app, which is quite similar to the web version in terms of aesthetics and appeal and is just as easy to use.

After installation, it takes through an onboarding process that helps you import bookmarks and other data from other browsers, choose a theme, and more. By default it places tabs at the top, but you can also place them on the left, right, or at the bottom of the window.

The best thing about the browser is its fully functional sidebar. Besides providing easy access to the browser’s downloads, history, and bookmarks, you can also access all of Vivaldi’s most used tools from here.

We particularly like how the browser’s design is customizable, and you can experiment with multiple themes of your choice.

Vivaldi browser: Competitors

Vivaldi faces tough competition from Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and Opera, to name a few.

The biggest drawback of Vivaldi is that it's relatively new to the market. On the other hand, browsers like Opera, Firefox, and Chrome have been around for a long, long time. They have a strong hold over the market, making it difficult for new browsers like Vivaldi to break in.

The browser has also deliberately avoided jumping on the AI-bandwagon with its CEO saying that AI isn't a priority for them.

Vivaldi also doesn’t have extensions of its own. Instead it points users to the ones on the Chrome Web Store, thanks to its Chromium base. But this comes with a caveat—not all extensions designed for Chrome will work flawlessly on Vivaldi.

However, on the flip side, Vivaldi not only includes a free VPN like Opera and Edge, but its implementation, courtesy of ProtonVPN, is uncapped. That said, the VPN facility is currently only available on the desktop version.

Also, Vivaldi is one of the few browsers that provides a commendable environment to foster work and efficiency — it offers a separate set of task management tools that helps you manage your tabs and keep your workspace clutter-free.

Vivaldi browser: Final verdict

People who enjoy feature-rich browsers will certainly enjoy Vivalidi. After all, there’s just so much to do.

For example, it makes browsing multiple tabs more efficient through the Tab Stacking feature — group two or more tabs of the same subject together. You can also send the inactive ones into hibernation mode to save battery and CPU power.

On top of all this, Vivaldi also comes with a built-in tracker and ad blocker, which, to be fair, are available on most browsers. That said, their presence is certainly appreciated. One protects you from malicious websites that collect user data, while the latter blocks annoying pop-ups and ads that might otherwise disrupt your experience.

All said and done, thanks to the inclusion of an email client, and a feed reader, Vivaldi is designed for people who want to use their web browser for more than just browsing the web.

Also check out our roundup of the best anonymous browsers.

Online courses have been a game changer for me since my University days. In this day and age, we have the advantage of numerous platforms to choose from, and Udemy is one of them. Udemy is one of the best online learning platform that offers various courses to develop new skills or enhance existing ones. Udemy’s founder Eren Bali grew up in a small village in Turkey with little opportunity to learn. In his quest to find learning opportunities online and make knowledge accessible to all, Udemy was founded.  

• Interested in Udemy? Check out the website here

To put it in a simple way, imagine Udemy as a virtual school where instructors from around the world create and offer video lessons, quizzes, and assignments. You can choose topics from its vast course catalog ranging from programming and business to photography and personal development. And to top it all off, you can learn at your own pace, anytime and anywhere. We’ve also tested the best online courses and online class sites. 

Udemy: Plans and pricing

Udemy offers three distinct plans to cater to various needs. If you’re looking to develop a new hobby, learn a new skill, or simply want to try something new, then the Personal plan is an ideal choice. The Personal plan is $19 per month and you gain access to over 11,000 courses across a wide range of topics. 

Next up is the Team plan which is designed for groups of 5 to 20 people and costs $360 per user annually. This plan is ideal for organizations aiming to enhance team skills and efficiency through structured learning and development. While it includes the same course access as the Personal plan, it also offers additional features such as analytics and adoption reports. However, the price difference between these two options is quite big so if you’re not looking for analytical reports, you are better off with the Personal plan since both these options provide the same number of courses. Both plans offer a 7-day free trial.

The third plan is targeted towards smaller organizations. This plan grants access to over 25,000 top-rated courses and includes dedicated customer support, customizable content, and hands-on tech training as add-ons. It encompasses all the features of the Personal and Team plans but adds more tailored support and resources to meet the needs of a larger workforce. The pricing for this plan is not available on the website so you will have to enquire with the sales team.

Even though Udemy offers well-structured plans, if you’re hesitant about long-term commitment Udemy also allows you to purchase individual courses with lifetime access. This option lets you explore specific subjects at your own pace and you can decide if the platform suits your learning needs.

Udemy: Features

Creating an account on Udemy is straightforward and free. Once your account is all setup you answer a few questions to receive personalized course recommendations based on your interests, desired skills, and preferred certificates. When I specified my job as a writer the dashboard promptly suggested popular writing courses tailored to my profession. 

For Learners

Once you find a course of interest, you have the option to either purchase it individually or you can opt for a monthly subscription. The only difference between these options is that the subscription would give you access to multiple courses without the need to pay for each one separately. Each course listing includes a ‘what you’ll learn’ section and a detailed breakdown of the content. A notable feature here is the ability to preview some video lectures before purchasing, so you can assess if the course is a right fit for you. All the courses are also accessible via the mobile app and can be downloaded for offline viewing. Learners have a personal dashboard where they can manage courses, add items to their wishlist, and even set reminders for their learning goals.

For Instructors

Now let's take a look at Udemy from an instructor’s perspective. As an instructor, you can utilize resources provided by Udemy to design engaging courses. And to top it all off, Udemy has introduced a new instructor challenge. This initiative incentivizes timely course publication by promoting your course on Udemy’s social media if published within 45 days. Instructors also benefit from being part of an instructor community where they can network, share insights, and learn from peers. Marketing insights are available to help instructors choose relevant topics for their courses. 

Even though we found the course catalog to be diverse, it is worth noting that anyone can become an instructor on Udemy so the quality of courses varies significantly. Some courses may lack depth or professional quality. Upon completion of the course, the learner receives a certificate of completion. Unlike some other platforms like Coursera, Udemy’s certificates are not accredited by universities or institutions, which might reduce their value for some learners seeking formal recognition. This also means that Udemy does not offer any structured degree programs.

Udemy’s content is meticulously organized into categories. Each course is categorized by subject such as business, technology, arts, and more. Within these broad categories, there are sub-categories and specific topics. Each course features user reviews and ratings so learners can access the relevance of the courses. The course length is also varied. Some courses we looked at were 3 hours long, while others were more comprehensive lasting 11 hours. Overall, we found the interface easy to navigate, allowing seamless switching between learner and instructor dashboards.

These are the best laptops for students on the market.

Udemy: Support

Udemy’s support options are quite limited. They don’t offer email or phone support, instead, users have to rely on the Help Center. The Help Center is accessible to both learners and instructors. While there is a chatbot option, it is somewhat hidden. You need to click on a few links to access it. Despite these limitations, we found the Help Center to be quite useful for immediate support. The FAQ section is quite comprehensive and there is a separate section for searchable topics like account profiles, refunds, and more, providing users with detailed information and assistance. 

Udemy: Final verdict

As someone who enjoys enrolling in online courses, I found Udemy to be an accessible learning platform. The extensive course catalog can be overwhelming with so many options to choose from. But if you’re looking for a very specific type of course, rest assured you will find it on Udemy. Pro tip: once you have decided on the topic, check out the popular courses for that category. For those seeking formal academic recognition or degree programs, alternatives like Coursera may be more suitable.  

Udemy: Also consider

Brave is a unique browser that puts a strong emphasis on privacy. While you can equip the popular web browsers to thwart unwanted information leaks, the Brave web browser ships with privacy strengthening features built right into its core.

A relatively new entrant, the Brave browser was only founded in 2016. But thanks to its unique set of features, the browser has emerged as one of the most promising entrants in the industry and has amassed over 70 million users in less than a decade.

Besides its strong emphasis on privacy, another interesting feature in Brave is that it offers users the option to earn cryptocurrency by viewing privacy-respecting ads.

If you want to know more about how Brave can transform the internet for you, read on.

Brave browser: Features

It’ll be in fact a folly to look at Brave as just another web browser. Instead, think of it as an ecosystem of apps and services.

Along with the list of recently visited websites, you can also ask the browsers to enable the Brave News service.

One prominent component of that ecosystem built into the web browser is Brave Rewards, which again you can enable from the dashboard. When toggled, Brave Rewards will display the occasional, unobtrusive advert. In return however, if you view enough of them you’ll be rewarded in Brave’s native cryptocurrency, the Basic Attention Token. You can then pass these over to your favourite content creators.

Also, by default the browser uses Brave Search, which is the browser’s privacy-centric search engine. You do however get the option to switch to any of the other popular options. Another interesting feature is its ability to display vertical tabs.

The privacy offered by Brave is simply unparalleled. It clearly states on its website that it isn’t in the business of selling user data. In fact, it actively fights trackers, malware, hackers, and anyone who might try to break into your system through the browser.

Brave will let you know exactly how many ads and trackers it's blocking every day. Along with that, you’ll also get to customize your browser’s shield settings. For example, if you want to keep the ads coming in from a website you’re familiar with and block the ones from the rest, you can adjust those settings accordingly.

For additional security, Brave offers a built-in VPN and firewall. While most other browsers with VPNs limit their functionality to masking IPs alone, Brave goes a step ahead and encrypts everything you do online. In short, there’ll be no way to trace back any activity to your account.

Brave also includes a privacy-focused video conferencing feature called Brave Talk. You can use it to make free, unlimited one-to-one video calls, without creating a separate account. The browser also integrates Tor to help you browse the internet anonymously.

It also includes a webpage translation function, and will help you find archived versions of missing web pages thanks to its integration with the Wayback Machine service.

If you don't like the default design of the browser, you’ll have plenty of options to experiment with the colors and the background. By default, the browser displays random images as the background, but you can add images from your system, edit, crop, or resize them and turn on the dark/night mode to protect your eyes during long working hours.

Reading a report or blog is highly convenient and quick with Brave’s Speedreader feature. All unnecessary visual elements are removed upon activating this feature, and only pure content is filtered out and displayed in a simpler format. Reducing design elements also helps the page load faster, which further reduces the reading time.

And keeping up with the times, Brave also includes an AI assistant called Leo that can summarize web pages, answer questions about content on a web page, and more.

Besides the Brave-specific functionalities, the browser has all the features you’d expect from a mainstream web browser. As it’s based on Chromium, the browser is compatible with all the extensions in Google Chrome’s Web Store. Oh, and it’ll hide those irritating cookie consent notices.

Brave browser: Privacy

After reading through Brave’s privacy policy and observing its performance over the years, it's safe to claim that it's a privacy-friendly browser. As per its policy, it doesn’t store your data, track your activities or sell details about you to any third party.

Brave also supports fingerprint randomization, which essentially makes you appear different to all websites, further thwarting any tracking attempts. There’s also its Tor mode for anonymous browsing.

If you want more robust privacy, you can use Brave’s built-in VPN to keep all your online activities anonymous.

Speaking of built-in tools, Brave also offers integrated ad blockers and tracker blockers so that it becomes impossible for any third party to monitor your web history or disrupt your experience with annoying pop-ups.

Also, since it's a Chromium-based browser, you can look up Brave’s code any time you want and come up with your own ways to make it more secure.

Brave browser: Ease of use

Whether you are an experienced campaigner or a newbie, getting started with Brave shouldn’t pose a problem. On first run the browser offers to import settings and bookmarks from other installed browsers.

The interface of the Brave browser is quite similar to Chrome, so if you’re familiar with the latter, getting started with Brave will be a piece of cake for you.

The main page is quite simple and clutter-free. Brave’s dashboard proudly displays the number of trackers and ads it has blocked, and the bandwidth and time this has saved.

If you want to enroll in the Brave Rewards program to earn some extra tokens, simply click on the red triangular icon on the right side of the search bar to get started.

Next to it is the Shields icon that’ll give you details about the trackers, ads, and other nefarious privacy-intruding elements that it has blocked. You can enjoy the protection as is, or customize it using this icon.

Most useful functions, such as the VPN are also within reach and can be toggled with a single click. Some, such as the Talk video conferencing tool, don’t take much effort to get going.

Brave browser: Competitors

Brave is rather new to the market, just like Vivaldi. Its lack of experience puts it at a disadvantage, especially against big tech companies like Google and Microsoft, which are dominating the industry.

However, there are more than a few reasons why Brave could be your next default browser. Firstly, unlike Chrome, Brave is renowned for the tight security of user data. It not only comes with a built-in tracker blocker and ad blocker but also disables bad cookies by default.

On top of that, its privacy policy page confirms that it neither collects your data nor sells it to any third party.

Brave is also the only well-known browser that lets you earn rewards and tokens for watching privacy-respecting ads. The money you earn from these ads can then be forwarded anonymously to creators you want to support through its own payment portal called Brave Payments.

On the downside though, Brave doesn’t have the same extensive portfolio of extensions that you’ll find on some of its peers like Chrome. And while its ad-blocking can be a boon to privacy conscious users, it’ll cause issues on certain websites.

Also, while it does ship with a VPN, unlike VPNs in Opera and Edge, Brave VPN is a paid subscription service that offers a 7-day free trial. It’s also currently not available on the Linux version of the browser.

Brave browser: Final verdict

Although Brave is relatively new to the market, its new-age features and adaptive design have given a glimpse into its potential.

Brave offers some unique features like no other browser. For example, it lets you earn rewards by watching privacy-respecting ads, which you can then donate to support your favorite creators.

Also, it deletes all bad cookies and prevents any unauthorized third-party software from tracking by default. This means that even before you configure its settings, Brave will ensure that all your online activities are safe from day one.

All things considered, if you value your online privacy and can live with the occasional site breakage, you can’t go wrong with Brave.

Also check out our roundup of the best anonymous browsers

Individuals are likely acquainted with Microsoft's prominent collection of productivity software, Microsoft 365.  

It encompasses widely recognized applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as lesser-known products including Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive.

For a considerable duration, Microsoft Office has served as the established benchmark for productivity software, a position it continues to hold. Nevertheless, there have been notable shifts within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem

Microsoft has shifted its focus away from standalone products and toward a subscription-based pricing model centered around Microsoft 365. This strategic move reflects Microsoft's vision for Microsoft 365 as a cohesive ecosystem, designed to provide a comprehensive digital workplace solution for businesses. With Microsoft 365, organizations gain access to a wide range of integrated applications and services, including communication tools, cloud storage, backup, syncing capabilities, and productivity apps. This holistic approach streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, and empowers businesses to operate efficiently in the digital age.

Within this extensive analysis, we investigate the comprehensive aspects of the suite's primary platforms and engage in a discourse on the potential benefits of investing in Microsoft 365 for your organization's operational needs.

In our evaluation, we believe it to be the best office software, but if you’re not convinced, you might want to check out our guide to the best alternatives to Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365: Plans and pricing

Microsoft 365 pricing is straightforward, and there are several options for businesses. Here’s a concise overview of the Microsoft 365 business plans and their pricing:

The lowest plan is Microsoft 365 Business Basic which has a cost of $6.00 user/month with an annual subscription. It includes web and mobile versions of Office apps, 1 TB of cloud storage, and Microsoft Teams.

Moving up is the Microsoft 365 Business Standard which comes in at $12.50 user/month with an annual subscription. This plan includes everything in Business Basic, plus desktop versions of Office apps and additional tools like Microsoft Loop and Clipchamp.

At the top of the tiers is Microsoft 365 Business Premium at $22.00 user/month with an annual subscription. It offers advanced security, device management, and more, on top of all features in Business Standard.

Also, there is the Microsoft 365 Apps for business which runs $8.25 user/month with an annual subscription. This plan provides desktop versions of Office apps and 1 TB of cloud storage.

Also note that all plans come with the option to try free for one month.

Microsoft 365: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is arguably the most widely recognized of the Microsoft 365 platforms and is considered by many to be the quintessential word processing application

Over the course of time, Microsoft Word has consistently been recognized as one of the premier applications for writing across a wide range of genres. The software's extensive array of functionalities, encompassing a broad spectrum of templates, ensures versatility for users. Furthermore, its stellar performance and reliability align with expectations for a product developed by Microsoft. In essence, for individuals seeking to compose or modify text-based documents, Microsoft Word offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities that cater to diverse requirements.

The platform offers unparalleled collaboration and review capabilities, rendering it an optimal solution for teamwork within organizations, particularly when integrated with OneDrive and the comprehensive Microsoft 365 suite. Multiple individuals are empowered to co-author documents, access historical iterations of files, monitor changes, and provide real-time feedback to collaborators. OneDrive facilitates the seamless distribution of links to colleagues, ensuring the allocation of appropriate permission levels within a Word document. 

Another notable strength of Word lies in its robust sharing and exporting capabilities. Users are empowered to export documents into a diverse range of file formats, encompassing OpenDocument Text (.odt), Portable Document Format (PDF), and Microsoft Word Format (.docx). Each of these formats enjoys widespread support, significantly reducing the likelihood of encountering compatibility issues. This feature sets Word apart from competitors such as Apple Pages, which has consistently faced challenges in ensuring seamless compatibility.

While a comprehensive listing of all of Word's extraordinary capabilities is beyond the scope of this document, several notable features include the integration of speech-to-text, automatic translation, and the immersive reader mode. The inclusion of three-dimensional graphics further distinguishes Microsoft Word from its competitors. 

While the platform does have some annotation and drawing functionalities, Word operates most effectively in the context of text-based projects. Should you seek to engage your creative side, Microsoft OneNote would be a more suitable option to explore. 

Microsoft Word applications are accessible across a multitude of platforms, encompassing Windows, Android, macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Despite its optimal functionality being realized on desktops and iPads, its mobile applications offer utility for making necessary last-minute revisions to documents while in transit or for promptly recording significant ideas.

For an in-depth analysis of the platform's advantages and disadvantages, explore our recently revamped Microsoft Word review. 

Microsoft 365: Microsoft OneNote

OneNote, a digital notebook application developed by Microsoft, has been specifically designed to accommodate the note-taking requirements of both academic individuals and professionals. While its user interface presents an aesthetically pleasing appearance, and the software boasts a remarkable array of functionalities, it has not achieved the same level of popularity as other platforms such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Nevertheless, OneNote has secured a dedicated user base among students and academic professionals. It is our belief that OneNote ranks among the most effective note-taking platforms available, and we assert that it is underutilized within business and organizational contexts.

One of OneNote's primary strengths lies in its robust organizational capabilities. The software employs a hierarchical structure, wherein top-level parent categories are termed "notebooks." Within each notebook, users can create sections and subsequently individual pages. Our extensive experience with various note-taking applications has led us to conclude that OneNote is the most proficient solution for maintaining the organization and coherence of one's thoughts and ideas.

Another noteworthy strength of OneNote is its seamless integration with Microsoft OneDrive, ensuring that users have access to their notes, sketches, and brainstorming sessions across all their devices. This integration is facilitated through the utilization of cloud synchronization technology. The availability of the software on various operating systems, including iOS, macOS, iPadOS, Windows, and Android, further eliminates any potential obstacles to file accessibility. Additionally, a web-based application is provided for note-taking while on the move.

OneNote also excels in facilitating the sharing of notes with colleagues or clients. The software allows users to invite others to view and edit notebooks, irrespective of whether they possess a Microsoft 365 subscription. Furthermore, it provides the capability to export specific pages in PDF format, which is particularly useful for attaching notes to emails in Microsoft Outlook.

The user interface of OneNote is both aesthetically appealing and feature-rich. It empowers users to engage in a wide range of activities, such as writing and highlighting text, sketching freehand, inserting images, graphs, stickers, and equations, and even incorporating audio clips into their notes. These functionalities, along with numerous others that cannot be mentioned due to space constraints, contribute to OneNote's status as one of the most powerful note-taking applications available in the present year.

Our comprehensive OneNote review explores in detail the reasons why OneNote stands out as an exceptional tool, and it provides insights into how organizations can harness its potential within their operations.

Microsoft 365: Microsoft Excel

The mere mention of Microsoft Excel can elicit a range of emotions, from enthusiasm to apprehension. Nevertheless, we believe that Excel should not be perceived as a daunting tool. Its user-friendliness and capabilities may surpass initial expectations. With just a few hours of dedicated training, individuals can acquire the confidence necessary to create and utilize advanced spreadsheets effectively.

Microsoft Excel offers a vast capacity, allowing users to work with over 17 billion cells in a single spreadsheet, significantly exceeding the 5 million cells available in Google Sheets. This immense computational power makes Excel an ideal choice for large organizations with extensive databases seeking a robust solution.

Furthermore, Excel boasts an extensive library of functions, currently exceeding 475, which provide users with versatile data manipulation and visualization capabilities. These functions enable the extraction of rich insights from data. Additionally, experienced users can create and implement their own macro functions using VBA code, extending the functionality of Excel even further.

Compatibility is not a concern with Microsoft Excel, as it is available on various operating systems. Users can conveniently export their spreadsheets in multiple formats, including Microsoft (.xlsx), OpenDocument Spreadsheets (.ods), and Portable Document Format (.pdf). It is also possible to access Excel documents on alternative platforms such as Google Drive.

While Excel offers numerous advantages, it is not without limitations. Despite the recent introduction of co-authoring functionality, this aspect remains a notable area for improvement. Real-time collaboration requires all users to possess a Microsoft 365 subscription and the latest version of Excel, which may hinder collaboration with external parties. However, when co-authoring is feasible, it is reliable, responsive, and immensely beneficial.

Read our full in-depth Microsoft Excel review.

Microsoft 365: Microsoft OneDrive

Cloud storage has exploded in popularity in recent years, and OneDrive is Microsoft’s entrant in this fiercely competitive market. It is among the best cloud storage platforms for both consumers and businesses.  

The platform provides a secure repository for critical data and documents. Its user-friendly interface simplifies navigation and utilization. It offers thumbnail previews for various file formats, while the intelligent AI search capabilities facilitate efficient retrieval of desired information.

OneDrive's true distinction lies in its comprehensive integration with all other Microsoft 365 applications. This seamless integration transforms Microsoft 365 into a comprehensive ecosystem of digital productivity, surpassing the limitations of individual applications.

Firstly, OneDrive prioritizes security. All files are encrypted during transmission and when stored, making it more secure than many competitors. Even in the event of data theft or interception, the encrypted nature of the files renders them indecipherable.

Microsoft elevates security even further with the introduction of Personal Vault, a sub-folder that provides end-to-end encryption for highly sensitive files. This ensures that no one, including Microsoft, can access or decrypt this data.

Administrators have the ability to enhance account security by implementing two-factor authentication and mandating periodic password changes for employees. This advanced security architecture instills confidence in businesses of all sizes to entrust their essential documents and files to OneDrive.

Furthermore, OneDrive is characterized by its ease of access and utilization. Reliable apps are available for various devices, complemented by a responsive and well-designed web app. This web app ranks among the most impressive cloud storage web apps in our evaluation.

The platform seamlessly integrates with all other Microsoft 365 applications. It serves as the default save location, facilitating real-time collaboration among colleagues. As changes are made on one device, they are simultaneously reflected on all connected devices. This functionality elevates OneDrive beyond a mere cloud storage platform, positioning it as a cloud-syncing platform.

Collaboration is further enhanced through the sharing of files and folders using customized links. These shared items are organized within a dedicated folder on the OneDrive home screen of both users. This feature makes Microsoft 365 an ideal solution for organizations that emphasize team-based work.

If you want to know more, read our full in-depth OneDrive review.

Microsoft 365: Microsoft PowerPoint

For over two decades, PowerPoint has been instrumental in assisting individuals from elementary school children to Fortune 500 executives in creating compelling and engaging presentations. Our conviction remains that it stands as the optimal platform for presentation creation, and we shall elucidate the reasons behind this assertion.

PowerPoint proffers a plethora of tools designed to stimulate inspiration. The most notable among these is Microsoft's comprehensive collection of templates, which are provided at no cost to Microsoft 365 subscribers. Additionally, corporate personnel have access to the presentation coaching tool, which furnishes advice and feedback concerning the pace and style of their presentations.

Another potent feature, also available in Microsoft Word, is the capability to insert and manipulate three-dimensional images. Three-dimensional files can be rotated, inverted, or tilted to maximize their utility within a presentation. This distinguishes PowerPoint from the vast majority of its competitors.

As with other Microsoft 365 applications, users are empowered to collaborate and provide feedback in real-time. Integration with OneDrive renders it an ideal solution for designing and managing presentations within a business context.

However, it is imperative to acknowledge a limitation: collaboration on PowerPoint is feasible solely through the web-based application, precluding the desktop and mobile versions of the software. This constitutes a relatively significant limitation and is somewhat disappointing considering the platform's exceptional performance in all other categories.

If you’re itching to know more about the platform, our Microsoft PowerPoint review was recently updated and explains everything you need to know about the software.

Microsoft 365: Microsoft Teams

Teams, the newest addition to the Microsoft suite, is arguably the most significant. In essence, Teams amalgamates audio and visual conferencing capabilities akin to Skype with workplace communication tools similar to Slack. It serves as a centralized platform for coordination and communication, integral to business efficiency in an increasingly remote work environment.

Like OneDrive, Teams is designed to act as a cohesive element, integrating various applications and features of Microsoft 365. It leverages cloud-based technology to facilitate collaborative, real-time work across multiple platforms.

The video conferencing capabilities of Microsoft Teams are substantial, enabling employees to organize and conduct individual conversations or company-wide meetings. Furthermore, it accommodates webinars and information sessions with up to 10,000 participants. During calls, participants benefit from features such as screen sharing, call recording, live captions, background blur technology, and chat functionalities.

Alongside video conferencing, communication channels allow users to engage in group discussions focused on specific topics, such as project-based teams, company-wide announcements, or social events. This approach ensures that conversations remain relevant, enabling employees to compartmentalize and streamline their communications.

There’s so much to know about Microsoft Teams that we couldn’t list it all here. However, our in-depth Teams review does the job for us. 

Microsoft 365: Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook, a key component of the Microsoft suite, has been instrumental in assisting users in organizing their emails for several decades. Although it may not possess the same level of popularity as Google's Gmail or Apple's Mail, we posit that it is one of the most effective email clients available, particularly for individuals who utilize other Microsoft 365 applications.

Spam and malware blockers are incorporated into the software, which is a standard feature of most email clients. Businesses can also leverage group inboxes, which facilitate the sending and receiving of emails from a single email address by multiple employees.

One feature that we find particularly advantageous is the categorization of emails into distinct folders: the focused inbox and the other inbox. The focused inbox collates messages that the platform's algorithms deem to be of particular importance or urgency, enabling employees to prioritize and respond to the most critical emails promptly.

Moreover, Outlook has been meticulously designed to seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft 365 applications. Consequently, for those seeking a straightforward, integrated, and responsive email client, Microsoft 365 is a highly recommended option.

Read our full Microsoft Outlook review.

Microsoft 365: Support

Concerning customer support, Microsoft excels in the industry. Notably, even with its consumer plans, the company consistently exhibits promptness in responding while also displaying diligence in troubleshooting issues. In our experience, when using the online chat window to contact the company, we received a response and answer to our question within just a few minutes.

Although some applications provide users with the ability to access support directly through the application, we recommend utilizing the Microsoft support website. This comprehensive resource includes how-to guides, video tutorials, and community forums, offering solutions to virtually all potential issues. In our evaluation, it is the most effective online support center encountered in this software category, with a considerable emphasis on business-specific advice and assistance.

Businesses can also contact Microsoft through telephone and online chat, with premium plans offering an understandably more timely and responsive service. Moreover, Microsoft's knowledgeable technicians and cybersecurity experts are available as part of the advanced cyberthreat detection services included in premium plans.

Microsoft 365: Final verdict

We firmly believe that the digital ecosystem of Microsoft Office 365 Business is the optimal office software available, and we trust that you will concur.

This office suite adroitly combines multifaceted document creation and productivity applications, such as Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Excel, with the potent capabilities of cloud technology in OneDrive. Furthermore, it is imperative to highlight Microsoft Teams, the definitive all-in-one digital communications platform designed to ensure that your employees operate with the utmost efficiency.

We have also meticulously outlined the several subscription options available to businesses. There is an appropriate plan for every organization, irrespective of size, whether it be a compact team of five individuals, a multi-location workforce comprising fifty employees, or a vast enterprise encompassing hundreds or even thousands of personnel.

We list the best Microsoft Office alternatives.