Introduction

Distill Overview

"Tracking website updates, automated and simplified."

With feature functionality that doesn’t radically differ from other competing website change monitoring tools, Distill is a common solution for keeping track of online changes.

Typical of web tracking tools, you can select specific parts of the page to monitor, and set certain “conditions” so you only get alerted of relevant changes.

You can customize your tracking frequency, and integrate alerts into your workflow with its webhook, API and integrations, like Slack and Teams.

And, with the dashboard – referred to as your “watchlist” – you can manage all your monitors in one spot.

Distill Strengths

What differentiates Distill from its alternatives is a generous free plan: you can monitor up to 25 web pages, as frequently as every 6 hours, which is more than most of the competition.

You can also receive phone push notifications and, on Chrome, Firefox and Opera, set up web monitoring through its browser extension.

Distill Limitations

Not User-Friendly

Users tend to report the desktop and mobile interface aren’t particularly user-friendly. Its alert customization process also takes some getting used to.

Lack of Support

Beyond the FAQ guide and knowledge base for users, which includes use cases and setup guides, it doesn’t offer additional hands-on support for premium users.

You can access support through their contact email, which promises a response within one business day.

For businesses looking to scale up and monitor many web pages, support options like onboarding training, a dedicated account manager and remote hands to manage your pages for you is valuable. For many teams and businesses, then, Distill may not be optimal – especially in combination with the not-so-user-friendly interface.

There are several Distill alternatives that offer industry standard web monitoring capabilities, as well as advanced features for customized monitoring and relevant alerts, without breaking your budget.

A few select tools also offer a more use-friendly interface and support options, so you can get the help you need to stay on top of web changes important to your business.

Check out the list below for Distill alternatives, reviewed according to their ease of use, advanced features and support.

Top Distill Alternatives 2025

1. Visualping

Ease of Use

Visualping is the top Distill alternative. That’s because of its user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to set up and manage your jobs, powerful customization features, and the ample support for Business users.

For example, unlike many Distill alternatives, to create your first monitor, you don’t have to go through the process of creating an account first, and/or click around on the website to figure out how to get started.

Just head to the homepage and paste the URL you want to track into the search field.

The page will load, and you can set it up – select the areas of the page you want to track, specify the tracking frequency, your email address for the alerts, etc.

The combination of its easy-to-use interface, 24/7 support – plus, its advanced features – makes Visualping one of the top web monitoring tools available.

Advanced features

Don’t mistake Visualping’s minimalist style for a simple tool. It competes with Distill in terms of typical functionality, as well as its advanced features.

For instance, you can select specific parts of the page, and you choose from an array of flexible frequencies. Integrate alerts into your workflow with its webhook, API, and integrations, like Slack and Teams.

Similar to Distill’s “conditions”, you can filter alerts for specific keywords, phrases and numbers of interest. There’s also a dashboard, where you can review and manage all your jobs in one place.

But you can also, in a single click, automatically block all cookie and ad pop-ups, so you can access the content you care about, and also never get notified of an irrelevant pop-up.

Monitor password-protected pages with the perform actions feature, which allows you to easily enter automated steps for Visualping to navigate a page in a certain way - such as filling in a form, or selecting from a dropdown menu – to access the content you’re after.

Or, for users with coding experience, Visualping offers customization options through XPATH, CSS and regular expressions, so you can interact with the page however you wish.

Support

There are no Distill alternatives that offer the same extent of support packages as Visualping. This is a major selling point for businesses looking for a service that’s fully managed for them.

Visualping for Business can choose between three different tiers of support – Basic, Advanced, and Dedicated.

The basic package includes 1 day response, like Distill but, unlike Distill, also includes onboarding support, training, and chat.

The Advanced package also includes remote hands, and your email is handled as a priority.

The Dedicated package goes above and beyond, with an additional dedicated account manager, video conference support and a managed workflow and report.

Depending on your needs, you’ve got the option to invest in your success. For teams looking for a convenient web monitoring solution – while still having access to powerful, advanced features – Visualping is a top contender.

Save Time with Visualping AI

Further, Visualping leverages AI to include automatic text summaries in the alerts – called Summarizer, free for all Business users. They concisely summarize all the changes for you, so you can understand what was updated faster.

The AI can even be trained to understand what you’re specifically looking for on the page. In that case, it’ll tell you whether or not the change is important, so you can more quickly decipher whether or not the alert is worth reviewing.

Advanced features like the above can save you a lot of time.

2. Wachete

Ease of Use

Wachete is another top Distill alternative. Its interface is pretty clear and simple to use. A beginner could get set up and use it with little trouble.

Unlike Visualping, you have to sign up for an account before setting up your first monitor. You don’t have to download any software.

After making your account and clicking the Create New Wachete button, you can start setting up your monitor.

Advanced features

Wachete’s feature functionality doesn’t radically differ from Distill and its alternatives.

But, unlike Distill and Visualping, you can actually automatically monitor other subpages on a domain, as opposed to having to manually gather all the pages on a site and enter them into the tool.

You can also receive daily or weekly reports in email, to help review changes over a specified period of time.

Support

Like Distill and most of its alternatives, Wachete’s customer support has room for improvement.

It has an extensive FAQ section that covers general and more specific questions. There’s also an email address, and live chat.

But the website doesn’t state the hours of availability, so it’s unclear how available the support actually is. When we attempted to contact Wachete through live chat, we were informed that the support team was not online, and would email us back.

3. ChangeTower

Ease of use

Similar to Visualping, for a feature-rich product, ChangeTower is easy to set up and use.

Again, to get started, you do have to create an account first by clicking Create My Free Monitor and adding your name, email address, and a password.

It’s only then you’ll be taken to the web-based app where you can start creating alerts. The process is the same on desktop and mobile.

The interface itself is fairly clear. As you create a new monitor, it walks you through the process step by step, making it pretty straightforward to customize your alerts and track what’s relevant.

Advanced features

Unlike Distill and its alternatives, ChangeTower can track SEO changes invisible to the everyday users – like meta descriptions, HTML code, and keywords and search engine optimization (SEO).

Support

ChangeTower lacks support options, especially for paying users.

There’s an extensive knowledge base, including setup guides, common troubleshooting advice, and educational articles on the best ways to use the software.

Like Wachete, it also offers live support, but it’s on the slower side. They claim response times are a couple of hours but, after having tried it, we waited 24 hours.

Additional support is available via a ticket system, whether on the free or paid plans.

4. Versionista

Ease of use

Like other Distill alternatives, such as Wachete and ChangeTower, you have to create an account before setting up any pages.

It’s pretty straightforward from there – enter the URL, and a few seconds later you’ll see the page view. Specify how often you want the page monitored, and any filters, like which parts of the page to include or exclude).

Advanced features

Unlike Distill and its alternatives, you can crawl entire sites by simply adding the top-level page of the site. It’ll automatically find the other links for you, rather than you having to manually locate all the pages yourself and enter them into the tool.

In one click, you can monitor all the pages. Or, if you prefer, you can add the single top-level page, and then have more manual fine-grained control over which pages it monitors from there.

Additionally, in the dashboard, when you click on a link to a site, new pages Versionista has found will appear, with the option to monitor or ignore those, as well.

You can also get detailed digest reports of web changes emailed to you at a frequency you can choose.

Support

Like many Distill alternatives, Versionista’s level of support falls short. Unless you’re on a customized enterprise plan, support is only available by email, with response times of up to 12 hours.

Although, the response will come from a senior engineer, so you’re interacting with the folks who will be directly working on the solution.

Enterprise users have 24x7 support, which they say can be customized to suit your business, although it’s a little unclear what this support entails. You have to book a demo before discovering the support options available, and for how much of a fee.

5. Fluxguard

Ease of use

Because Fluxguard is tailored to more advanced users, like IT security professionals for visual regression testing and uptime monitoring, its website verbiage and product explanations are likely difficult to understand for most users. Setting up and managing your monitors may also be a little tricky at first.

Advanced features

Fluxguard’s distinguishing features include daily or weekly reports, which you can create yourself, or be delegated to Fluxguard’s “Solution Architects” who will “co-screen results, optimize monitoring, and deliver bespoke reports.”

Fluxguard will also discover and extract other links on the site you’re monitoring, and propose to monitor these newly found pages.

Support

Support is available to users via product guides, email and online live chat that, sometimes, can be on the slower side.

The Bottom Line

While Distill is an adequate website monitoring tool, it's interface isn't particularly user-friendly and it lacks support. Alternatives like Visualping offer advanced features, with an easy-to-use interface and support package options. Competitors like Wachete and Versionista allow you to monitor the subdomains of an entire website, and provide daily or weekly digest reports of change alerts over time.