With competitor price tracking, you can inform your competitive strategy with the latest intel on your rivals’ price changes.

You don’t have to do it manually. Get real-time price alerts to stay one step ahead of the game.

It’s scientifically proven good deals make consumers happier.

Thanks to the release of a “happy” hormone called Oxytocin, coupons actually give customers a rush of euphoria. 88% of American consumers used coupons to shop in 2020.

So, if your competitor advertises a deal on their website that beats your prices, then potential customers may be lured into switching from considering your products and services, to opting for the competition.

Consumers are even increasingly signing up for their own price drop alerts, so they can get notified the moment these discounts occur online.

Businesses in a competitive landscape should do the same.

In an increasingly competitive eCommerce space, where discounts, coupons and promos send Oxytocin flying, the challenge becomes monitoring and staying on top of your competitors’ price changes on their websites and online marketplaces, so you can respond promptly and stay competitive.

You can supplement your competitive strategy with automated competitor price tracking, with tools like Visualping, and a handful of others discussed in this post.

We’ll cover several of the benefits of competitor price tracking, and a rundown of the best price monitoring tools you should use to automate the entire process.

What is competitor price tracking?

Competitor price monitoring, otherwise known as price intelligence, is the process of tracking variations in your competitors’ prices so that you can analyze historical and current price changes, in order to optimize your own pricing strategy.

You can learn how frequently competitors update their pricing, and the patterns over time. Price tracking is essential in gathering your own competitive intelligence to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Why you should automate your competitor price tracking

Automated competitor price monitoring tools examine pricing changes in eCommerce stores, marketplaces and specific competitor websites. They make the information gathering process easier and more efficient, because you’re not having to check this pages manually, and record the information yourself.

The best competitor monitoring tools will monitor any web pages you’re interested in, empowering you to stay on top of the exact pages, competitors and information you care about. They’ll also offer the option to alert you of changes in real-time – like Visualping.

With a price monitoring tool, you don’t have to worry about manually checking up on your competitors, missing important price updates, having a delayed response and simply being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of pages to be checking and rechecking on a regular basis.

This can help you make more accurate and informed decisions about your pricing strategy.

Tracking prices with web change detection tools

Compared to most price monitoring software available, website change detection tools are the most cost-efficient for small and middle-size businesses.

As well as more affordable, compared to price monitoring software platforms, they’re more flexible, and can be tailored to your organization’s unique needs. Visualping, for example, can monitor any web pages you want on the internet, to track the exact updates you’re looking for. Website change detection tools are both multi-scenario and multi-industry:

• Multi-scenario: Besides price monitoring, they can be used as competitive intelligence tools more generally, for purposes such as for online reputation monitoring, and monitoring competitors’ websites for changes.

• Multi-industry: a web change detection tool can also be used to stay on top of updates in many industries, including in the regulatory and legal industry, compliance, finance and SEO.

Below is a list of the top price monitoring tools for 2023. While this list is not exhaustive, it’s a solid start to help you get started.

The top competitor price tracking tools

Visualping

Visualping is a website change detection tool that can be used as a competitor monitoring tool.

You simply tell the tool which web pages you want monitored – such as your competitors’ pricing pages, or their homepages to look out for discount advertisements – and it’ll notify you, via an email alert, when there’s a page change.

That way, you can stay on top of your competitors’ pricing patterns and discounts, without manually checking yourself.

Visualping is the quintessential example of a simple and easy-to-use competitor tracking tool. It’s kind to those of us who aren’t super tech savvy, and it doesn’t overload you and your team with an overload of overwhelming information: it simply monitors exactly what you want it to, and sends you alerts.

It keeps things simple, while making it easy to stay on top of the competitor landscape.

Unlike many other website change detection tools, Visualping offers real-time monitoring. You can check web pages and get notified as frequently as every 5 minutes. 3 times daily, or once daily, is common amongst its competitors.

Visualping also offers bulk monitoring, for companies looking to track many different competitors, and their advertised pricing from many different sites – marketplaces, price comparison sites, websites, etc. You can create, edit and manage jobs in bulk, making it easy to monitor more pages than you ever could before.

Visualping also offers flexibility and customizable monitoring options. You can track any web pages you want, and you can monitor any specific parts of the page, too. This enables you and your team to only be notified of the changes you care about – you’re not being overwhelmed with a mountain of data and analysis you’re not looking for.

Pricing

For a monitoring tool with a smooth ease-of-use that offers real-time monitoring, Visualping is very reasonably priced.

For the Business plan, which offers bulk monitoring and the team collaboration options, it’s just $100/month.

That’s cheaper than the vast majority of its change detection competitors, who aren’t nearly as user-friendly, don’t provide real-time or bulk monitoring.

Interested in learning more about how Visualping can help ypu monitor competitors' prices? Contact our team today -- We'd be happy to help.

Competera

Competera is a strong contender for those looking for pricing comparison data, and for users looking to automate changes to their own pricing data, using the tool – that’s automated repricing.

It uses Deep Learning algorithms to help retailers set the most optimal prices for their products, based on demand and a number of other market factors. It also includes rule-based repricing, which you set in advance, and cause-effect analysis of price changes.

One thing to keep in mind with Competera is that it is not a website change detection tool, but a price monitoring software tool.

This means that you’re also looking at much more advanced features – complex analysis and reprising which, for those simply wanting to make their competitive monitoring processes more simple and efficient, might make them feel an uneasy loss of control.

Pricing

It’s a price monitoring software, so you’re looking at a substantially heftier fee; their pricing is “custom,” meaning you speak to their sales team, they evaluate your individual business needs, and present you a number. That usually means it’s on the pricier side.

Fluxguard

Like Visualping, Fluxguard is another website change detection tool, which means it’s generally a more affordable and straightforward way to keep an eye on your competitors’ pricing changes.

Similar to Visualping, Fluxguard’s email reports include screenshots and extracted text changes for every monitored page. You can also review side-by-side HTML comparisons, screenshot sliders, network activity differences, and before-and-after side-by-side comparisons.

Also like Visualping, you can customize simple rules for your change alerts – to only monitor a part of the page, and limit alerts to certain keywords or web page elements, for example. Advanced reporting options are available, for sharing with your team members.

Team collaboration features are available via Slack integration, webhooks or API. You can add multiple users and collaborate with notes and flagging.

Keep in mind though that it is tailored to IT professionals and software developers – it’s not the easiest tool to use for non-tech savvy folks, looking for something user-friendly and easily manageable.

Pricing

Fluxguard is $99/month.

Skuuudle

Skuuudle is a cloud-based price monitoring software that monitors your competitors’ pricing and inventory, and allows you to set dynamic repricing rules, in response to the comparisons.

It also provides daily price and product insights. It’s actually loaded – it gives you a lot. Some teams might find it mind-boggling and a little paralyzing. What’s neat though is that they also provide an AI-supported quality team, to help guide you through the sheer mountains of analysis and information. However, they only provide online support during its business hours.

Pricing

It’s a price monitoring tool packed with advanced features, so it comes at a price.

It’s $399/month.

Versionista

Versionista is another website change detection tool – simple but advanced features, and at an affordable price.

It crawls web pages from its cloud, and sends change alert emails when it detects changes. You also get side-by-side comparisons that highlight code, content and design changes, so they’re easy to see and understand quickly.

However, Versionista does not provide real-time monitoring. By default, pages are checked about once per day. But, by clicking into each monitored site, expanding the "crawl options" area, you can choose a lower or higher frequency as needed.It is not the optimal tool for responding, as soon as possible, to competitor price changes.

Pricing

Versionista is among the more expensive website change detection tools, at $99/month.

Omnia Dynamic Pricing

Finally, Omnia Dynamic Pricing is another all-in-one automated price monitoring tool. It allows businesses to automate their pricing strategies through data collection, tracking pricing changes and setting custom repricing rules that take the pricing elasticity of every product into account. You also get pricing insights on different product ranges.

Omnia Dynamic Pricing may be a little easier to use among the price monitoring softwares, as it explains to the user how its algorithm works and has a comprehensive training system.

Pricing

It’s a price monitoring software that would be considered too expensive for a small-size company, with customized pricing.

Competitor Monitoring Tools: Final thoughts

Without the right tool at your disposal, price monitoring is next to impossible to do manually.

There are many competitor price monitoring tools available online. Some come packed with all sorts of features, such as automatic repricing and additional analysis. Others are more simple and straightforward, and focus on performing the monitoring process for you, giving you the space and freedom to make your own decisions.

Whatever tool you choose, competitor price tracking tools can give you invaluable insights into your competitors’ pricing and overall business strategies. Use pricing tools to generate more sales, grow your business, increase your market share, stay competitive, and improve your brand positioning

Interested in learning more about how Visualping can help ypu monitor competitors' prices? Contact our team today -- We'd be happy to help.