Watching other people's pages
For competitor prices, supplier stock, regulatory pages or any public URL you do not control, a change-detection tool is exactly right and a monitoring tool is the wrong shape.
Hexometer is commonly evaluated as a broad website monitoring assistant spanning availability, performance, SEO, and web changes. If you are looking for an alternative, the question is usually whether you want that breadth or a focused view of website health and customer journeys.
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Focused website monitoring without the unrelated all-in-one clutter.
Compare a broad monitoring assistant with a focused website-health-and-journey approach.
| Criteria | NorthDuty | Hexometer |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | Website health and user journeys | The current Hexometer site promotes Hexowatch for website change detection and Hexomatic for data scraping |
| Multi-step journeys | AI-suggested or plain-text, with step-level results | The reviewed current product page lists page-change and endpoint monitors, not multi-step browser journeys |
| Visual change detection | Not offered — NorthDuty checks that pages render and journeys complete rather than diffing layouts | Hexowatch monitors whole pages or selected regions for visual, content, HTML, source-code, technology, and other changes |
| Rendered health depth | JavaScript errors, broken resources, and API calls per check | Availability and API response-change monitors are listed; JavaScript-error and broken-resource checks are not listed on the reviewed page |
If you are searching for Hexometer, the first thing worth knowing is where the monitoring now lives. Hexometer's own site (Hexact, Inc.) still describes monitoring types — visual, HTML element, keyword, technology, source code, availability, WHOIS, sitemap, API, backlink and RSS — but its navigation points monitoring users to Hexowatch, and the Hexometer pricing URL redirects there. Hexowatch describes itself as monitoring any website for visual, content, source-code or data changes.
So the practical comparison is not Hexometer versus a monitoring tool: it is change detection versus monitoring the things customers do. Both are useful; they answer different questions.
Checked on the vendors' public pages on 18 September 2026. Hexowatch's plan prices are shown only through its own pricing widget, so no figures are quoted here.
| What you want to know | Hexometer / Hexowatch | NorthDuty |
|---|---|---|
| Did anything on this page change? | Yes — visual, content, HTML element, source code and data change detection | Not the intended use — NorthDuty checks that the page renders and its journeys complete, not what changed |
| Did a competitor change their pricing page? | Yes — change detection on any public URL is the core use case | Not the intended use; monitoring is aimed at your own sites |
| Can a customer still complete checkout? | Not a documented check type | Yes — journeys run the steps in a real browser |
| Did the page render, or go blank? | Change detection may notice the difference after the fact | Rendered health check every 5 minutes, with blank-page detection |
| Are SSL, DNS and redirects healthy? | WHOIS and related checks | Included in every health check |
| Which step failed, and what did the page look like? | Not applicable | The failing step is named, with the page state captured |
| Published prices | Shown through the site's pricing widget | Free, $29 Starter, $79 Pro, listed publicly |
The question is what you are watching and why.
For competitor prices, supplier stock, regulatory pages or any public URL you do not control, a change-detection tool is exactly right and a monitoring tool is the wrong shape.
For checkout, signup, login and forms on your own site, you need the flow executed and verified, not a diff of the page it starts on.
Change detection compares how a page looks over time; NorthDuty does not. Change detection tells you something moved; monitoring tells you whether the page and the flow still work.
Change alerts are usually research or competitive intelligence. Monitoring alerts are incidents. Decide which inbox this belongs in before buying.
Broad monitoring tools cover many categories at once, which is appealing when you want one dashboard for everything.
The trade-off can be depth on the things that most directly affect revenue: whether a page actually rendered, whether a multi-step flow completed, and exactly which step failed after a deploy.
NorthDuty concentrates on the customer-facing failures that cost money and explains them with evidence.
Each 5-minute check renders the page and records SSL, DNS, blank-page detection, broken resources, JavaScript errors, and first-party API calls; and user journeys run multi-step flows with step-level results and a screenshot of every step.
Depth on the failures that affect revenue.
Rendered website health monitoring starts automatically.
Use AI-suggested or plain-text flows for login, signup, and checkout.
Deploy detection re-runs health checks and journeys after a release.
Send alerts to your channels and export PDF or scheduled-email reports.
Review the product pages and supporting content that explain the monitoring depth behind the comparison.
Feature
Learn how NorthDuty combines editable user journeys and website health checks in one website monitoring project.
Explore Website MonitoringFeature
NorthDuty runs your checkout, signup, login and form flows in a real browser on a schedule and reports the exact step that failed, with a screenshot.
Explore User Journey MonitoringArticle
Website monitoring tools compared with 2026 prices: free tiers, entry plans and which ones can actually run a checkout or login flow, not just ping a URL.
Read Best Website Monitoring ToolsArticle
Use this 41-point website monitoring checklist to cover uptime, SSL, DNS, forms, checkout, journeys, alerts, launch checks, and incident response.
Read Website Monitoring Checklist: 41 ChecksPricing
NorthDuty plans are sized by how many checkout, signup and login journeys you monitor: Free, $29 Starter, $79 Pro, $199 Business. 7-day trial, no card.
Compare pricing plansAnswers to common buying questions for teams comparing monitoring options.
Hexometer's site is still published by Hexact, Inc. and lists its monitoring types, but monitoring users are pointed to Hexowatch — the Hexometer pricing URL redirects to hexowatch.com. Checked 18 September 2026.
Hexowatch watches any public page for visual, content, source-code or data changes, which is ideal for pages you do not control. NorthDuty monitors your own site's health and runs multi-step journeys — checkout, login, signup, forms — in a real browser, and tells you which step failed.
Not really. NorthDuty does not do visual change detection: it checks that your own pages render and that journeys like checkout and signup complete, with a screenshot of each step. If watching pages for visual or content changes is the main need, a dedicated change-detection tool is the better fit.
For teams that want focused website health and user journeys rather than a broad multi-category assistant, NorthDuty is a strong alternative.
No. NorthDuty focuses on whether customers can complete checkout, signup, login, and forms, and whether the site is up and healthy. If pixel-level change detection is the main need, Hexowatch is the better fit.
Yes. AI suggests journeys you can enable in one click, or you describe a flow in plain text.
Choose NorthDuty when you want depth on website health and user journeys rather than breadth across many categories.
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