General 2 min read

A simple website monitoring stack for agencies

Inspect on a schedule, alert on new broken links, watch client pricing and legal pages. Litework free or low-cost plans cover the retainer without an SEO suite.

Agencies lose hours to "the contact page is 404" tickets and silent pricing edits. You do not need a full SEO platform per client for that. Pair a scheduled inspection, new-break link alerts, and a few page monitors — then bill the calm.

The stack

  1. **SiteCheck** — plain-English defect report (links, redirects, SEO basics, SSL). Free one-off for triage; Starter $9/month (1 site weekly), Pro $19/month (5 sites daily), Agency $49/month (25 sites, client-ready reports, CSV).
  2. **Mortise** — verify each client site, baseline, alert only on new 404/410 after double failure. Free: 1 site. Pro $12/month or $79/year: up to 10 sites, schedule, email, webhook, CSV.
  3. **SignalWatch** — client pricing, homepage, or legal URLs. Free: 3 monitors. Pro $12/month (50 monitors) or Business $29/month (500) when the roster grows. Slack/Discord/webhook with diffs.

How the three fit: when to use SiteCheck, Mortise, and SignalWatch together. Handoff day: website health check before client handoff.

Per-client setup (about fifteen minutes)

  1. SiteCheck the live URL; fix or document findings.
  2. Mortise verify + baseline after cleanup.
  3. SignalWatch on one or two URLs the client would notice if wrong.
  4. Alerts to a shared Slack/Discord channel named for that client, or a webhook into your ticket tool (Mortise Pro / SignalWatch signed webhook).

What you can honestly sell

  • "We watch for newly broken links" (Mortise), not "we run Ahrefs for you."
  • "We get a diff if pricing copy changes" (SignalWatch), not "full brand listening."
  • "Monthly/weekly health report" (SiteCheck paid), not "enterprise SEO."

Stay cheaper than an SEO suite seat per staff member when the retainer only needs health and regressions — broken-link alerts without an SEO suite.

Checklist

  • Every retained site: inspection cadence + Mortise baseline.
  • Critical copy URLs on SignalWatch.
  • Alert routing agreed (who wakes up).
  • Start free; upgrade the product that hit its limit first.