Mortise (opens in a new tab) 1 min read
Mortise vs one-off broken link checkers
One-off checkers list every 404 today. Mortise baselines a site you verify and alerts only when a previously working link newly fails.
Paste-a-URL broken-link tools are useful for a cleanup day. They are noisy for ongoing watch: every known 404 comes back on every run. Mortise (opens in a new tab) is built for the opposite job — tell you when something that worked starts returning 404 or 410.
What each is for
| Need | Fit | |------|-----| | See every broken link on this crawl | One-off checker or SiteCheck (opens in a new tab) | | Stop hearing about the same old 404s | Mortise after a quiet baseline | | Recurring crawl + email/webhook on new breaks | Mortise Pro |
Mortise free: 1 verified site, 200 pages, one manual check per day, dashboard only, no card. Pro ($12/month or $79/year): more sites and pages, schedule, email, webhook, CSV.
Why the baseline matters
The first Mortise crawl stays silent. That snapshot is the accepted state. Later crawls alert only after a previously working link fails twice as 404 or 410. Known leftovers stay quiet — why broken-link checkers keep reporting the same broken links.
A one-off tool has no memory between runs. If you need a punch list before you baseline, use SiteCheck or a free checker once, fix what you will fix, then start Mortise. See check a website for broken links for free.
When to stay with a one-off tool
- You do not own or cannot verify the site.
- You only need a single audit for a handoff.
- You want a full SEO suite (titles, content scores, backlinks) — that is not Mortise's job. For suite-free regression alerts, see broken-link alerts without an SEO suite.