Website inspection vs new-break link alerts

Use a website inspection when you need a plain-English punch list of what is wrong right now: broken links, page errors, redirects, SEO basics, and SSL. Use new-break link alerts when the site is already in a known state and you only want to hear that a link which used to work now returns 404 or 410. Same site can need both. They are different questions.

Full inspection

You give a site URL. The tool crawls a sample of pages and reports every defect it is built to find on that crawl.

SiteCheck (opens in a new tab) stamps that into one report: broken links, HTTP errors, redirect chains and loops, titles, meta descriptions, H1s, robots.txt, sitemap, TLS, mixed content, noindex, and canonicals. Free: one-off report, up to 25 pages, no account, no card. Starter ($9/month or $90/year) adds weekly scans on one site. Pro ($19/month or $190/year) adds daily scans on up to five sites. Agency ($49/month or $490/year) adds more sites, client-ready reports, and CSV.

It is the right tool before a launch, after a redesign, before you hand a site to a client, or any afternoon you want the current list. How to run it is in how to inspect a website for health problems. What each check means is in what a website health report covers.

What it does not do: remember that you already accepted twenty old 404s, or stay quiet about them on the next email. The inspection answers "what is broken on this crawl?"

New-break alerts

You verify a site you own. The tool crawls, stores a baseline, and later alerts only when a previously working link newly fails.

Mortise (opens in a new tab) makes the first crawl silent. Later crawls notify only after a link fails twice as 404 or 410. Links that were already broken stay quiet. That rule is explained in why broken-link checkers keep reporting the same broken links.

Free: 1 site, 200 pages per crawl, a manual check at most once a day, dashboard only, no card. Pro ($12/month or $79/year) adds more sites, a schedule, email, a webhook for new breaks, and CSV.

What it does not do: audit titles, meta descriptions, H1s, sitemaps, mixed content, or TLS as a full inspection. Its job is link regressions after a baseline.

Side by side

• Question. SiteCheck: what defects exist on this crawl? Mortise: did a link that previously worked newly break?
• Memory. SiteCheck: each report stands alone (paid plans keep issue history for monitoring). Mortise: a baseline so known breaks do not alert.
• Scope. SiteCheck: links plus HTTP errors, redirects, SEO basics, SSL-related checks. Mortise: link status against the baseline.
• Free plan. SiteCheck: one-off, 25 pages, no account. Mortise: 1 verified site, 200 pages, manual daily check, dashboard.
• When it shines. SiteCheck: cleanup day, launch, client report. Mortise: weeks after cleanup, watching for regressions.

When one is enough

Choose SiteCheck if you need the punch list. A freelancer finishing a build, or an owner who has not looked at redirects in a year, wants the full current picture.

Choose Mortise if you already know the old breaks and only care about new ones. A site that ships weekly content changes needs the baseline more than another full dump of the same 404s.

When to use both

1. Run SiteCheck (or any full audit) and fix what you are willing to fix.
2. Take a Mortise baseline on the cleaned site, as in how to find newly broken links after a website migration.
3. Keep SiteCheck on a weekly or daily schedule if you still want a recurring full report; keep Mortise for new-break alerts.

They stay separate products, separate accounts, separate prices. There is no bundle.

For watching whether the words on a specific public URL changed, or whether that URL's certificate is near expiry, use SignalWatch (opens in a new tab). That third job sits next to these two in website change monitoring vs broken-link monitoring.

A small way to decide this afternoon

1. Do you need a cleanup list before you trust the site? Start with SiteCheck's free scan.
2. Is the site already cleaned, and would a repeat of the same old 404s train you to ignore email? Use Mortise.
3. If both are true this month, inspect first, then baseline.

The tools are listed together on the Litework tools page.