Competitor monitoring checklist: what to track and when
A competitor monitoring checklist for small teams: nine things to track, how often to check each one, and what to ignore.
By DanPublished 3 min read
Competitor monitoring fails in one of two ways. Either nobody does it, and you learn about a rival's new plan from a prospect. Or someone tracks everything, and the weekly update becomes forty links that nobody reads.
A checklist fixes both. It says what to look at, how often, and what to skip. This one is built for a team with no analyst, where monitoring is a small part of somebody's week.
Start with five competitors or fewer
Each competitor on the list costs time every week. Five is the most a small team can follow by hand. Three is better. Pick the ones buyers compare you with, and move the rest to a "check twice a year" list.
The checklist
Nine things are worth tracking. Each has a place to look and a rhythm that matches how often it changes.
- Pricing page
- Weekly. Prices, plan names, limits, the free tier and which features sit in which plan.
- Home page
- Weekly. The headline, the first screen and the main button.
- Changelog
- Weekly. What shipped, and whether three releases in a row point the same way.
- New pages
- Weekly. New feature, comparison and landing pages, found through the sitemap.
- Public complaints
- Weekly. Forum posts where their customers complain or ask for an alternative.
- Blog and newsletter
- Monthly. Topics they write about, and the customers they name.
- Careers page
- Monthly. Which teams are hiring and in which countries.
- Integrations and partners
- Monthly. New entries on the integrations page.
- Terms and security pages
- Quarterly. Data location, uptime promises and contract length.
Why these nine
The weekly five
Pricing page. A price change reaches your sales calls within days. This is the one item you can't afford to check monthly. How to track pricing changes covers it in detail.
Home page. The headline is the company's answer to "who is this for?". When it changes from "for startups" to "for sales teams", they have picked a new customer.
Changelog. One release tells you little. A run of releases about the same area tells you where the roadmap is going.
New pages. A new page called "Acme CRM vs your product" means they now meet you in deals. Most new pages aren't linked from the menu, so read the sitemap to find them.
Public complaints. A thread where their customers ask for an alternative is a list of people who might switch to you, with their reasons written out.
The monthly three
Blog posts, job ads and integration pages change slowly and say something about the next six months. A weekly check of these produces noise. Once a month, skim them and write down only what surprises you.
The quarterly one
Terms and security pages rarely change. When they do, it matters to larger buyers, for example when a competitor starts offering EU data hosting. Four checks a year are enough.
What to leave off the list
- Every social media post. Launches reach the changelog and the blog anyway.
- Design changes. A new illustration style changes nothing for your customers.
- Funding news and headcount. Interesting, and rarely something you can act on this week.
- Things behind a login. If you would need a fake account to see it, leave it. Public pages cover what you need.
How the time adds up
Here is the checklist run by hand for 5 competitors. The weekly five take about 10 minutes per competitor. The monthly three take 15 minutes per competitor, and the quarterly check takes 10.
- Weekly five200 minutes a month
- Monthly three75 minutes a month
- Quarterly one17 minutes a month
A worked example: 4 weekly rounds of 50 minutes, one monthly round of 75, and a third of a quarterly round of 50.
That is close to five hours a month, and the weekly items make up most of it. They are also the easiest to automate, because they live on public pages that a tool can check.
Hand the weekly five to a tracker
Plainrival covers the weekly part of this checklist. Website change tracking checks each watched page once a day and keeps the before and after. It finds new pages through the sitemap. Complaint signals collects public complaints and switching posts about each competitor from Hacker News.
Once a week it sends a brief of at most seven items, sorted by how much each one matters to you.
Weekly brief
Week 40 · 4 items · 23 changes filtered out
- Moved SSO into every paid planPricing page · acme.exampleImportance 922 h
- Launched AI inbox triage in betaChangelog · cedar.exampleImportance 841 d
- New page: “Lumen Billing vs your product”Sitemap · lumen.exampleImportance 782 d
- Starter plan up from €29 to €35 a monthPricing page · orbit.exampleImportance 664 d
The monthly and quarterly items stay with you. They need a person who knows the market, and they take about an hour and a half a month.
End every round with a decision
A checklist only earns its time when a check leads to something. After each weekly round, write one line:
- What changed
- Who it affects
- What you will do, or "nothing this week"
"Nothing this week" is the right answer most of the time. Writing it down means someone looked and made the call.
Questions
Questions about competitor monitoring
How many competitors should I monitor?
Three to five. Choose the ones buyers compare you with. Check the others twice a year.
How often should I check competitors?
Pricing, home page, changelog, new pages and public complaints weekly. Blog, careers and integrations monthly. Terms and security pages quarterly.
Who should own competitor monitoring in a small team?
One named person, usually in marketing or the founder. A shared task gets skipped the first busy week.