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Perhaps you’re looking for the best deals on your favorite product, or you’re hunting for a job. Or, you may just be on the lookout for fresh news and updates or need to monitor websites for academic/business purposes.
All this requires easy-to-use and effective website change monitoring software. Enter Sken.io. It’s a basic website monitoring tool that tracks website content and updates you on these changes. Although pretty barebones, Sken.io gets the job done, especially for personal uses. You can easily track changes with its handy comparison mode.
Plus, Sken.io offers you a 14-day free trial to help you get started, besides being one of the most affordable monitors out there. This article will explore in detail the features, pricing, and in-use experience of Sken.
Sken.io: Plans and pricing
Sken.io has three straightforward plans, in addition to a 14-day free trial. The trial lets you run 140 checks, which is enough to gauge if the platform fits your needs. The first paid plan, the Basic Plan, starts at €30.00/year ($31), which boils down to around $2.5/month. This makes it one of the cheapest website monitoring plans out there. The basic plan lets you run 500 checks per month.
If that’s not enough, you can upgrade to the Standard plan at €120/year ($125), with 3,000 checks per month. The Enterprise plan, at €450/year ($467), allows up to 15,000 checks per month. These plans are ideal for small and mid-sized businesses. However, if you’re a large business, you can even tailor a plan as per your needs with custom check limits.
One thing that we liked about Sken.io is that each paid plan supports a monitoring frequency of up to 1 minute. This is not something you get with other providers, where a low interval of 1 minute can only be found with higher-tier plans.
Another impressive thing about Sken.io is that if you are not satisfied with their services, you can request a full refund within 48 hours of payment. This is also something not many providers offer.
Sken.io: Features
Sken.io is pretty barebones when it comes to features. However, given the low price of $2.50/month, it still manages to deliver excellent value for money.
We liked Sken’s comparison mode, where you can use a virtual slider to view the changes side by side. The right side of the screen shows the previous version, whereas the current version is on the left. Simply move the slider from left to right to see all the changes highlighted in green.
You get two options when setting up a new monitor: regular interval and custom scheduler. The regular interval option comes in handy when you want to constantly check a website – say every hour or every 30 minutes.
However, there may be websites that do not need a regular check. For instance, if you’re monitoring your university results, you may choose the custom scheduler option. Under this, you’ll be able to select the exact date and time the crawling should take place. Not many content monitors offer this option.
You can also choose to monitor only a specific element on the webpage, say images. Next, there are also options to choose between visual check and content check. This eliminates clutter, ensuring you only get results that matter.
There’s also a unique content removal mode, where you can remove elements on a page you don’t want to track. For instance, if you’re looking for job listings, you may not be interested in tracking the images on that website. This mode helps Sken.io focus on the changes material to your needs and avoid any non-contextual change
Sken.io: Interface and in use
Sken.io’s dashboard, in spite of being basic, is free of clutter. You can check all your active jobs and detected changes at the top of the dashboard. Below this, you’ll find a list of all jobs currently being tracked.
Simply click the ‘Detail’ button on the right side of each job to view a list of all detected changes. On the left, you can access all exported change files along with your invoices (if you have a paid plan).
Using Sken.io is pretty easy, too. Just paste the link to create a new job, choose the frequency, and start monitoring. It does take a bit of time (around a minute) to load the page once you’ve pasted the link, which isn’t a dealbreaker.
Overall, you won’t require any training to start using Sken.io – everything is pretty self-explanatory.
Sken.io: Support
There aren’t many support options on Sken.io. If you have any queries, you’ll need to fill out a form on their website and input your email address and message. Then, simply wait for Sken’s team to reach out to you. Another option is to send them an email at info@sken.io.
Besides this, we didn’t find any tutorials on the website, not that you’ll need them anyway. There are a few blogs, though, that can help you learn more about Sken’s use cases.
Sken.io: The competition
Sken.io is a good entry-level content change monitoring website. However, it fails to deliver the goods for mid- and large-sized businesses. Here are a couple of alternatives you can consider.
PageCrawl offers a comprehensive free plan where you can track 6 pages each month along with PDF, Excel, and Word files. Plus, you get a lot of integrations, reports, and customized alerts – features you only see on paid plans of other providers.
Even its paid plans offer good value for money. You can track pages in bulk, track password-protected pages, and organize your tracked pages. However, PageCrawl lacks AI features.
Fluxguard is a good option if you’re looking for an AI-backed content monitor. There’s an AI tool that can translate other pages in English. Plus, you can use AI to summarize change reports, allowing you to spot key changes quickly and saving you a lot of time.
Fluxguard also allows you to set up custom AI prompts to look only for specific words during searches. However, it can be a tad expensive.
Sken.io: Final Verdict
Overall, we found Sken.io great for beginners and personal needs. Priced at just $2.50/month, it’s one of the cheapest trackers on the market right now. Using it is a cakewalk, too. All you have to do is paste the website link and choose your tracking frequency.
You can also set up a scheduled scan by choosing the exact time and date of the crawl and use its comparison mode for a quick visual snapshot of the recorded changes. Although there’s no free plan, you do get a 14-day free trial, which provides access to all Sken.io features. During this time, you can run a total of 140 checks.
However, during our testing, we found that Sken.io lacks a lot of advanced features, like report summarization, tracking password-protected pages, and integration. If you’re looking for a content monitor for business purposes, you can consider other options.
FAQs
Does Sken.io offer a free plan?
Although there’s no free Sken.io plan, you get a 14-day free trial to try out the tool risk-free. The best part is that none of the features are off-limits during this trial, which means you get to try the full paid product during the trial phase. You can run 140 scans during the free trial without even entering your credit card details.
Even if you want to upgrade, the Basic plan starts at just around $2.50/month, making Sken.io one of the most affordable content change monitoring platforms.
Who is Sken.io ideal for?
Sken.io is ideal for individuals and startups looking for a cheap content monitoring platform. Its paid plans start from just $2.50/month and are more than enough for starter-level tasks. Also, Sken.io is one of the easiest platforms to use. So, even if you’re not that quick with tech, you’ll find it a joy to use.
It’s worth noting that Sken.io does offer a $125 plan with 3,000 checks per month. However, a lack of advanced features like tracking locked content, PDFs, and Excels makes it a less popular choice among large businesses.
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