Distill Web Monitor vs Visual Sentinel
Distill Web Monitor
distill.ioVisual Sentinel
visualsentinel.comSide by side
| Figure | Distill Web Monitor | Visual Sentinel |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $15/mo | $4.50/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 9 | 15 |
| Spec score · Website Monitoring Software | 9.3 (#1) | 8.5 (#11) |
| Integrations | Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams actions use incoming webhooks and are available to paid customers. | The pricing comparison lists Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Cloudflare import and proxy bypass, and server-to-site correlation. |
| Intended users | The maker describes Free as suited to testing and non-essential use, Starter for individuals, Professional for advanced individual use, and Flexi for scale and fast updates. | The maker describes the product as serving small teams, agencies, and site owners. |
| Notable release | The Google Play September 2026 release notes describe a rebuilt app with a diff-engine overhaul, change feed, AI monitor setup, offline access, and bulk actions. | The changelog lists version 2.173.1 on September 26, 2026, fixing signup-source retention when continuing with Sign in with Apple. |
| Purpose | Distill monitors websites on a schedule, compares page content, and alerts users when it changes. | Visual Sentinel monitors websites and servers and detects visual page changes that ordinary uptime checks may miss. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.6 out of 5 from 4 reviews | 5.0 out of 5 from 1 review |
| What it does | Distill monitors webpages and other supported URLs on a schedule, compares versions, and sends alerts when configured changes occur. | Visual Sentinel monitors uptime, performance, SSL, DNS, rendered visual changes and configured content changes from one service. |
Plans
Distill Web Monitor
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Starter$15 a month
- Starter$15 a month
- Professional$35 a month
- Professional$35 a month
- Flexi$80 a month
- Flexi$80 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
Visual Sentinel
- Solo$6 a month
- Solo$54 a year
- Starter$12 a month
- Starter$108 a year
- Business$39 a month
- Business$351 a year
- FreeFree
- Agency$149 a month
- Agency$1,341 a year
- FreeFree
In their own words
Distill Web Monitor
Distill Web Monitor tracks selected website or document content on a schedule, compares it for changes, and sends alerts. Local monitors run in a browser or on the user's computer; cloud monitors run on Distill's servers without requiring the device to stay on. Users can select a whole page or a portion visually, then refine the selection with XPath, CSS, regular expressions, or JavaScript. Monitor types include webpages, PDFs, JSON, Word, XML, feeds, uptime, and sitemaps. Alert rules can use text matches, numeric ranges, and regular expressions. Notifications include email, SMS, phone push, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, and webhooks. Macros can fill forms and click, and API access is available on request. Local checks can run at intervals as short as five seconds; Free cloud checks start at six-hour intervals. The free plan costs nothing and includes 25 monitors, five cloud monitors, 1,000 cloud checks per month, two devices, and 30 email alerts per month. Starter begins at $15 a month. Unused resources expire at the billing period's end, and cloud checks count in ten-second units.
Visual Sentinel
Visual Sentinel monitors websites and servers, including page changes that ordinary uptime checks may miss. Its monitoring covers uptime, screenshot-based visual comparison, SSL, DNS, performance, content, APIs, endpoints, and servers. For visual checks, it captures a page in a browser and compares the screenshot with a prior baseline. Users can exclude changing page elements with CSS selectors and set the amount of change needed to flag a capture. Failed uptime checks are repeated; a site is marked down only if it fails from all selected regions. Alerts can go to email, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, webhooks, Prometheus, and browser push. The REST API manages monitors, incidents, status pages, maintenance windows, reports, and notification channels; API access is listed for Business and Agency. The Free plan costs nothing and includes three monitors, 10-minute checks, and one status page. Solo costs $6 a month. Visual Sentinel is built and operated by Acefina LLC and is intended for small teams, agencies, and site owners.