When we launched OR:ON, we wrote about pages: prices, stock, job boards. That’s where most people start, and it’s what page monitors was known for.
But a lot of what matters never shows up on a page you’d think to open. It shows up in a feed, a data file, a domain record, a script in the code, or a server that stops answering. OR:ON watches those too, and we’ve barely mentioned them.
Every Watch works the same way. You add the address, preview the first result, and pick how often it checks and on which days. Later checks compare against that first result. You choose what counts as an alert: any change, something new, something removed, or a sentence you write. Alerts go to email, Slack, Discord, Teams or Telegram.
What changes is the question each Watch answers. Here are seven, with one example each.
1. What did they publish?
RSS Watch. Alerts when an item in a feed is new or changed, with the title and the link.
Most people think of RSS as a way to follow blogs. The more useful feeds come from places that publish things you have to act on.
Take the tools your business runs on. Most software projects on GitHub publish their releases as a feed at github.com/owner/project/releases.atom. Point an RSS Watch at the plugin, library or app your site depends on, and you hear about a new version, or a security fix, the day it ships. You don’t have to wait for something to break first.
The same goes for government agencies, standards bodies and industry groups. Many of them publish notices, recalls and rule changes as feeds that nobody reads until a customer asks about them.
Available on every plan, including Free.
2. What are they building, and what did they drop?
Sitemap Watch. Alerts when a page address is added to a sitemap or removed from it.
A sitemap is the list of pages a site wants search engines to find. Companies update it with every launch, often before the new page is linked from anywhere.
A competitor’s sitemap gaining /integrations/salesforce or /pricing/enterprise tells you where they’re heading. The removals tell you even more. When a whole product line disappears from a sitemap, someone made a decision, and you’ll know about it before any announcement.
Now do the same for your own site. A redesign or a plugin update can quietly drop hundreds of addresses from your sitemap. Search engines use that list to find and recheck pages, so the missing ones get found and updated less often. A Sitemap Watch on your own domain tells you the same day, while it’s still an easy fix.
Available on every plan, including Free.
3. Did the data I depend on change?
JSON Watch and API Watch. Both alert when a field is added, removed, or its value changes.
A lot of data sits one step behind the page. Many Shopify stores, for example, publish their whole catalog at /products.json: every product, variant, price and stock flag. A JSON Watch on that address catches a price change or a product going out of stock across the entire store, not just the one page you happened to bookmark.
The API Watch is for data you can’t get with a plain link. You set the method, headers and body, plus the status you expect back. That covers the services your business runs on: shipping rates, supplier inventory, a payment provider’s response. When a vendor renames a field or changes a value format, your integration breaks and nobody sends you an email. The API Watch does.
JSON Watch: every plan, including Free. API Watch: Plus and Scale.
4. Is my site actually up?
Uptime Watch. Alerts when a host goes down and again when it comes back, with the status and how long it was down.
Most owners find out their site was down from a customer. The checkout stopped answering at 2 AM, and the first sign was an angry email at 9.
An Uptime Watch tells you at 2 AM, in the channel your team actually reads. The second alert matters just as much: you learn when it came back and how long it was gone. That’s the number you need when you talk to your host, or explain a bad morning to your boss.
Watch the hosts you don’t own too. If your store depends on a payment provider or a shipping API, an Uptime Watch on that host tells you the problem is theirs before you spend an hour searching your own code.
Plus and Scale.
5. Who just switched tools?
Tech stack Watch. Alerts when a site adds a technology, removes one, or changes its version.
When a company adds a chat tool, moves to a new store platform, or drops an analytics product, it’s spending money and making decisions. That’s a sales signal, and it’s public.
If you sell to companies on a specific platform, put your prospect list into Tech stack Watches and wait for the platform to appear. If you compete with a known product, watch its customers for the opposite. A script that disappears from a customer’s site often means the contract ended and they’re shopping.
Agencies can point it at client sites. A version change you didn’t make, or an old version that never gets updated, is a reason to call the client before something breaks.
Personal, Plus and Scale.
6. Is my domain safe?
WHOIS Watch. Alerts when a domain’s registrar, expiry date, nameservers, status or DNS records change.
These records almost never change. That’s exactly why a change is worth an alert.
Start with your own domain. A new nameserver or registrar you didn’t set up is an early sign of a hijack. A changed MX record means your email is now going somewhere else. Either one can cost you a week of lost mail or a lost domain, and the WHOIS Watch catches it on the next check. Send this one to Slack, not a daily digest.
It also works for a domain you want to buy. For most generic domains like .com, an expired name goes through a renewal grace period, then about 30 days of redemption and 5 days of pending delete before anyone can register it. A WHOIS Watch on its status tells you when it enters each stage, so you’re ready on the day it drops.
Personal, Plus and Scale.
7. What changed under the hood?
Source code Watch. Alerts when a page’s HTML changes, and shows the lines that changed.
Some of the most important changes are invisible on the page.
On your own site, the classic one is a single line: <meta name="robots" content="noindex">. It slips onto a live page after a deploy, the page looks perfect, and search engines quietly drop it. Nobody notices until traffic falls weeks later. A Source code Watch on your key pages shows you that line the day it appears. The same goes for a tracking script that vanished after an update, or a plugin that injected code you never approved.
On someone else’s site, the code tells you what they’re testing. A new A/B testing script, a new ad pixel or a changed page title usually comes before a visible change.
Plus and Scale.
Start with one you can set up tonight
Three of these work on the Free plan: RSS, Sitemap and JSON. Pick the one closest to a question you already have.
Do it yourself: open orion.hexowatch.com then click add URL and paste your Sitemap, and you’re done. No card needed.
