How to switch from OnWebChange without losing a tracker

If you want to switch from OnWebChange, the hard part is not signing up somewhere new. It is turning years of CSS selections, keyword filters and number rules into something that still fires at the right moment. This guide walks through that move one tracker at a time, using AyeWatch as the destination, and ends with the trackers you should probably leave where they are.

Before you start: take stock

OnWebChange has been around since 2009, so many accounts carry trackers nobody has opened in years. Spend ten minutes sorting yours into three piles:

• Still useful. You act when these fire.
• Noisy. They fire often and you mostly ignore them.
• Dead. The page is gone, or you no longer care.

Drop the dead pile. The noisy pile is where a move pays off most, because those trackers usually fail on a keyword filter that matches a word without knowing what the change means.

If you are on Standard or a Turbo plan, OnWebChange's tracker exporter gives you a CSV of everything, which makes the list easy to work through. Free and Lite plans do not include the exporter, so copy the URLs by hand.

Step 1: one URL, one sentence

AyeWatch has no import tool. For each tracker you keep, open a new webpage monitor, paste the URL, and write down what you actually want to hear about. The sentence replaces three things in OnWebChange: the CSS selection, the keyword rule and any number condition.

Some translations:

The rule is judged against the meaning of the change, not a DOM path. If the site moves the price into a new block next spring, the monitor keeps working because nothing pointed at the old block.

Step 2: group pages that share a rule

OnWebChange counts one tracker per page. In AyeWatch a webpage monitor can hold more than one URL under a single rule. If you watch five suppliers' price lists for the same reason, put them in one monitor with one sentence. That cuts setup time and gives you one alert stream to read.

Step 3: set the timing

Each monitor has its own schedule, so a busy pricing page and a quiet policy page do not have to share one.

• Auto speeds checks up while a page is busy and slows them when it goes quiet.
• Custom lets you choose a fixed interval, down to once a year for pages that rarely move.

Most trackers that ran daily on OnWebChange's free plan are fine on a daily schedule. Paid plans start at $9 a month, after the Free Preview. Whatever the timing, AyeWatch reads each change against your sentence and only alerts you when it matters, with a short summary attached.

Step 4: route alerts

OnWebChange sends email, Pushover and URL callbacks. AyeWatch sends push notifications to its own iOS and Android apps and fills an in-app feed on every plan. Paid plans add email, a daily digest email, Slack, Discord, signed webhooks and the REST API. You pick channels per monitor, so a supplier price change can go to Slack while a job posting goes to your phone.

If you used callbacks to feed another system, the AyeWatch webhook is the closest match. Each event carries a short summary of what changed.

Step 5: run both for a week

Keep the OnWebChange trackers live for a few days after you set up the new monitors. Compare what each one sends. You will usually find the AyeWatch rule fires less often, and when it does the summary tells you why. Tighten any sentence that is too loose, then pause the old tracker.

What to leave on OnWebChange

Be honest with yourself about a few cases:

• PDFs and files. OnWebChange tracks PDF and document contents directly. AyeWatch does not list PDF tracking, so keep those trackers.
• Pages behind a login. OnWebChange can send custom headers to reach login-protected content. AyeWatch watches the public web.
• Tight budgets. OnWebChange's paid plans start at 0.89 euros a month. If cost is the only thing that matters and your filters already behave, there is little reason to move.

Start small

Pick your three noisiest trackers and rebuild them first. The AyeWatch Free Preview gives you three lifetime monitoring runs across up to three topics with no card, which is enough to see whether plain-English rules cut the noise for your pages. For a side-by-side of features, see the OnWebChange comparison page.