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Website Change Monitoring vs Uptime Monitoring
Uptime monitoring answers one question: did the server respond? Change monitoring answers a different one: what changed on the page, and does it matter? A site can return HTTP 200 while its checkout button has vanished, its canonical tag points elsewhere, or its analytics script stopped loading. Uptime tools call all three healthy, because by their definition they are.
Last updated: September 9, 2026
How do uptime monitors compare with MyKavo?
The table below is capability by capability. Anything marked for MyKavo is in the shipped product today, not a roadmap item.
| Capability | Uptime monitors | MyKavo |
|---|---|---|
| Detects the server being down | Yes - this is the core job, usually within a minute | Yes - a probe every 5 minutes, with incidents opened after two consecutive failures |
| Detects a page returning 200 but broken | No - a 200 response is treated as healthy | Yes - the page is compared against an approved baseline |
| Detects a missing checkout or signup button | No | Yes - conversion elements are checked by CSS selector for existence, visibility, text and destination |
| Detects an index-to-noindex flip | No | Yes - flagged CRITICAL, the highest severity |
| Detects analytics or payment scripts disappearing | No | Yes - recognised services are named, and their removal is flagged HIGH |
| Shows before-and-after evidence | No - the alert is that a check failed | Yes - previous and current values, plus screenshot diffs for visual change |
| SSL certificate expiry warnings | Commonly yes | Yes - an incident opens 14 days before expiry |
Where uptime monitors are the better choice
There are real cases where the other tool wins, and pretending otherwise would waste your time. Pick them over MyKavo when you need:
- Sub-minute detection intervals, where MyKavo probes every five minutes
- Multi-region probing to distinguish a real outage from a regional network fault
- Phone, SMS and pager escalation policies for on-call rotations
- Monitoring APIs, TCP ports and infrastructure rather than rendered web pages
Who should choose MyKavo?
Teams who already know when the site is down, and keep getting caught by the failures that happen while it is up.
- Free plan: 1 website, 5 monitored pages, weekly scans, 30-day history, no card
- Pro at $20/month: 8 websites, 15 pages each, daily scans, 1-year history, 5 seats
- Site audit on every plan: 89 checks across 22 categories
- Every alert carries the previous and current value, and a screenshot diff for visual change
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between uptime monitoring and website change monitoring?
Uptime monitoring checks whether a server responds and how fast. Change monitoring captures what a page contained and compares it against a later capture, reporting what differs. The first catches outages; the second catches regressions that leave the site technically online - a broken form, a deleted section, a canonical tag pointing at the wrong URL.
Do I still need an uptime monitor if I use MyKavo?
MyKavo runs its own uptime probe every five minutes with SSL expiry tracking and incident history, which is enough for most small teams and agencies. If you run on-call rotations and need sub-minute detection, multi-region probing or phone escalation, keep a dedicated uptime tool and use MyKavo for what changed rather than what is down.
Can an uptime monitor detect a broken checkout button?
No. An uptime monitor requests the URL and checks the status code and response time. If the page returns HTTP 200 the check passes, regardless of what the page now contains. Detecting a missing button requires comparing the rendered page against a known-good version, which is a different kind of check entirely.
How quickly does MyKavo detect a change?
Availability and SSL are checked every five minutes. Page content is compared on your scan schedule - weekly on the free plan, daily on Pro, plus on-demand manual scans. Change monitoring is deliberately less frequent than an uptime ping because each scan renders the page in a real browser and captures a full screenshot.