Most people looking for a website change alert app want one thing: a buzz on the phone when a page they care about changes, without keeping a laptop open or installing anything heavy. OnWebChange can get you there, but it takes a detour through a second app. This explainer shows how that works today and what a phone-first option looks like.
How OnWebChange reaches your phone
OnWebChange is a web service. You sign up in the browser, pick a page, select the part you care about, and it checks on a schedule. It sends alerts by email, by URL callback, and through Pushover.
Pushover is a separate notification app for Android and iOS, made by a different company. To get OnWebChange alerts as phone notifications, you install Pushover, link it to your OnWebChange account, and route your trackers there. OnWebChange does not show its own mobile app on its site.
That setup works, and plenty of people run it. It does mean two accounts, two apps' settings, and an alert that tells you a page changed rather than what the change means for you.
What a dedicated app changes
AyeWatch has its own apps for iOS and Android, plus a web app, and everything syncs between them. You can set up a monitor on your phone during a lunch break and see the same thing on a laptop later.
Setting up takes three moves:
- Paste a link, for example a concert venue's events page.
- Write what you want to hear about: "Tell me when tickets for a new date go on sale. Ignore changes to the merch section."
- Pick how often it should check.
When the page changes in a way that matches your sentence, the app sends a push notification with a short summary of what happened. If the change does not match, for instance the venue swaps a banner photo, nothing arrives. Push notifications and the in-app feed come with every plan, including the free one.
Things you can watch from your phone
The pages people follow from a phone tend to be personal:
- A product page for a restock or a price drop
- A careers page at a company you want to join
- A school or club page for registration dates
- A rental listing site for new places in one area
- A game studio's news page for patch notes
AyeWatch also follows topics, not just pages. You can ask it to watch news, forums and social sources such as Reddit, YouTube or TikTok for a subject, which a single-page tracker cannot do.
Side by side
| OnWebChange | AyeWatch | |
|---|---|---|
| Phone alerts | Through Pushover, a third-party app | Its own iOS and Android apps |
| How you set the rule | Select page parts, add keyword or number rules | Write a sentence |
| What the alert says | That the content changed, with optional AI summary | A summary of the change that matched your rule |
| Free option | Free plan, 3 trackers, daily checks | Free Preview, 3 lifetime runs across up to 3 topics |
| Cheapest paid | 0.89 euros a month | $9 a month (Pro) |
The honest trade-off
OnWebChange is cheaper, and its free plan lasts forever, while AyeWatch's Free Preview is a short trial of three runs. If you are tracking one or two simple pages and do not mind installing Pushover, OnWebChange is a fine choice. AyeWatch makes more sense when you want the alert itself to be useful, and when you would rather manage everything from one app on your phone.
Paid AyeWatch plans run on monitoring credits. Most checks use one credit, and the app shows the expected daily use when you pick a schedule, so faster checking on more pages costs more. Email, Slack and Discord alerts are on paid plans too.
Getting started
Install the app, paste one link, and write one sentence. If the first alert is the kind you would have wanted anyway, add the next page. You can also read AyeWatch's longer list of OnWebChange alternatives to see how other trackers handle mobile alerts.