Short answer
Distill is a flexible, technical website monitor. You pick exactly what to track with a visual selector or XPath, CSS and regex, filter alerts with conditions, and run checks in the cloud or locally as often as every few seconds. It has a free plan. Tonic needs no setup. It finds each competitor's pricing and offer pages, checks twice a week, explains and ranks each change, and builds client reports. Pick Distill for precision. Pick Tonic for agency reporting.
Comparison table
| Feature | Tonic | Distill |
|---|---|---|
| Per-client organization | Yes, on every plan | Not verified (shared watchlist on Enterprise) |
| Importance ranking | Yes, changes ranked by importance | Conditions filter alerts; importance ranking not verified |
| Before/after screenshots | Yes | Not verified |
| Check frequency | Twice a week (Monday and Thursday) | Cloud every 6 hours (Free) to 2 min (Flexi); local from 5 seconds |
| Pages per competitor | Up to 3 key pages, found for you | Any pages; 25 to 500+ monitors in total by plan |
| Reports/PDF | Client-ready reports, share links and PDFs | Version history; reports/PDF not verified |
| Team seats | 1 (Solo), 5 (Agency), 10 (Studio) | Not verified (team watchlist on Enterprise) |
| Starting price | $599/yr (Solo), billed yearly | Free; Starter $15/mo (20% off annually) |
Where Distill is better
- Precision: track an exact element, with conditions on the value.
- Speed: local checks every few seconds; cloud checks down to 2 minutes.
- Price to start: a free plan, and paid plans from $15/month.
- Alert channels: email, push, SMS, webhooks, Slack, Discord and Teams.
Where Tonic fits better
- No selectors or rules: Tonic finds the pricing and offer pages for each competitor.
- Organized by client: Each client gets its own workspace, with its own competitors, changes and reports.
- Explained, ranked, report-ready: each change has a plain-words explanation, an importance ranking, screenshots and a client report.
Who should pick which
- You report to several clients and want no setup: Tonic
- You need to track an exact element or value with conditions: Distill
- You need checks every few minutes or seconds: Distill
- You want a free plan or many alert channels (SMS, push, Discord, Teams): Distill
- You want each change explained, ranked and ready for a client report: Tonic
Examples
- During a competitor's seasonal sale, you want to know within minutes if the price on one booking page drops below a set number. Distill can watch that exact element with a number-range condition, on a 2- to 10-minute cloud check depending on plan.
- You manage 5 clients, each with 3 competitors, and need a monthly report of meaningful offer and price changes. Tonic Solo covers 5 clients and 15 competitors for $599/yr, with no selectors to set up.