Getting Started¶
A 5-10 minute walkthrough from signing up to seeing your first comparison, plus where to go next for each feature.
Core concepts¶
| Concept | What it means |
|---|---|
| Project | A site or app you're tracking — one domain, permanently. |
| Environment | A deployment target for a project (e.g. staging, production). |
| Language | A locale to capture the page in. |
| Viewport | A screen size to capture the page at. |
| Page | A URL (or URL template) within a project to capture. |
| Scan | Finds pages on your site automatically instead of adding each one by hand. |
| Capture | One screenshot — a specific environment/language/viewport/page combination. |
| Monitor | Watches one page on a schedule, recapturing and comparing automatically. |
| Comparison | A diff between two captures — what changed, and how much. |
Quick start¶
1. Create your account and workspace¶
Sign up with an email and password, or with Google (see Account & Workspace). Your first Workspace is created for you — it's the billing and membership boundary that will own everything else you create.
2. Create a project¶
An eligible first workspace starts a 14-day trial during the welcome flow. The trial clock starts when the workspace is created, so continue setup promptly. See Plans & Billing for trial limits and subscription instructions.
From your workspace dashboard, use Add project. Pick the domain you want to track (this can't be changed later) and give it a name. See Projects.
3. Let the guided setup create your defaults¶
When you create a project, choose Follow the guided tutorial or I'll set it up myself. New projects come with a Production Environment (from the domain you entered) and a Desktop 1440×1080 Viewport already created for you either way — you don't need to add either by hand to get started. Following the tutorial walks you through everything else one field at a time: a highlighted box shows exactly which field to fill in next, with a brief explanation, an Example where useful, and Previous/Next to move between fields (skippable at any point via Skip tutorial, always in the top-right corner). It covers your main Language, optionally more Viewports (a "Desktop viewport was created for you" prompt offers Add a viewport now or Continue to scan later), discovering and approving pages, and taking a first capture. See Environments, Languages, and Viewports for what each of these actually configures, and edit the auto-created defaults any time — onboarding never overwrites or duplicates existing configuration on a project that already has any. Selecting Skip tutorial at any point remembers your choice for this project, so it won't reappear on the next guided step either.
4. Find your pages¶
Either run a Scan (Sitemap is fastest if your site has one) to discover pages automatically, or add a single page by hand from the Pages tab to try things out immediately. A scan's "New" pages aren't tracked until you Approve them.
5. Install the Chrome extension and take your first capture¶
Manual captures run through the Chrome extension, not the server — install it from the Chrome Web Store and sign in to Cloud mode (a separate sign-in from the dashboard). Then, from the Captures tab, select your environment/language/viewport/page and start a capture. See Captures & Comparisons. Once your first capture finishes, a banner offers View capture — worth clicking even outside onboarding, since it's also what marks first-time setup as complete.
6. See your first comparison¶
Run a second capture of the same page later (after a real or deliberate change), open the completed job, and select both captures to compare. You'll see the side-by-side/overlay/diff views and the change signals breakdown. See Comparing two captures.
7. Set up a Monitor for ongoing tracking¶
Manual captures are one-off; a Monitor watches one page on a schedule, comparing every new run against a baseline automatically and notifying you when something changes — this is the core, recurring use case most people are here for. Monitors also run server-side, so they work against environments that need auth (cookies/headers/basic auth), unlike manual captures. After your first capture, a dismissable "create your first monitor" banner offers to jump straight into this. Choosing Create monitor opens the Monitors page and — if you're following the tutorial — walks you through the page, language, viewport, schedule, and notifications fields one at a time, with nothing preselected for you. If you dismiss it, the same offer reappears as a "New to monitors?" banner the next time you open the Monitors page, until you dismiss that too.
Where to go next¶
- Plans & Billing — compare limits; subscribe; upgrade, downgrade, change seats, manage invoices, cancel, or resume.
- Account & Workspace — members/roles, billing, trials, custom domains, workspace storage.
- Projects — environments, languages, viewports, pages, interaction rules.
- Scans — automatic page discovery (sitemap, crawler, manual list, Excel).
- Monitors — scheduled watch-and-notify on one page at a time.
- Captures & Comparisons — on-demand screenshots and diffing.
- Review Workflow — triage every change your monitors detect in one queue.
- Collections — group captures together so they're never auto-deleted.
- Wayback — browse the full screenshot history of a page on a calendar.
- Uptime — lightweight "is it up?" checks, separate from screenshot monitors.
- QA Rules — catch text/content problems automatically on every capture.
- Notifications — the notification bell and email alerts.
- Chrome Extension — Free Local mode (no account) vs. Cloud mode.
- FAQ / Troubleshooting — common gotchas and error messages explained.