Browse the docs
Getting started
Set up SpyGlow in your first hour, from entering your website to your first battle card.
This guide covers your first hour: tell SpyGlow your website, pick a competitor, choose what to watch, and see what comes back. Everything here works on the Free plan.
1. Create your account
Sign up at https://www.spyglow.com with Google or with your email address. The Free plan needs no card. SpyGlow then opens onboarding.
2. Enter your website
Onboarding starts with Let's find your competitors. Enter your website, for example yourcompany.com, and click Continue. SpyGlow scans your market and suggests up to three competitors to monitor first. It usually takes about 15 seconds.
On Top matches for your site, click Monitor next to the competitor you want, or click Enter a different competitor to type a domain yourself. If suggestions are slow or unavailable, type a domain or click Try suggestions again. To skip suggestions, click Skip, I'll add a competitor directly on the first screen, or Skip for now on a later one.
3. Set up your first competitor
The setup wizard opens at /competitors/new. You can come back to it any time with Add competitor on the dashboard. It has four steps:
- Find competitor. Search by company name or domain, or open Enter domain manually. If you picked a suggestion in onboarding, this step is done.
- What to monitor. Under Recommended pages to monitor, SpyGlow suggests pages to watch, such as the homepage and pricing page. Turn pages on or off, or add one with Add page manually. On a wide screen, click a page to preview it on the right. The homepage is always included. Free covers 3 pages per competitor.
- Alerts. Choose what reaches your inbox (see the next section).
- Review. Check the summary and click Start monitoring.
On Pro and above, you can switch a page from Full page to Sections and watch only the parts you care about, such as a pricing table. To stop halfway, click Save and exit. Your draft waits in your competitors list.
4. Choose your alerts
The Alerts step asks you to Choose what should interrupt you. New competitors start with:
- In-app activity on.
- Email important changes on, at High impact only: changes rated 8 to 10 on a 1 to 10 importance scale.
Open Advanced sensitivity to pick High + Medium (5 to 10) or All alerts (1 to 10) instead. Whatever you choose, every change stays in your Changes feed with before and after evidence. Later, change alerts in the competitor's Settings tab, or turn off all competitor alert emails under Account > Notifications. Slack and webhooks are available on Pro and above.
5. See what SpyGlow found
After Start monitoring, the competitor's page opens with What happens next. Setup runs in the background, so you can leave the page. SpyGlow emails you when setup is ready and tells you when the first automatic check runs. Free checks pages once a day, and changes appear when a later check finds something different.
Meanwhile, open the Dashboard. For a competitor added in the past week that has no changes yet, the First look card shows what SpyGlow learned during setup: their tagline and positioning, business model, pricing, who they sell to, possible threats and opportunities, the pages being watched and when the next check runs. It comes from their website and public search results, so check anything important before you act on it.
6. Read the Daily Market Feed
The dashboard home is the Daily Market Feed. Each story groups related moves by a competitor, and Decide today lists the ones that need you most. For each story, choose Ignore, Watch or Respond. Until a competitor changes something, the feed shows Your first stories are on their way.
7. Make your first battle card
Open Battle Cards, click Generate, then pick the competitor and a Card type. For a competitor you just added, Balanced or Web research usually works best, because there is little monitoring history yet.
Free includes one battle card generation a month: a new card or a check for updates. If SpyGlow cannot find enough supported facts, you see More evidence needed instead of a guessed card, and that attempt does not use your allowance. From there you can click Try web research or Check monitoring setup.
8. Ask AskGlow
Open AskGlow from the sidebar, or click Ask AskGlow what to watch on the competitor's page. Ask something like "What should I watch for with Acme?" and AskGlow answers from what SpyGlow has collected. Free includes 10 questions a month, and the count shows under the question box.
9. Invite your team
Inviting teammates needs the Teams plan, which includes 3 seats. Extra seats cost $39 a month each, up to 25 seats. The team owner opens Team in the sidebar and clicks Invite member. On another plan, open Billing in the sidebar to change plans first.