Deployment Monitoring: Checks That Run When Your Site Changes

Scheduled monitoring finds a broken deploy on its next run — which could be minutes or hours after it shipped. NorthDuty also watches for the deploy itself, and runs the full check suite as soon as your site changes, whether that change came from a release pipeline or someone hitting Publish in WordPress.

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Run every check the moment you deploy or publish — not at the next scheduled slot.

What runs when a change is detected

The same four monitoring types NorthDuty already runs on a schedule, re-run against the version you just shipped.

A full health audit

Not the cheap uptime tier — the full pass: SSL, DNS, redirects, Core Web Vitals, broken resources, JavaScript errors, security headers, accessibility, and SEO fundamentals. A deploy is exactly when those break, and exactly what a status-code ping cannot see.

A capture and visual diff

A fresh full-page screenshot diffed against the last baseline, so you see what the release actually changed on screen — including the parts nobody meant to change.

Every active user journey

Login, signup, checkout, and search flows replayed in a real browser. A release that breaks checkout is invisible to a page-level check and obvious to a journey.

Every enabled API monitor

Backend contract changes ship with deploys too. NorthDuty re-runs your API monitors so a renamed field or a changed status code surfaces immediately, not at the next cadence.

See what the deploy changed

A change-triggered run produces the same evidence as a scheduled one — the difference is when it ran.

UI Changes

The visual diff from the run your deploy triggered

Changed regions outlined over a dimmed capture with a changed-percentage figure, produced minutes after the release rather than at the next scheduled slot.

NorthDuty UI changes monitoring screen showing screenshot history, previous screenshot, diff overlay, and 7.20 percent changed.
Screenshot history with previous capture, diff overlay, and changed percentage.

The window between shipping and finding out

Most breakages are not random — they are caused. Somebody deployed, updated a plugin, published a page, or switched a theme, and something that used to work stopped. Monitoring on a fixed timer will find it eventually, but 'eventually' is the whole problem: the gap between the change landing and the next scheduled check is the window where customers hit the broken version and you have no idea.

Deployment monitoring closes that window by making the change itself the trigger. NorthDuty detects it two ways. It watches your site for the signatures of a release — the content-hashed asset filenames every modern build tool produces, framework build IDs, CMS version bumps, sitemap and feed timestamps, and platform APIs like the WordPress REST endpoint. And it accepts a signed webhook from your CMS, host, or CI pipeline for the cases where you want it instant.

Either way the result is the same: a full health audit, a fresh capture and visual diff, every active user journey, and every API monitor — run against the version you just shipped, not the one from an hour ago.

Why triggering on change beats waiting for the next check

Same checks, better timing — plus the context of knowing what caused the result.

How deployment monitoring works

Detect, wait for the dust to settle, then run everything once.

1

NorthDuty notices the change

Either your CMS, host, or CI posts a signed webhook, or NorthDuty's own fingerprint check spots that your asset hashes, build ID, sitemap, or CMS content timestamps moved.

2

A short settling window

One deploy can produce a dozen signals in ninety seconds. NorthDuty collapses them into a single run, and the brief wait also lets your CDN finish purging — so the capture reflects the deployed site, not a half-warm cache.

3

The full suite runs

Health audit, capture and visual diff, active user journeys, and API monitors — all against the new version, all producing the same reviewable evidence as a scheduled run.

4

You get told what broke

Your existing alert rules apply unchanged. Failures reach the channels you already configured, tied to the change that caused them.

Related NorthDuty Pages

Explore pricing, feature details, solution pages, and related tools connected to this website monitoring use case.

Pricing

Pricing

NorthDuty plans are sized by how many checkout, signup, and login journeys you monitor: Free (1 daily journey), $29 Starter, $79 Pro, $199 Business, $499 Enterprise. 7-day full trial, no card.

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Features

Explore NorthDuty features: website health checks every 5 minutes, screenshot-based visual change detection, and AI-suggested user journey monitoring in one project.

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Solutions

Explore NorthDuty solutions for ecommerce website monitoring, SaaS website monitoring, agency website monitoring, and startup website monitoring.

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Feature

Website Change Detection

Monitor web pages for visual, content, and layout changes with scheduled screenshots and pixel-level diffs.

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Feature

Visual Regression Monitoring

Screenshot-based visual regression testing and website change detection for key pages — get pixel diffs on design, content, and layout changes, no code required.

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Feature

User Journey Monitoring

NorthDuty runs your checkout, signup, login, and form flows in a real browser on a schedule and reports the exact step that failed — with a screenshot. AI-suggested, no scripts.

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Feature

API Monitoring

NorthDuty finds the critical APIs your site depends on and suggests monitors for them. Add an endpoint, confirm the fields it should return, and get alerted when it breaks.

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Article

How to Monitor a Website After Deployment

Learn how to monitor a website after deployment so releases, CMS edits, experiments, and integration changes do not create silent regressions.

Read How to Monitor a Website After Deployment

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to common questions about this monitoring feature and when teams should use it.

What is deployment monitoring?

Deployment monitoring runs your checks when your website changes, instead of only on a fixed timer. NorthDuty detects a deploy or a CMS publish and then runs a full health audit, a screenshot and visual diff, your user journeys, and your API monitors against the version that just shipped.

Do I have to install a plugin or change my pipeline?

No. NorthDuty can detect deploys from the outside by watching your site's content-hashed asset filenames, framework build ID, CMS generator version, sitemap and feed timestamps, and platform APIs such as the WordPress REST endpoint. A webhook is optional and makes detection instant rather than within the polling interval.

Which platforms does it work with?

Detection without any setup works on WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Ghost, Magento, PrestaShop, HubSpot CMS, and any site built with Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, Gatsby, Remix, Hugo, or Jekyll. Signed webhooks are supported for WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, Strapi, Storyblok, Prismic, Ghost, Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Bitbucket Pipelines — plus a generic endpoint any script can post to.

Will a preview or staging deploy trigger a run?

No. Preview and branch deploys on platforms like Vercel and Netlify are recognised and ignored, as are failed builds, in-progress builds, and CI runs on non-default branches. Only successful production releases trigger monitoring.

Will a busy publishing schedule burn through my checks?

No. Signals arriving close together are collapsed into a single run, and a minimum interval between change-triggered runs caps how often they can fire regardless of how chatty the source is. Your scheduled monitoring continues unaffected.

Does this replace scheduled monitoring?

No — it adds to it. Scheduled checks still catch problems that appear without a deploy, such as an expiring certificate, a third-party script failing, or an origin going down. Deployment monitoring covers the changes you cause.

Which plans include deployment monitoring?

Deployment monitoring is included on all paid plans, starting with Starter at $29 per month. The Free plan runs scheduled health monitoring only.

Call To Action

Start monitoring your website with NorthDuty today.

Stop finding out about a bad release at the next scheduled check. Let NorthDuty run the full suite the moment your site changes.

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