Adding a website
Add a site, pick its audit level and schedule, and start its first audit
Dashboard → Add website takes a URL and starts the first audit straight away. The form has three parts, top to bottom: the URL, the audit level and the schedule. Only the URL is required, and it has focus when the page opens, so you can type a domain and go. The level and the schedule start on sensible defaults, and both can be changed later in the site’s settings.
An organization with no websites yet sees the same form on its websites page, under a First audit heading. Same fields, same order, same button: the heading is the only difference, so your first site is set up the way every later one is.
Website URL
Type a domain or a full address. example.com is fine: when you leave the field it is tidied into a full URL, and anything that does not read as a website is left as you typed it so you can fix it.
If the page is opened from a link that carries a URL, the field is filled in and focus goes to the button instead. The form never submits on its own: the button spends credits, so you get a look at the URL first.
Audit level
A slider with three stops, left to right: Quick, Surface and Full. It starts on Surface. The level decides every setting of the audit (how many pages, how the crawl picks them, whether the cloud checks run, rendering, external link checks), so there is nothing else to fill in here.
| Level | Pages | What it reads | Shown cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick | 25 | The start page and its sitemaps. Links are followed only when the sitemap has nothing to crawl. No cloud checks; external links are checked. | Up to 125 credits |
| Surface | 100 | Follows links, one page per URL pattern first. Cloud checks and external link checks. The default. | Up to 350 credits |
| Full | 500 | Every page it can reach, with the cloud checks and external link checks. Pro and Team. | Up to 1,550 credits |
The box under the slider names the level you picked and the most its audit can cost, such as Up to 350 credits. When your plan or your balance lowers the page count, it says so in a few words (“Balance covers 150 pages.”) rather than leaving you to find out from the report.
The figure is a cap, not the bill. An audit costs 50 credits plus 2 per audited page, plus 1 for each distinct external link the cloud verifies, and the cap reserves one link check per page on the levels that check links. A site with fewer pages than the level allows costs less. No level is free: Quick skips the cloud checks, but it is still a cloud audit (it renders the pages that need JavaScript in a cloud browser) and is billed at 50 credits plus 2 per page like the others. Failed audits are refunded automatically, which is the one line of small print under the button. See Credits and pricing.
On the Free plan the Full stop is greyed out and tagged Pro, and the slider will not settle on it. Free cannot run Full’s every-page crawl; Audit levels says what happens to a Full request that reaches a Free organization another way.
The form offers whole levels only. To change one setting (a bigger page budget, rendering off, no external link checks), add the site, then open its crawl settings: changing any of the level’s settings there makes the site Custom.
Schedule
Whether the site is re-audited on its own, and how often. Weekly and on by default: a scheduled audit is how you find out what changed, and a site nobody re-audits only ever tells you about the day it was added.
The choices sit in one row, left to right:
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| Disabled | Nothing recurring. The site is audited only when you ask. |
| Monthly | An audit every month. |
| Weekly | An audit every week. The default. |
| Daily | An audit every day. Pro and Team. |
The schedule starts as soon as the site is added, not after its first audit has finished. Each run is a cloud audit at the site’s level and costs credits like any other, and every completed run emails you what changed. Turn it off any time under Settings → Schedule.
Picking a cadence here is a decision, and it is treated as one. A site added with the schedule disabled stays unscheduled: it will not switch itself on after its first audit, which is what happens to a site added through the CLI or the API without an explicit choice.
What your plan funds
Cadences your plan does not fund are shown locked, with a Pro tag. Free covers weekly and monthly on one website; Pro and Team add daily and put every website on a schedule. See scheduled audits for the full table.
If your plan’s scheduled-site slots are already taken, every cadence but Disabled is locked, none is selected, and the line above them says which site is holding the slot. Freeing that site’s schedule is the alternative to upgrading, and it is usually the quicker one.
A site added while the slots are spent is not recorded as a refusal. It is left waiting instead, so if a slot frees up later, the site’s next completed audit puts it on the weekly default. Only picking Disabled yourself makes the off permanent.
Add website
Press Add website, or press Option+Enter (Alt+Enter on Windows and Linux) from anywhere in the form. Hold Option (or Alt) and the button shows the shortcut: ⌥ ↵ on a Mac, Alt ↵ elsewhere. The site is added and its first audit starts in the same step, at the level you picked. If the audit cannot start, because the balance does not cover it for instance, the site is still added and the page says why the audit did not run.
If the schedule was not granted
The plan limits are applied when the site is created, not when the form is filled in, so it is possible to ask for a schedule that cannot be given: someone else in your organization takes the last slot while you are typing, for instance.
When that happens the site is still added and its first audit still runs. The page tells you the schedule was not granted and why, rather than reporting success and leaving you to discover weeks later that nothing has been re-audited.