Online shoppers understandably want the best prices possible, and many use ecommerce price monitoring tools to track price changes, hoping to score a deal. They aren’t alone. Ecommerce store owners have a natural interest in price tracking. They watch competitors’ pricing to determine the optimal product price for their goods and services.
To help streamline tracking and price adjustments, online retailers can use competitor price monitoring software. Here’s an overview of competitor price monitoring tools available and how to leverage them to develop a competitive pricing strategy.
What is price monitoring?
Price monitoring is the sustained observation and analysis of pricing information for products or services in the market. It involves tracking pricing changes over time to understand market trends, competitor pricing strategies, and the optimal prices for your offerings. It’s particularly helpful in industries with dynamic prices and high competition, such as ecommerce.
Like a consumer price comparison website, a retailer price monitoring tool scrapes pricing data from websites, APIs, and databases. The tool analyzes this data to provide insights into price fluctuations, competitor prices, and dynamic pricing patterns over time (i.e., pricing based on demand and market conditions).
If you run an online retail business, competitive price monitoring can help you adjust your pricing strategies to maximize profits and boost your brand value.
Benefits of price monitoring
Price monitoring can be a boon to businesses large and small. It helps you understand your competitors’ prices and choose suitable price points for your offerings. Here are the three core benefits of price monitoring:
Competitive insights
Price monitoring provides valuable insights into your competitors’ pricing strategies. Using a competitive intelligence tool to track competitor prices can show how your product prices compare.
If you sell shoes, for instance, you can use a price monitoring tool to track shoe prices at rival retailers, noting how the price of each model rises and falls over time. This knowledge can help you adjust your price strategy to stay competitive—perhaps raising prices on some models while lowering prices on others. The goal is to attract more customers and improve sales performance.
Optimized pricing strategies
Tracking pricing helps you identify industry-wide pricing trends and patterns over time. Rather than price items based on intuition, you can embrace this data-driven approach for historical and real-time price information. You can use collected pricing data to embrace pricing optimization, such as setting up dynamic pricing, offering discounts at strategic times, or adjusting prices based on demand fluctuations.
Increased profitability
You can track competitor pricing to find the optimal balance between maximizing profit and staying competitive. This means you charge enough to make a profit on each item sold but not so much that you price yourself out of the market.
Data collection helps you understand market dynamics and consumer behavior—such as how much your target customers are willing to spend on the items you sell. You can then make strategic pricing changes to increase sales volume and boost your overall profit margins.
Top price monitoring tools
Competitor price tracking software can streamline and simplify the price monitoring process. It’s especially valuable for ecommerce businesses selling a range of products and needing robust price comparison capabilities.
Here are some of the best price monitoring tools for gleaning accurate data about your competitors’ pricing. (Note: These are all business tools not designed for consumer use.)
Prisync
Prisync is an online price monitoring tool that offers competitor price tracking, dynamic pricing suggestions, API access, and data on competitor stock movements.
A Prisync subscription starts at $99 per month. Shopify retailers can use the Prisync for Shopify app, where prices start at $49 per month.
Price2Spy
Price2Spy is a price monitoring solution with real-time price tracking, competitor insights, dynamic pricing rules, and price elasticity analysis, making it among the top price monitoring tools for price optimization.
You can start with a 30-day free trial and then transition to a paid plan, starting at $134.99 monthly.
Repricer
Repricer specializes in price automation for large online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Its feature suite includes automated repricing (adjusts prices automatically based on criteria), competitor analysis, real-time price adjustments (instant, dynamic price changes), and customizable pricing rules (user-defined pricing guidelines).
Create a Repricer account for a quote.
Skuuudle
Skuuudle’s online pricing tools let you track millions of products across more than 100 marketplaces. You can monitor competitor stock availability, receive real time price alerts (instant notifications of competitor price changes), and set up dynamic repricing, which adjusts prices automatically based on competitor behavior.
Contact Skuuudle directly for a quote.
Minderest
Minderest is a price intelligence tool that lets you track prices on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Google Shopping. You can set price alerts and receive competitor reports for informed data analysis.
Contact Minderest to request a demo and a quote.
Competera
Competera’s price tracking tool gives you access to dynamic pricing, competitive benchmarking, assortment optimization, and MAP (minimum advertised price) monitoring—all of which help you set a competitive price for your goods.
Contact Competera for a quote.
Dealavo
Dealavo offers a suite of competitor monitoring tools to help you adopt the best pricing strategy for your business. Features include tracking prices, establishing dynamic prices, and integrating with ecommerce platforms.
Reach out to Dealavo for a demo and product pricing.
Intelligence Node
Intelligence Node stands out for its automated price monitoring tool, PriceIntelligence AI. This artificial intelligence tool can monitor ecommerce websites and automate price adjustments for you accordingly. It’s designed for Shopify retailers, allowing you to harness the same ecommerce insights large retailers use for price optimization.
Contact Intelligence Node directly to learn the company’s pricing structure.
Wiser
Wiser’s suite of price intelligence tools helps ecommerce brands gain market awareness, monitor competition, and set sales strategies. Specific products include a live price check tool, a digital shelf intelligence tool, and a retail execution management tool to put your data to work.
Contact Wiser for a free price consultation.
Omnia
Omnia has two main offerings: one geared toward small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) and another geared toward enterprise clients. Its signature product is Omnia dynamic pricing, which helps you set, test, change, and adjust pricing rules effortlessly using Omnia’s pricing tree feature.
Contact Omnia directly for a quote.
Ecommerce price monitoring tools FAQ
How do you monitor pricing?
As an ecommerce business owner, you can monitor pricing with price monitoring tools that systematically collect, analyze, and provide ecommerce insights about competitor price fluctuations.
What is an example of price monitoring?
An example of price monitoring is when an ecommerce retailer regularly tracks and analyzes the pricing strategies of its competitors to remain competitive and avoid a damaging price war. By continuously assessing competitors’ prices, you can adjust your strategy to remain profitable while responding to market dynamics.
Does Shopify offer price monitoring tools?
You can find price monitoring in the Shopify App Store. These third-party applications include Pricefy, PriceMole, and PriSync for Shopify.