Smart Triggers

5 min read

Define conditional rules on your monitored focus areas so you never miss the changes that matter most. Available on the Pro plan.

Pro feature: Smart Triggers are available on the Pro plan. Free users can see the trigger button but cannot create triggers.

What Are Smart Triggers?

Smart Triggers are conditional rules you set on specific focus areas of a monitor. Unlike significance scoring, which decides whether a change is noteworthy enough to notify you, triggers fire based on exact conditions you define — giving you full control over when you get alerted.

For example, you can set a trigger to notify you the moment a competitor's price increases above $100, or when a specific product goes out of stock. No matter how the significance score rates the change, your trigger fires if the condition is met.

Condition Types

There are 9 condition types, covering both numeric and text-based scenarios:

  • Increases above — fires when a numeric value crosses above a threshold
  • Decreases below — fires when a numeric value crosses below a threshold
  • Changes by amount — fires when the absolute change exceeds a value
  • Changes by percentage — fires when the percentage change exceeds a value
  • Contains text — fires when the value contains specific text
  • No longer contains text — fires when previously present text disappears
  • Any change — fires whenever the value changes at all
  • Value appears — fires when a previously absent value is detected
  • Value disappears — fires when a previously present value is no longer found

How Triggers Work

After every monitoring check, CheckSite evaluates all triggers on that monitor. If a trigger's condition is met, it fires and you receive an instant notification — regardless of how the change scores on significance.

Crossing Semantics

Numeric triggers (increases above, decreases below) use crossing semantics, which means they fire only when the value transitions across the threshold — not on every check where the value happens to be above or below it.

Example: You set "Price increases above $100." The price is currently $95. On the next check it rises to $105 — the trigger fires. On the following check the price is still $105 — the trigger does not fire again because no crossing occurred.

Hysteresis (Oscillation Prevention)

When a value hovers near a threshold, you can get repeated notifications as it bounces above and below the line. The optional recovery threshold prevents this by requiring the value to move significantly past the threshold before the trigger can fire again.

Example: You set "Price increases above $100" with a recovery threshold of $90.

  1. Price rises from $95 to $101 — trigger fires
  2. Price drops to $98 — trigger does not re-arm (still above $90)
  3. Price rises to $102 — trigger does not fire (never re-armed)
  4. Price drops to $88 — trigger re-arms (below recovery threshold of $90)
  5. Price rises to $101 — trigger fires again

Without a recovery threshold, the trigger re-arms as soon as the value drops below the original threshold ($100 in this example). The recovery threshold gives you a wider buffer to eliminate noise from small fluctuations.

Setting Up a Trigger

  1. Go to the monitor detail page for the monitor you want
  2. Find the focus areas section
  3. Click + Add trigger on the focus area you want to watch
  4. Choose a condition type (e.g., "Increases above") and enter your threshold value
  5. Optionally set a recovery threshold to prevent oscillation alerts
  6. Save the trigger

Tip: Triggers are matched to focus areas by name using fuzzy matching, so they continue to work even if the focus area name changes slightly between checks.

Limits & Cooldowns

  • Maximum 10 triggers per monitor — enough for comprehensive coverage without overloading notifications
  • Optional cooldown period — set a minimum time between trigger firings to further reduce alert fatigue
  • Free users see a locked button on each focus area that links to the pricing page

Digest Override

Triggers always send notifications instantly, even if the monitor belongs to a group with daily or weekly digest mode. Because triggers represent explicit conditions you defined, they bypass digest batching so you never have to wait.

The change is also included in the next scheduled digest for completeness, so your digest still provides a full picture of everything that happened.