Scheduled Screenshots: Automatically Monitor Your Web Pages

The Problem with Manual Monitoring

Manually checking websites for visual changes is tedious and error-prone. Whether you're monitoring a competitor's landing page, verifying a client site after deployments, or archiving a page over time — doing it by hand doesn't scale.

WebCaptureAPI's scheduled screenshot feature solves this by running captures automatically on a defined schedule and delivering the result straight to your inbox.

How Scheduled Jobs Work

A scheduled job consists of:

• A URL to capture
• A frequency (every 15 min, hourly, daily, or weekly)
• An optional delivery time (for daily/weekly jobs)
• A delivery email address
• Optional screenshot settings (viewport, format, full-page)

The job runs automatically at the configured interval. When it fires, the API captures the screenshot using your account's quota and emails the image as an attachment.

Creating a Scheduled Job

Go to Dashboard → Schedule and click New Job. Fill in:

1. Label — a name to identify the job (e.g. "Competitor homepage — daily")

2. URL — the page to screenshot

3. Frequency — how often to run

4. Delivery email — where to send the result (defaults to your account email)

5. Screenshot options — viewport width, format, full-page toggle

Click Save and the job becomes active immediately.

Frequency Options by Plan

Upgrade your plan from Dashboard → Billing to unlock higher-frequency schedules.

Use Cases

Visual Regression Monitoring

Schedule a daily screenshot of your production app's homepage. Compare against previous captures to catch layout regressions, broken images, or unexpected content changes before customers do.

Competitor Tracking

Monitor a competitor's pricing page or feature announcements on a weekly schedule. Get the screenshot delivered to your inbox every Monday morning without lifting a finger.

Client Reporting

Agencies can set up weekly captures of client websites to document the state of a site over time — useful for audits, handoff documentation, and performance reporting.

Uptime Verification

Pair a scheduled screenshot with your uptime monitoring. A 200 status doesn't mean the page renders correctly — a screenshot confirms what the user actually sees.

Content Archiving

Archive news articles, product pages, or any time-sensitive content automatically before it changes or disappears.

Quota Considerations

Each scheduled job execution counts as one screenshot against your monthly quota. Plan accordingly:

• An hourly job runs ~720 times per month
• A daily job runs ~30 times per month
• A weekly job runs ~4 times per month

If your quota is exhausted, the job is automatically paused rather than silently failing. You'll see it flagged in your dashboard. The job resumes at the start of your next billing cycle or after a plan upgrade.

Managing Your Jobs

From Dashboard → Schedule you can:

• Pause/resume jobs without deleting them
• Edit frequency or delivery settings at any time
• View last run time and any errors
• Delete jobs you no longer need

Tips for Reliable Captures

Add a delay for dynamic pages. If the target URL loads data via JavaScript, enable a capture delay in the job settings so the page has time to fully render before the screenshot is taken. Use a specific viewport. If you're monitoring a page that looks different on mobile vs desktop, set an explicit viewport width to ensure consistency across captures. Monitor your quota. Check Dashboard → Usage regularly if you're running high-frequency jobs on a large number of URLs.

Getting Started

Scheduled screenshots are available on all paid plans. If you're on the Free tier, upgrade to Starter to get 10 scheduled jobs with daily and weekly delivery.