There are two ways to start watching something. Pasting a link is quicker. The form gives you every setting.

Paste a link

The box at the top of Monitors is headed Watch a shop, or one item. Paste a link and press Watch it. What happens next depends on the link.

A shop's address, like totalcards.net. StockWatch works out what the shop runs on and makes a monitor for it, checking as often as your plan allows.
A link to one product. StockWatch reads the page and shows you what it found. If the shop lists sizes, tap yours. Then press Start watching.

A product watched this way is called a watch, and it won't appear in your monitor list. It's on Products with Watched switched on, and the Watched items row on Monitors takes you there. Watching one product from a link has more.

If StockWatch can't read the page it says so, and offers other ways in: watching it from your own browser with the Chrome extension, picking what to watch on the page yourself, or asking us to add the shop.

Use the form

Press Add Monitor on the Monitors page. On a computer you get a form. On a phone you choose between Pick it on the page, where you tap the price or button you want watched, and Choose a supported site, which takes you through it a step at a time. If you'd like the step-by-step version on a computer too, switch on Wizard Mode in Settings.

The form asks for:

Web address: the shop or page to watch. StockWatch spots what the shop runs on and picks the site type for you.
Site type: leave it unless the guess is wrong. See Choosing a monitor type.
Name: a label for you, like "Zatu Pokemon restocks".
How often to check: it starts at the fastest your plan allows. See How often monitors check.

Most shop types also have two boxes for narrowing things down: Only products with these words and Skip products with these words. Put "booster box" in the first and a busy card shop only tells you about booster boxes.

Choose what you hear about

Every monitor has a list headed What should we tell you about?

Back in stock is always on.
New products: when the shop lists something new. On to start with.
Price drops: when a price goes down. Off to start with.
Sold out: when something sells out. Off to start with.
Only deals: leaves out anything reduced by less than the percentage you pick. That includes full-price restocks, so leave it off unless discounts are all you want.
Email me as well: off to start with, so a new monitor doesn't use your monthly email allowance until you ask it to. Setting up alerts has the rest.

Not every monitor shows every row. One that watches a single product has no new products to tell you about.

"Saved, and paused for now"

Each plan runs a set number of monitors from our servers at once. These are called cloud monitors. Free runs 1 cloud monitor, Standard 10 and Power User 50. Make one more than that and it is saved paused, and StockWatch asks which one you'd like running. You can swap them whenever you like. Pokemon Center queue alerts don't count towards the number, and neither does a monitor that runs in your own browser. Plans and limits has the rest.

If the shop isn't supported

A shop we've never seen isn't a dead end. StockWatch tries it as Any other shop, and checks it can read the page before it saves anything. If it can't, an Ask us to add button appears under the box. See Requesting a new site.