Find the MAP violation before your other resellers do
A single reseller undercutting your minimum advertised price does not stay a single reseller for long. The others notice, they match, and a policy you spent months negotiating stops meaning anything.
From $5 a month · No check quotas · Set up in under a minute
How do you monitor MAP violations?
Watch each reseller's listing page for your products and select the price region. When an advertised price changes you are alerted with the old and new figures and a timestamped screenshot — which is both the detection and the evidence. It replaces the monthly spreadsheet sweep that most brands know is too slow.
Minimum advertised price policies fail quietly. Enforcement usually means somebody checking a list of resellers periodically, which is slow, incomplete, and produces no evidence beyond a screenshot taken after the fact.
The detection problem is straightforward: a reseller's listed price is on a public page, and a change detector notices when it moves. The valuable part is that it produces a dated record at the moment of the change, which is exactly what an enforcement conversation needs.
This guide covers setting that up across a reseller network, and is clear that detection is not enforcement.
MAP, MSRP and what you are actually watching
Worth being precise, because the terms get used interchangeably and are not the same thing.
MAP is about advertising, not selling
A minimum advertised price policy governs the price a reseller may display publicly. It does not set the price they sell at, which is why "add to basket to see price" exists as a workaround.
MSRP is a suggestion, MAP is a policy
Manufacturer's suggested retail price is a recommendation. MAP is a term of your reseller agreement, with consequences attached.
What you watch is the displayed price
Which is exactly what a change detector reads. If a reseller hides the price behind a basket action, that is itself a signal worth noticing.
Watch the listing, not the search results
Search pages reorder constantly and produce noisy alerts. The individual product listing on each reseller is the stable page.
Set up a MAP watch on a reseller page, step by step
One watch per reseller listing. The walkthrough uses a public practice store so every screen is real.
1. Paste the reseller's product URL
In Page watches → New watch, paste the reseller's listing for your product. Watch the listing page rather than their search results: you want one product, one advertised price.
2. Select the advertised price
Choose the suggestion marked The price here changes that contains the product title and price. Keeping the title inside the selection is deliberate — if the reseller swaps the listing to a different product, you see that too.
The advertised price and title selected on a reseller listing.
3. Switch off number filtering
MAP enforcement is entirely about numbers, so set Tell me about to Any change. On an existing watch, open Settings and make sure Ignore standalone numbers is off.
For MAP watches, Ignore standalone numbers must be off or a price cut is filtered out.
4. Name it so the alert is evidence on its own
Use a name like "Reseller — product — MAP $249". The name appears in every alert and in the timeline, so the email you forward to the reseller already says what was breached.
5. Keep the record
Each detected change keeps its before and after images and the exact time it was captured. That dated record is what you take into the conversation with a reseller — not a screenshot someone took on their phone.
Before and after, time-stamped: the record to attach when you raise a MAP breach.
What you get to take into the conversation
Detection is only half of it. The other half is being able to show what you saw and when.
Every recorded change stores a full-page screenshot of the listing before and after, the changed price highlighted, a word-level diff and a timestamp. That is considerably better than a screenshot someone took a week later, and it exists automatically rather than because somebody remembered.
The last thirty versions of each listing are retained, so a reseller who repeatedly drops below MAP and restores it produces a documented pattern rather than a single incident. For a repeat violator, the pattern is usually the more useful thing.
This is detection and documentation. The enforcement — the notice, the escalation, the commercial consequence — is entirely yours, and no monitoring tool changes that.
The limits of automated MAP detection
Four of these are common enough that you should assume you will hit them.
Price-in-basket workarounds
The standard way round a MAP policy is to hide the price until the item is in the basket. We read public pages, so a price that only appears in a basket is invisible to us — and to every other automated checker.
Marketplace listings that vary by seller
A marketplace page showing a rotating buy box gives us whichever seller was winning when we checked, not a complete view of every offer.
Sites that block automated requests
Some large marketplaces refuse non-browser traffic. We identify ourselves honestly, so those will refuse us.
It does not find new violators
You watch listings you know about. A reseller you have never heard of, listing on a marketplace you do not monitor, will not appear. Dedicated MAP platforms crawl for unknown sellers; we do not.
How to monitor MAP violations
Detect and document when a reseller advertises below your minimum price.
List your authorised resellers and their product URLs
One listing page per product per reseller. This list is the work; the setup is quick.
Watch each listing and select the price
Click the displayed price so surrounding recommendations and reviews are ignored.
Check every five minutes to hourly
Violations often appear over a weekend and are restored on Monday, so daily checks miss the pattern entirely.
Set a threshold below your MAP
Or leave it off and review every move — with prices, small changes usually matter.
Route alerts to whoever owns the channel
The account manager for that reseller, not a shared inbox.
Keep the record for enforcement
Each change stores a timestamped screenshot and diff, ready to attach to a notice.
Typically about 10 minutes from start to finish.
What it costs
Uptime monitors, watched pages and heartbeats each get their own allowance, so adding a page watch never costs you a monitor. SSL and domain checks ride along with the monitor they belong to and use nothing extra.
| Plan | Monitors | Watched pages | Heartbeats | Fastest interval | Alert channels | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 25 | 25 | 25 | Every 5 minutes | Email + webhook & chat | $5/mo |
| Basic | 10 | 10 | 10 | Every 10 minutes | Email + webhook & chat | $8/mo |
| Growth | 50 | 50 | 50 | Every 5 minutes | Email + webhook & chat | $19/mo |
| Pro | 100 | 100 | 100 | Every 60 seconds | Email + webhook & chat | $34/mo |
Annual billing is cheaper on every paid tier. The pricing page is the authoritative list.
What an alert actually looks like
Every recorded change is compared word by word and kept with a before-and-after image. This is the real output, shown with worked example data.
Price fell from $49 to $39, and an annual discount was added.
The item is available again and the basket button returned.
A new subprocessor was added in another jurisdiction.
Where we can reach you
The free plan sends to one email address. Every paid plan adds the chat and webhook channels below, with 2 to 10 destinations depending on the plan. However many alerts you receive, the price does not change — nothing here is metered or charged per alert.
There are no voice calls and no SMS. If a phone call at 3am is a hard requirement, say so before you subscribe — we would rather tell you now than refund you later.
MAP monitoring questions
What is MAP monitoring?
Watching the prices your resellers advertise publicly, to detect when one displays below the minimum advertised price in your agreement. Automated monitoring replaces a periodic manual sweep and produces dated evidence at the moment the change happens.
What is the difference between MAP and MSRP?
MSRP is a suggested retail price — a recommendation. MAP is a policy term in your reseller agreement governing the price they may advertise publicly, with consequences attached. MAP governs advertising, not the final selling price, which is why price-in-basket workarounds exist.
Can it catch price-in-basket workarounds?
No. If the price only appears once the item is in a basket, it is not on the public page and no automated checker can read it. That is the standard workaround and it defeats this approach and every competing one.
Does it find resellers I do not know about?
No. You watch listings you supply. Dedicated MAP platforms crawl marketplaces for unauthorised sellers; we watch pages you point us at. If discovering unknown violators is your main problem, we are not the right tool.
What evidence do I get?
A timestamped full-page screenshot of the listing before and after, the changed price highlighted, and a word-level diff. The last thirty versions of each listing are kept, so a repeat violator produces a documented pattern rather than one incident.
How often should I check?
Five minutes to hourly. Violations frequently appear over a weekend and are restored before Monday, so a daily check will show you nothing at all.
How many listings can I watch?
25 on the $5 plan, 50 on Growth, 100 on Pro. That is per listing page, so a brand with ten products across ten resellers needs a hundred and would want Pro.
Does it enforce the policy?
No. It detects and documents. The notice, the escalation and the commercial consequence are yours — no monitoring tool changes that part.
Related monitoring guides
- Monitoring for ecommerceThe wider storefront picture
- Competitor price monitoringPrices you do not control
- Price drop monitoringThe consumer version
Last updated August 4, 2026 · Written by Amit Gupta, founder of MonitoringDaddy
Stop sweeping resellers by hand.
Free plan watches one listing. $5/mo watches 25, with dated evidence of every change.