been running a productivity saas for about 2 years and honestly competitor analysis was killing me. used to spend hours manually checking pricing pages and feature updates every week. the problem got real when i lost 2 clients in a month to competitors who had launched features i didnt even know existed. felt like i was flying blind and it was costing real revenue. tried a bunch of expensive market research tools but they were either too broad or cost more than my marketing budget. then found this workflow thats been working really well: started using tracksimple for automatic competitor monitoring (tracks their site changes and pricing updates) and when i need to dig deeper into data analysis, i use their free csv analyzer tool. lets me pull competitor data, upload it, and actually understand patterns without paying for another analytics subscription. the csv tool is honestly pretty solid for quick data analysis - handles large files, gives you insights, and its free. been using it for analyzing customer feedback exports too. combo has been saving me like 6 hours per week and i caught 3 major competitor moves last month that helped me adjust my roadmap. not perfect but way better than the manual checking i was doing before. anyone else found good solutions for staying on top of competition without breaking the bank?