SiteUpdate · Comparisons
SiteUpdate vs Pastel
Pastel made client review genuinely frictionless: paste a URL, get a live "canvas," send one link, and clients comment anywhere with no login and nothing installed. It’s a lovely design-approval flow. But a sticky note saying "change this" still lands on a developer with no context and no next step. SiteUpdate is built for that next step — turning the comment into a spec, and often into the fix itself.
What Pastel does well
An honest comparison starts with credit where it’s due.
- The fastest client experience in the category: one link, no login, no install — and unlimited guest reviewers on every tier, including free.
- The proxy canvas stays live, so site changes propagate, and the same model covers image and PDF review — agencies review more than websites.
- Copy-editing suggestions: a client can click text and propose the replacement wording directly.
Pick Pastel if your work is design and copy approval rounds — reviewing comps, landing pages, and PDFs with marketing stakeholders — and your developer handoff happens somewhere else.
Side by side
| Feature | SiteUpdate | Pastel |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 30 requests/mo, unlimited reporters | Yes — 1 user, 1 active canvas |
| Paid entry | $39/mo flat, unlimited sites (Pro) | $35/mo — 2 users, 3 active canvases (Pro) |
| Sites / canvases on paid plans | Unlimited sites on Pro | Capped until Team ($119/mo, then $24/user) |
| Client experience | Widget on your real site — point, describe, send, no account | Excellent — one shared link, comment anywhere, no login |
| Works on logged-in / dynamic pages | Yes — the widget runs on the real site, nothing is re-rendered | Proxy re-render; reviewers report breakage on some authed/dynamic sites |
| Technical capture | Masked replay, console, network, click trail on every request | Browser type, screen size, screenshot |
| AI intake | AI interviews the reporter → dev-ready spec, dedup, repro steps | — |
| Issue tracking | Tracker + kanban + statuses, closed-loop notifications | Labels + resolve; no statuses, kanban, or assignments |
| Integrations | GitHub, Jira, Linear, Slack 2-way — 1 on Free, all on Pro | Trello, Asana, Jira, Monday, Zapier — Team plan ($119/mo) and up |
| Public REST API / MCP server | Both, on every plan | No API; webhooks on Team+ |
| Image & PDF review | — | Yes — same canvas model |
| Autofix — the request ships its own fix | Proposed diff free on every plan; ships as a PR or WordPress apply (Pro) | — |
Pasteldetails taken from their public pricing pages, help center, and G2/Capterra reviews, verified July 2026. “—” means not offered or not publicly documented at that time. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.
What Pastel users actually complain about
Pulled from real reviews — and how SiteUpdate answers each one.
- “Three active canvases on a $35 plan doesn’t fit an agency.”Pricing page; G2/Capterra reviews on canvas caps
- Pastel meters "active canvases," so an agency juggling client sites is constantly archiving or paying $119/mo. SiteUpdate Pro is unlimited sites at $39/mo flat — site count is the one thing an agency tool should never meter.
- “The proxy breaks on real-world sites.”Reviews report failures on some password-protected, staging, and dynamic sites
- Pastel re-renders your site through a proxy, which is exactly the kind of hard capture tech that fails on auth walls and JavaScript-heavy pages. SiteUpdate’s widget runs on the actual site — logged-in states, staging environments, dynamic content — because there’s nothing to re-render. And all capture code is error-isolated, so it can never break the host page.
- “The comment still isn’t a ticket.”No technical capture; integrations gated to the $119/mo Team plan
- A Pastel comment carries a screenshot and a browser name; turning it into a dev task is manual, and even Trello/Jira export starts at $119/mo. SiteUpdate outputs a written spec with replay, console, and network context, syncs 2-way with GitHub, Jira, and Linear on the $39 Pro plan — and for plain-text changes, Autofix drafts the exact old-to-new fix for one-click approval.
The short version
Pastel optimizes the moment a client leaves a comment; SiteUpdate optimizes everything after it. The client experience stays just as simple — point, describe, send, no account — but an AI interviews them into a dev-ready spec, the developer gets replay and console context instead of a sticky note, and a copy change can ship as an approved pull request or WordPress update with the client automatically told it’s live.
And because the people reporting are often the least technical people in the room, the capture flow is keyboard-operable end to end — see our accessibility statement (WCAG 2.2 AA).
Vague request in, dev-ready ticket out.
Free plan with unlimited reporters — the API, MCP server, and console logs are never paywalled.
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