Frequently Asked Questions

Usually because they changed something you didn't see in time — dropped their prices, launched a promotion, added a service, extended their hours, or started an ad campaign — and you only found out weeks later when your bookings dropped. MyIntelBrief watches your competitors' websites and news every day and emails you the morning something changes, with a specific suggested response. So a competitor can't quietly take your customers before you even know why.

You could check every competitor's pricing page by hand every morning — most owners don't have the time. MyIntelBrief does it for you: we monitor your competitors' websites daily and flag price changes, new promotions, and package changes in your morning brief, along with a specific action you can take this week in response.

That's exactly the gap MyIntelBrief closes. Your daily brief summarizes new services, promotions, hours, content, and news from every competitor you track, then lines it up against your own business — including live Google ratings side by side — so you can see at a glance where they're moving and you're standing still, and do something about it.

You don't need to install anything or manually spy on competitor sites. MyIntelBrief tracks your competitors' websites every day and reports what changed — new prices, new pages, new offers, updated hours or services — in plain language in your morning brief. We monitor public pages and summarize the differences for you.

Often because they're publishing more, collecting more reviews, or updating their site more often than you are — the kind of steady activity you'd have to catch by hand. MyIntelBrief surfaces competitor website and content activity in your daily brief, and the local ranking heatmap at /local-ranking-heatmap shows where you rank vs competitors across your market so you can see the gap and close it.

Yes — the Free Competitor Finder at myintelbrief.com/free-competitor-finder. Type your business name and it shows your real local competitors, named, on a map. Your first lookup needs no account, no email and no credit card. After that we ask for an email before running more. It is discovery only: the competitor list, not the daily brief.

It depends which one you mean. The Free Competitor Finder needs no card at all. The 7-day free trial DOES require a card — Stripe collects it when you start and you are auto-billed on day 8 unless you cancel first. Cancel any time before day 8 from your Account page and you are not charged.

Yes. In Account Settings you can add extra recipients for your daily brief. They are added as BCC on the same email you receive, so recipients cannot see each other's addresses. Paid plans allow up to 5 extra addresses, the Student plan 1, free accounts none. You can also point one address at a group alias such as team@yourcompany.com.

MyIntelBrief monitors your competitors' websites and news every day, then emails you a morning intelligence brief summarizing what changed and what you should do about it. You tell us your business and competitors — we do the rest.

7 days from email verification. You get 1 business, 3 auto-selected competitors, and historical intelligence (60-90 days old). A card is required to start the trial, but you won't be charged if you cancel before day 8. (To try MyIntelBrief with no card at all, run the live demo — no card or email needed.) After 7 days your monitoring pauses — your data stays safe until you upgrade.

You get a daily brief every weekday, delivered at your chosen time — set it in Account Settings. Monday's brief covers Friday + weekend activity.

Yes — restaurants, retail, home services, healthcare, legal, real estate, automotive, fitness, salons, and more. If your competitors have websites and get news coverage, we can monitor them.

English only at this time. Multilingual brief delivery is planned for a future release. Email info@myintelbrief.com if your business depends on briefs in another language and we'll let you know when it's available.

All prices are in USD. Starter: $79.99/mo (1 business, 10 competitors). Pro: $229.99/mo (3 businesses, 25 competitors). Enterprise: $1,499.99/mo (10 businesses, 40 competitors). If any remaining founder slots are still available, INTEL50 takes 50% off forever and is applied automatically at checkout — there is no code to enter.

If any remaining founder slots are still available, INTEL50 takes 50% off your subscription price forever — not just the first month — and it is applied automatically at checkout, with no code to enter. In that case Starter is $39.99/mo, Pro $115.00/mo and Enterprise $750.00/mo. It is a limited early-subscriber offer (first 100 paying customers), so if the slots have run out the standard prices apply instead. The pricing page always shows the live state.

All charges are final — no refunds for any purchased month, partial or full, under any circumstance. You can cancel anytime from your Account page. After cancellation you keep full access through the end of your billing period. No further charges after that.

Log in → Account → Cancel Subscription button. You'll see your access end date. Daily briefs continue until that date. No further charges.

Yes — upgrade anytime from Account → Pricing. Downgrades take effect at the next billing cycle. Contact info@myintelbrief.com if you need help.

Yes — every paid plan has a Monthly | Annual toggle at the top of the pricing page. Annual is 17% off (equivalent to 2 months free). Example: Pro is $229.99/mo or $2,299.90/year (saving $459.98/yr). You can also switch from monthly to annual mid-subscription — Stripe prorates the unused portion of your current monthly payment as a credit toward the annual charge, so you only pay the difference today. We send a reminder email 30 days before each annual renewal so you can review before the charge hits.

All payments are processed in USD only via Stripe. Your card issuer handles any currency conversion.

Yes — every signal comes with a specific recommended action, not just the observation. If a rival cuts prices the action is a non-price response (we report competitor pricing but never advise you on your own prices). If a rule change affects a service you sell, the action names the real choice: what compliance would require, whether that service still covers its costs, or whether to stop offering it.

Yes, when it applies. The same brief flags a regulatory or licensing change that narrows what you or a rival may offer, a supply or input-cost squeeze, a disruption to your trading week, and a product recall on something you may buy or resell. When there is nothing to report it says so plainly rather than inventing something.

No. A business you own is never a rival — a second location, a sister shop, a trading name or a subsidiary. Those are dropped and the seat goes to a real competitor instead. If one does slip through, remove it from your Competitors page and it stays out.

No, and that is deliberate. We report what competitors publicly changed, including prices, but we never recommend that you raise, lower, match or undercut yours — a third party advising many competitors on pricing raises real antitrust concerns. Where a rival changes price, the recommended action is always a non-price response.

AI-generated reports can contain errors or omissions. We monitor publicly available information about your competitors, but the AI can misinterpret content. Always verify important findings directly at the competitor's website before making business decisions.

In the free demo and the emailed preview brief we withhold real competitor names — you see Competitor A, Competitor B, and so on. They are deliberately hidden, not missing or made up: the preview is public and anyone can run it on any business, so naming real businesses to a stranger would expose exactly the intelligence our paying subscribers pay for. The moment you start a trial the masking comes off — every competitor is named, and we track all of them rather than the three shown in the preview.

The public demo and the emailed preview run on an intentionally delayed historical snapshot, so a date it mentions may already be in the past. That is expected, not a bug — serving live data publicly would give away the current intelligence our subscribers pay for. The real product delivers today's data every weekday morning. Your free 7-day trial lifts the delay and the name masking together.

Free trial users get historical intelligence rather than live data. This lets you see what the product does without live monitoring. Upgrade to any paid plan to get live daily intelligence immediately.

Our system uses Google Places + AI to find local competitors. If a competitor is missing, add them manually (paid plans). If a business is wrong, remove them from your Competitors page. Accuracy improves with a specific business type and city.

This can happen if a competitor's site was unreachable or nothing significant changed. Try clicking "Run Intelligence Scan" again. If it consistently fails for a specific competitor, email info@myintelbrief.com.

Paid users can type their top business concerns (e.g. "how to bring in more dine-in customers") in the concerns box on the dashboard. The AI cross-references your concerns against recent competitor activity and suggests a targeted action plan.

Yes — every daily brief is built to be agent-readable. Three encodings, same data: (1) a brief-YYYY-MM-DD-yourbusiness.jsonl attachment you can save and drop into any LLM-based AI service that accepts file uploads; (2) machine-readable data-* attributes embedded in the email HTML for agents that parse incoming mail; (3) a JSON URL in the email footer that returns the full structured brief. Schema reference: /docs/brief-schema. Practical examples: /help/jsonl-briefs. We do not recommend any specific AI agent — that's a trust decision only you can make based on your own security requirements.

No. AI agents need full access to your email inbox to work, and that's a serious trust decision — much bigger than choosing a tool to read MyIntelBrief specifically. Our policy is to make our briefs agent-readable but never to recommend a specific vendor. Pick whichever AI agent fits your security requirements, data residency needs, and budget. The two broad categories to research on your own: LLM-based AI services that ingest your inbox, and no-code automation platforms that hook into your email. We don't endorse any of them. Our brief schema is documented at /docs/brief-schema so any agent can be programmed to read it.

Check spam/promotions first. On the login page, click "Resend verification email". If it still doesn't arrive, email info@myintelbrief.com with your signup address.

Click "Forgot password?" on the login page. Enter your email — a reset link arrives within 5 minutes (valid 2 hours). Check spam. If you signed up with Google, use "Sign in with Google" instead.

Email info@myintelbrief.com from your current registered address requesting the change. We process it within 1 business day.

Email info@myintelbrief.com with subject "Delete my account" from your registered address. We delete all your data within 30 days per our Privacy Policy. Note: cancelling your subscription does not delete your account.

Check spam/promotions and add info@myintelbrief.com to your contacts. Briefs send on weekdays at your chosen time (set in Account Settings). If still missing after 24 hours, email info@myintelbrief.com.

Cancellation stops future billing but does not issue a refund for the current period. If you were charged after your access end date, email info@myintelbrief.com with your billing details — that would be an error we want to fix.

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Sessions use secure HttpOnly cookies. All traffic is TLS encrypted. We never sell your data. See our Privacy Policy at /privacy for full details.

We monitor publicly accessible information about your competitors — the same information anyone could find by visiting their websites or reading public news sources. We respect site policies and store only AI-generated summaries, not raw website content.

No. Our service is for commercial small businesses only. We do not monitor government agencies, defense contractors, military facilities, or critical infrastructure.

Please email info@myintelbrief.com before contacting your bank — we can usually resolve it faster. If you file a chargeback, we provide your bank with evidence of service delivery and your agreement to our no-refund policy, and suspend your account.