Frequently asked questions

Enter your work email on the sign-in page. We send a one-time magic link - there is no password. After you request a link (sign-in, invite accept, or email change), check your inbox (and junk if you can't find it), simply click the link to sign in.

Project-plan signups start in Single project mode: one workspace, nav shows Sites and Business (Business is Plan, members, and studio settings). Studio and Studio Plus signups use Multiple projects: a Projects directory, Sites across projects, and Studio for plan and billing. Buying Studio or Studio Plus from a Project workspace promotes you to Multiple projects. You can switch back to Single project under Manage business or Manage studio only when you have one project.

Project users (invited as project admin or member, with no studio membership) land on their project home - sites, members, and reports. Nav shows Sites (their project, or a chooser if they belong to more than one) plus Account. Project admins can add sites and invite collaborators; members can view sites and generate reports.

There is no perpetual Free plan. Pick Project, Studio, or Studio Plus on Pricing or Register - monthly or yearly is the cadence you will pay on if you subscribe later. After you verify your email, that plan's features start for 14 days with no card. Pages use a starter slice (500 / 1,000 / 2,000) so a no-card trial cannot empty the crawl queue.

Subscribe from Plan (Business or Studio) before day 14 to keep the full page pool. If the trial ends first, reports stay readable; Generate and schedule lock until you subscribe. If you have added more projects or seats than a smaller plan allows, you can only subscribe to a plan that already fits.

Studio managers open Plan on Business or Studio, pick monthly or yearly, and Subscribe. Payment is Stripe Checkout - we do not take a card at signup. Yearly is about 10% off (shown as a monthly equivalent; Stripe charges the yearly total). After you pay, the bell shows Applying your payment until the new limits are live. If you leave Checkout, nothing is charged.

Pricing lists seat packs and page packs so you can plan, but you add them on Plan after signup - not from the public page. Need custom limits? Use Talk to Pendulum on

When your studio has used all pages in the billing period (or the trial window), studio managers see a Page limit reached notice, with an Upgrade link to Plan. Add a page pack or wait for the next period.

A page is one resolved URL times one viewport. Generate asks you to confirm the reserved pages before it queues. Analytics Search Console and GA4 pulls cost 0 pages; a homepage PageSpeed lab check costs 2. Failed or cancelled jobs keep the reserved pages; deleting a report does not give them back.

On Plan, Cancel schedules the end of renewals. You keep the package until the date you have already paid through. Keep plan clears a scheduled cancel so it renews as usual. Use Billing portal on Plan to update the card or see invoices.

Switch access plan from the catalogue on Plan. A smaller plan is only offered when your current project and seat counts already fit it - remove extras first. Buying Studio or Studio Plus from a Project workspace switches you to Multiple projects automatically.

The bell and Plan show a Payment past due notice. Paid features stay on for a short grace window (about 14 days) so you can update the card in Billing portal. If the balance stays unpaid after grace, paid access ends: reports stay readable, Generate and schedule lock, and extra projects or seats may lose access (oldest stay active). Billing problem emails are always sent.

On a granting plan (including trial), managers can set an auto-run schedule and optional email recipients on each site (Capabilities). Schedule is per service. Set to defaults turns every granted service on daily at 06:00, enables email reports, and fills recipients with project members on that project. After a trial expires, Generate and schedule stay locked until you subscribe.

Under Account → Notifications you can turn off optional product emails: welcome, role changes, plan confirmations, Google reconnect, page-limit and schedule alerts, and audit report mail when your address is on a site list. Security and access emails - sign-in links, invites, membership changes, billing problems - are always sent. Product news is a separate opt-in on Account.

Generate queues a fresh audit or analytics pull for the site and service you choose (Analytics, SEO, Accessibility, AI visibility, or Brand). Run all reports sits at the top of the menu. Each row asks you to confirm and shows reserved pages against pages left in the period. Each finished run becomes a report you can open, share, and compare over time. Queued and running jobs are skipped when you use Previous / Next beside the run date on a report page.

Managers can create read-only share links from a report. Recipients without portal access open the share URL directly. The share page keeps the Arc logo, theme switcher, and sign-in, without the centre nav or developer view. Print opens the browser print dialog (Save as PDF from there if you need a file). When email notifications are enabled on a site, finished runs notify configured addresses with a link to the portal report if the recipient already has access, otherwise a read-only share link.

On plans with Developer report view, report pages show a </> control beside the title. On by default. Turn it off for a simpler view. Technical finding detail, WCAG columns where present, longer finding lists, and the run performance bar at the bottom of the report stay available when it is on. The choice is remembered in your browser and applies to all report services.

Some catalogue checks need human judgement. Under Guided & manual checks on a report, tick a check when you have reviewed it and optionally add a note. You can reopen it later; each change is kept in that check's history.

Each site config modal has a Copy from dropdown: pick another site (searchable, grouped by project) to fill that section's form, then Save. Site name, URL, and focus keyphrases stay as they are. Analytics copy fills date range and compare only - this site's Google connection is unchanged.

No. Analytics is its own service with its own Generate and report. It pulls Search Console and GA4 data, scans public Google tags on your homepage and up to five top landing pages, and (when configured) shows origin Chrome vitals plus a homepage PageSpeed Diagnose block. It is not scored like SEO, Accessibility, or AI visibility.

Studio managers connect Google under Integrations (account menu or /app/integrations), then bind Search Console and/or GA4 on the site's Analytics settings. Generate stays disabled until that binding is ready. Use a Google account that can already see those properties in Google Admin.

Grant the connecting Google account access in Search Console (user permission) and GA4 (Viewer or higher), then reload the pickers. A GA4 picker 403 often means the Google Analytics Admin API is disabled on the OAuth project, or that user has no GA4 access - Search Console can still load when GA4 listing fails.

For standard Google Tag Manager and GA4 on googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com, SEO, Accessibility, and AI visibility crawls abort analytics beacons in the browser before hits are sent - they should not add page views to your GA4. Analytics Generate does not use a full crawl for tags; it fetches HTML without running JavaScript. PageSpeed Insights on Analytics Generate can still load your homepage twice (mobile and desktop) via Google's Lighthouse - those hits use Google's user agent, not Arc's. First-party or server-side tagging can still record traffic we cannot block. You can add GA4 internal-traffic rules for user agents containing pend-seo, pend-a11y, or PendulumArc-analytics as a safety net.

Declared lists event names found in sampled HTML and public GTM container files. Counted lists eventName and eventCount from the bound GA4 property for the same date range. Gap highlights declared-but-never-counted and custom counted-but-not-declared rows. Automatic and enhanced measurement events (page_view, scroll, and similar) appear with category pills; they are not headline gaps unless a custom name is counted but not declared.

Studio managers can Import from Google on any plan (Integrations, Projects, Sites, or a project hub). Arc lists GA4 web properties and unmatched Search Console sites. You name each project plus site name and URL. Arc creates those projects and sites, binds Analytics when GSC and GA4 match, queues every report, and turns on daily schedules for every report the plan includes.

Turn Capture screenshots on under Accessibility settings, save, then Generate a new Accessibility report. Existing runs do not gain images retroactively. Desktop and mobile viewports, axe tags, and exclude selectors are managed by Arc and are not shown in Settings.

AI visibility checks bot access (robots.txt and known AI crawlers), llms.txt, SSR content gap, and related discovery signals on rendered pages. It is a separate service from SEO with its own Generate and score. Bot user-agents under AI visibility settings show the engine defaults until you save an override.

Each service uses a focused engine and catalogue. SEO covers technical search signals, meta, links, schema, and social tags. Accessibility runs axe against WCAG rules for contrast, names, keyboard use, and related checks. Image alt text and accessible names are owned by the accessibility engine; SEO may flag title attributes and structural signals separately. Brand and AI visibility are their own reports too.

Brand is included on Project, Studio, and Studio Plus (including trial). Generate harvests the homepage and scores how surfaces agree - chrome, tokens, share cards, and copy. After you declare brand targets, later runs score conformance and show drift. It is a separate service with its own Generate; the schedule stays off until you turn it on.

Crawl services fetch and render configured pages, run automated checks, and store results as reports in your studio. We do not publish your reports publicly unless you create a share link or enable email delivery. Audit traffic uses identifiable Pendulum user agents and is designed not to send standard client-side analytics beacons during crawls. See Privacy & Cookies for processors, retention, and your rights.

Arc may load GA4 on public and signed-in portal pages when configured, to understand product usage - not for third-party advertising. System admin accounts never load gtag. The /admin area is excluded. The cookie notice on public paths explains optional cookies; signed-in use in /app is described in Privacy & Cookies.

Email arc@pendulumdev.co.uk or speak to your Pendulum project lead. For billing or access issues, studio managers can use Plan on Business or Studio, and Billing portal for the card.