A Shopify price monitoring app that bills through Shopify

01What happens when you install

The app asks Shopify for one permission at install: reading products, which covers variants, prices, barcodes and unit costs. It never requests customer or order access.

1. 1

   A Pricebeeper account is created for the store

   It uses the store owner's email, which counts as verified only when Shopify reports it verified; otherwise we send a verification link. A store is never attached to an existing account just because the email matches.

2. 2

   Your catalog is copied

   A Shopify bulk export reads every active product and its variants, up to 50,000 products. The Overview page shows the sync's state.

3. 3

   You choose what to monitor

   On the Products page, attach products to a region, up to your plan's slots (50 on Free). On paid plans each one is then matched by barcode on Google Shopping and Amazon, as exact product matching describes.

If an account already uses the store's email, the store owner either links that account or picks another email for a new one. Nobody else on the store's staff can make that choice.

02How the catalog stays in step

Each Shopify product becomes one Pricebeeper product with its variants stored underneath, so variants never use extra slots. Four rules decide what else carries across:

• Barcode: used as the GTIN when every variant carries the same valid barcode; mixed barcodes are left out, not guessed.
• Vendor becomes the brand. SKUs are never treated as manufacturer part numbers.
• Unit cost from Shopify becomes the product's cost for repricing margin floors, when it is in the store's currency.
• Single-variant products get that variant set as the one repricing writes to; for others you pick the variant.

After the first sync, Shopify's product webhooks keep things current. A new active product is added. An edit refreshes the details the sync owns, and a changed barcode sends the product back through matching. A deleted product is removed from Pricebeeper if the sync created it, which frees its slots. Drafts and archived products are not imported.

Products already in your catalog from a catalog import are linked, not duplicated. The Sync catalog button re-reads the whole store and counts as one of your 20 imports an hour. Data from the Shopify admin is never pooled with other accounts' matching data, as Shopify's API terms require.

03Your plan on the Shopify bill

Accounts created by the app pay through Shopify, not by card. The app's Plan page lists Starter to Business at the same US dollar prices as the web, monthly or annual, with slot and region packs. Your choice becomes one recurring charge for the plan plus packs, approved on Shopify's own confirmation page.

For example, Growth with one 250-slot pack is a single charge of $224 every 30 days. Changing the plan or the packs creates a new charge for you to approve. Shopify then replaces the old one straight away and prorates the difference, except that an annual downgrade waits for the next billing cycle.

If the store's Shopify bill goes unpaid and Shopify freezes the charge, the plan stays in place. Cancelling moves the account to Free; slots beyond its 50 are paused, newest first, and resume if you subscribe again, as slot-based pricing explains. An account that already pays by card keeps paying that way: the Plan page sends it to web billing instead of adding a second charge.

04The Growth trial runs through Shopify

Stores on Free can start the 14-day Growth trial from the Plan page, under the web trial's rules: once per account and email address, from Free only, with a verified email. On Shopify it is also once per store, even after an uninstall.

The end is different. You approve the Growth charge up front with 14 free days, and Shopify bills nothing during them. When they run out, the plan carries on and Shopify starts billing it; 3 days before, we email the amount and a link to cancel. On the web, the trial needs no card and drops back to Free.

The trial covers the plan alone. Choosing packs with it starts a paid plan without trial days, and changing plan during the trial creates a charge Shopify bills from approval.

05Repricing writes to your store

On Growth, Pro, Business and Custom, repricing rules suggest new prices from competitors' offers, within your floor, ceiling, maximum change and MAP. To let Pricebeeper write approved prices to Shopify, grant the optional permission to edit products on the app's Repricing page. Without it, you can still review suggestions and change prices yourself.

• Before each write, Pricebeeper reads the variant's current price. If someone changed it in Shopify after the suggestion was made, the write is skipped instead of overwriting their change.
• Every write can be reverted from Pricebeeper.
• Rules and approvals live in the full web app. On Pro and up, an approved rule can apply its own changes within a daily cap.
• If you remove the permission in Shopify, Pricebeeper notices through Shopify's scopes webhook and stops writing.

06Linking a store to an existing account

Already using Pricebeeper on the web? Link the store to that account. Linking only happens from a signed-in Pricebeeper session with your consent, never by matching emails.

The store owner starts the link in the app, which opens a pricebeeper.io page that works once, within 15 minutes. Signed in to the existing account (it needs a verified email), you see what will happen and confirm. If your password changed or someone else signed in between those steps, the link is refused.

A store already working in an account the app created can move once, while that account is still only a container for it: no other store, no card billing, no paid Shopify plan. The container and its synced catalog are deleted, and the catalog syncs again into your account. One account can hold several stores; its plan is billed through one of them.

07Uninstalling, and what happens to your data

Uninstalling deletes Pricebeeper's access tokens for the store. Shopify cancels the app's charge, so an account billed through Shopify moves to Free, and monitoring of the store's products pauses. Reinstalling resumes it within the plan's slots.

Shopify asks apps to erase a store's data 48 hours after an uninstall, and Pricebeeper does. An account that exists only because of the install is deleted with everything in it. In any other account, the products the sync created are deleted and the others lose the identifiers that came from Shopify. A store reinstalled by then keeps everything. We keep the records of what Shopify billed. Customer data requests get a short answer: the app holds none.

08What the app does not do

• The embedded pages cover the catalog, slots, alerts, repricing permission and plan. Analytics, price alerts settings, MAP, ad monitoring, team members and API keys are in the full web app.
• An account the app created has no password. To use pricebeeper.io directly, set one with the password reset link.
• Inside the Shopify admin, Shopify's own sign-in protects the app; Pricebeeper's two-factor codes apply on pricebeeper.io.
• Searches for sellers run once a month, as on the web, with known sellers re-read weekly on Starter and Plus and daily on Growth and up. Daily or hourly searches need the Custom plan.
• The app is new and has no public reviews yet.

You don't need the app to monitor a Shopify store. The web app imports any Shopify store's public catalog by its address, on any plan, and competitor price monitoring works the same either way.

Questions people ask