Proxies for Shopify Stores

Why a Shopify merchant needs proxies

A Shopify store often sells to several countries at once. With Shopify Markets, you set the currency, prices, language and available shipping methods for each market. Apps add geo discounts, banners and redirects to the right version of the site.

The problem is that from your own office you only see one version. A shopper from Canada may get different prices, and a visitor from Poland may be redirected to the English version instead of the Polish one. Proxies help with five tasks: viewing the store as a shopper sees it, testing geo discounts and apps, tracking competitors, checking ad landing pages, and signing in to the admin from a stable address.

Your store as a shopper in another country sees it

Choose a country in the generator and open the store in a clean browser profile without signing in. Check:

• which currency is shown and whether prices are rounded correctly;
• which language the site opens in and whether the language switcher works;
• which shipping methods and delivery times the shopper sees at checkout;
• where the location-based redirect leads and whether the shopper can opt out of it;
• whether taxes and duties are shown the way you intended.

Shopify remembers the selected country and currency in cookies. If you have already changed them manually, the saved settings will override the country of your IP. Use a clean profile and a separate port for each check.

For this kind of check, the "Sticky session" mode on a port in the 10000-20000 range is convenient: the whole check runs from one address, and the store does not switch countries halfway through checkout. The port holds an IP for 1 to 120 minutes, 30 by default.

Geo discounts and apps

A discount only for UK shoppers, free shipping within the US, a banner for Germany - all of this is worth checking before launch. Through a proxy in the right country, you can see whether the rule fires and whether people it is not meant for can see the discount.

If a rule depends on the region, for example the state of California or the province of Ontario, turn on advanced mode in the generator. There you can specify a region (a state for the US), any city by name, or a ZIP. Traffic with precise geo (region, city, ZIP or carrier (ASN)) is counted double, so turn it on only for checks like these.

Take checkout up to the step before payment. Banks and payment systems are blocked through our proxies - run test payments from your usual connection. The list is on the blocked sites page.

Monitoring competitors' prices and product range

Many competitors also run on Shopify, and their storefronts are open to any visitor. Agencies and merchants track prices, new arrivals, sales and stock levels. Many stores expose public product data, so collection does not always require parsing every page in full.

For regular crawling, the "Rotating (new IP per request)" mode works well: port 823 (HTTP) or 824 (SOCKS5) gives a new address for every request. A plan allows up to 1000 concurrent connections, but go easy on small stores: a few threads and pauses between requests. The general principles are in the price monitoring use case.

If a store shows different prices by country, collect them from an IP in each country. One brand's prices in Canada and the US can differ by more than just the currency.

Ad landing pages by country

Ads send shoppers to specific pages of your store. Check that a visitor from Germany lands on the German version with prices in euros, not on the homepage in dollars. Through a proxy, you can see where an ad really leads and what the visitor sees after the click. How to set up this kind of check is covered in the ad verification use case.

Do not click your own ads during a check: every click costs money. Open the page link directly.

The admin from a stable address

If staff in different countries work on the store, or you travel a lot, signing in to the admin from one place and then another can trigger extra checks. A proxy lets you sign in from one stable address.

Use residential proxies at $1.59 per GB or mobile proxies at $2.50 per GB in the "Sticky session" mode. Keep the admin in a separate browser profile with its own port. A sticky residential or mobile IP can change early if the device goes offline - the port then gets a new address in the same country.

If you also sell on marketplaces, compare the approach with the marketplaces use case.

What to know in advance

• A proxy does not override the rules of Shopify or its apps.
• We do not promise that a site will accept a particular address: the site itself decides who gets access.
• Collect only public product data from competitors, with no personal data of their customers.

How much traffic you need

Store pages are heavy because of product photos and videos. Price monitoring does not need images: turn off their loading, and usage will drop noticeably. One-off checks by country need only a small volume; datacenter proxies at $0.80 per GB are suitable for technical checks. Traffic is counted in both directions. The traffic calculator helps you estimate the volume; prices are on the pricing page.