Questions about Zonify, answered

Zonify is a country and IP blocker app for Shopify. It runs on every page of your online store and decides, for each visitor, whether they may stay, based on the country and IP rules you set. Blocked visitors see your message or go to a page you choose, and every visit is logged in your Shopify admin with the reason.

It runs four checks on every page load, always in this order. First, an always-allowed IP address gets in, whatever the other rules say. Second, the bot types you chose to block: a fake search engine, a scraper or an automated browser is turned away, but a verified bot never is. Third, the country rules: a blocked country is turned away, and when your country allow list is on, any country not on it is turned away. Fourth, a blocked IP address is turned away. When a visitor's country or address can't be told, that check lets them through.

Shopify Markets and your shipping settings decide where you sell and which addresses checkout accepts. They don't stop anyone from visiting your store. Zonify decides which visitors can use your storefront at all, can block single IP addresses, and keeps a record of every visit it turned away. Many stores use both.

Four things. It's free, with every feature included, where most blockers limit rules, visitors or page views until you pay. It asks for one permission, read-only access to your themes, and nothing for your orders, products or customers. It proves search engine bots against the addresses Google, Bing and others publish, so a fake Googlebot can be blocked while the real one never is by a bot rule. And your store stays open if Zonify is down. Some paid apps do things Zonify doesn't: VPN detection, IP ranges, state and city rules, and checkout or order rules.

No, and we won't sell it as one. Zonify is a policy tool: it keeps out visitors you can't or don't want to serve. The country comes from browser settings a visitor can change, and blocking happens in the browser once the page has started to load. Use it to control where you sell, not to protect anything secret.

Yes, with limits. Zonify labels every bot that runs its script and checks search engines against the addresses Google, Bing and others publish, so a fake Googlebot is shown as fake. On the Bots page you can block fake bots, scripts and scrapers, automated browsers, AI crawlers, SEO tools or cloud servers. Nothing is blocked until you switch it on. Bots that never run JavaScript, like simple scripts that copy your page's code, never load Zonify, so they can't be seen or stopped.

A plain page that says “Store not available”, with your message, for example “Sorry, this store is not available in your country.” You set one message for country blocks and one for IP blocks. If you set a redirect, visitors see the message for a moment and are then sent to the page you chose.

Yes. Add the countries you serve to the allow list. As soon as the list has one country, every country that isn't on it is blocked. Zonify warns you before you turn it on, and says how many countries will be blocked. Remove every allowed country to go back to blocking countries one by one.

An always-allowed address gets in every time, even from a country you blocked. It doesn't affect anyone else. Use it for yourself, your team, your agency and your test devices, so a rule can never lock you out. Click + Add my IP on the IP addresses page, or Always allow my IP on the Dashboard when it shows.

Not as a range. Zonify matches exact addresses, IPv4 or IPv6. You can paste a whole list at once, one per line or separated by commas, and any entries that aren't valid addresses are skipped and counted.

Not out of your admin. Zonify only runs on your online store's pages, so your Shopify admin, the Zonify app and the theme editor preview are never blocked. If a rule blocks you on your own storefront, change or remove it in Zonify and reload the page.

No, there's no pause switch. Rules always apply, so a store never has rules that look active but block nobody. To stop blocking, remove the rules you don't need; you can select several and remove them at once, and add them back in seconds later. Bot types are different: each one has its own on/off switch on the Bots page.

On the visitor's next page load. There's nothing to publish in your theme.

From the visitor's browser: its time zone first, then its language setting. Only time zones that belong to one country are used. It's a good guess for most shoppers, but it isn't proof of where someone is.

Yes. Someone who changes their device's time zone and language can appear to be in another country, and a traveller whose laptop still uses their home time zone can be placed at home. That's why Zonify is a tool for controlling where you sell, not a security control.

The visitor is let through the country check, so someone with unusual browser settings isn't blocked by a rule meant for someone else. The visit is logged with the country as Unknown, and IP rules still apply.

Zonify adds one small script, under 10 KB, that loads without holding up your page, and makes one check per page load. It doesn't call any outside service to look up your visitors.

On their first page, yes, for about a second. Shopify sends your store's page before any app can check the visitor, so the block appears when the check comes back. After that, the visitor's browser remembers the block and shows it straight away on later pages, while still checking your current rules each time.

Your store stays open. If the check fails, or takes longer than a few seconds, the visitor is let in. The one exception is a visitor who was already blocked: their browser keeps showing the block for up to 24 hours, until a check gets through.

It can, if your rules block the country a search engine appears to come from. Crawlers that only read your page's HTML never run Zonify's script. Crawlers that run scripts, like Google's, are checked by your country rules like any visitor, using the time zone and language their browser reports. Bot rules are different: a verified Googlebot is never blocked by them, and search engines can't be switched on as a bot type at all. After changing country rules, check a page with the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.

Zonify runs as a theme app embed that you switch on in the theme editor of your online store. If you change themes, switch it on again in the new one. Headless storefronts that don't use a Shopify theme aren't supported.

Five things, each with its own switch: the right-click menu, selecting text, dragging images out of the page, copying and cutting text, and the keyboard shortcuts for developer tools, such as F12. When someone tries one of these, a short message you write can appear in the corner of the page.

No. Form fields stay selectable, and pasting always works, so shoppers can paste an address or a discount code. Images stay clickable. Content protection doesn't run on Shopify's checkout pages at all.

It stops casual copying, like right-clicking and saving an image. It can't stop someone determined: anyone can view the page source, take a screenshot or turn off JavaScript. Use it to discourage copying, not to protect anything that would really hurt to lose.

For each visit: the country it worked out, the IP address, the device and browser, the time zone and language, the page and the page that linked to it, how long the visit lasted, and whether the visitor was blocked and why. No names, emails, phone numbers or orders.

90 days. A daily clean-up deletes older visits. Your rules and settings aren't visitor data, and they're kept while the app is installed.

Yes. Analytics has an Export CSV button for the range you're viewing, 7, 14, 30 or 90 days. Each file holds up to 10,000 visits, with the time, country, IP address, device, browser, block reason, page, referrer, visit length and page views.

Visit records are deleted straight away. Your rules and settings are kept for 48 hours in case you reinstall, then everything is erased.

No. Install Zonify, switch on its app embed in your theme editor, and add your rules. There's no code to paste and nothing else to change in your theme.

Zonify is free to install, with every feature included. If we ever add a paid plan, installed stores will be told before it applies, and any charge will go through your Shopify bill.

One: read-only access to your themes, so Zonify can see whether its app embed is on. Nothing for your orders, products or customers, and it can't change your theme, so you switch the embed on yourself in the theme editor, in two clicks.