How to Tell If a Store Uses Shopify
Check public storefront signals, understand custom domains and headless stores, then decide whether you can collect the catalog you need.
To check whether a store uses Shopify, inspect its public storefront signals or open it in a Shopify detector extension. A custom domain, missing footer credit or unfamiliar design does not settle the question. After detection, check catalog access separately before planning an export.
You have a competitor's website open and want to study its product range. Before collecting titles and prices, establish what the storefront exposes and which scope would answer your research question.
I build Shopify Detector & Spy for that workflow: identify storefront signals, inspect public collections, and take away catalog files you can review. Here are the checks I would use.
1. Check the active storefront with a detector
Open the public store, then click the Shopify Detector & Spy extension while that tab is active. Its popup inspects public page context and identifies supported storefront, collection and product scopes.
Read the detection result before choosing Get data. A platform signal and a completed product capture answer different questions. Counts may still be scanning or unavailable even when the storefront has been identified.
For a first check, use a small collection you can inspect manually. Keep the popup open during capture and compare several returned products with the page.
2. Treat domains and footer credits as clues
Shopify gives stores a myshopify.com address, but merchants can use their own customer-facing domain. Shopify's domain documentation explains that relationship. A branded .com address therefore does not rule out Shopify.
A visible platform credit or a Shopify reference in public page source can provide another clue. Look for context around the reference: a product storefront, an asset URL, an embedded component, or a link to another website are different observations.
Record the page you inspected and what you found. A familiar logo or isolated string is weaker evidence than a consistent storefront result followed by usable product data. A missing footer credit alone is also insufficient to establish a different platform.
3. Account for headless storefronts
Shopify supports a headless architecture in which a custom frontend uses Shopify commerce underneath. The public site can therefore look and behave differently from a conventional theme-based store.
That matters for both detection and collection. The visible website domain and the public catalog host may differ, and a Shopify-backed storefront may not expose the public feed your chosen exporter expects.
Shopify Detector & Spy supports detected or verified Shopify catalog domains for supported custom storefronts. That is a supported workflow rather than a guarantee for every headless implementation. Preserve an unsupported, blocked or unavailable result instead of treating it as an empty catalog.
4. Separate store, theme and app detection
| Research question | Evidence you need |
|---|---|
| Does this storefront use Shopify? | Public platform signals and a supported detection result |
| Which theme does it use? | Theme-specific evidence or a tool that documents theme detection |
| Which apps are installed? | App-specific evidence, with the limits of public-page inspection understood |
| What products and variants are exposed? | A capture of the selected public catalog scope |
| How much does the store sell? | Appropriate sales evidence; a public catalog does not establish revenue |
Shopify Detector & Spy focuses on platform signals and public catalog research. It does not identify themes or installed apps, provide verified sales, or expose private merchant data. Choose the evidence required for the decision rather than treating every “Shopify spy” feature as interchangeable.
5. Turn the result into one useful research file
Choose the website, collection or product scope you actually need. Preview the returned records, then download CSV or the catalog ZIP. The ZIP includes observed-catalog.json, a text-typed Excel workbook, image links and a coverage manifest.
Free includes 100 captured products per UTC calendar month in the browser profile. Pro removes that monthly quota and has no fixed product or variant cap per run; source access and available browser resources still affect coverage.
For structured data, follow the Shopify JSON export guide. For a category review, use the collection walkthrough.
Start with one relevant storefront and one small scope. A useful result names the platform evidence, the requested catalog and what was actually captured. Those details make the next research step easier to explain.