A rival’s real price is the price after the welcome code

To monitor a competitor’s real price on Shopify, record what a first order pays, not only the page price: the sale and compare at price, the welcome code and its terms, whether it stacks with the sale, the free shipping line, bundles, member prices, texts and the emails after sign up. Price apps read the public page, so the code and the emails need a customer’s sign up; build the sheet by hand before the rival’s Black Friday offer goes live.

We read the pages of six price tracking apps and page monitors on 23 October 2026. Each follows prices on a rival’s pages. None lists the welcome code among what it follows, and the welcome code is part of what a new customer pays.

A rival’s real price is what a first order pays once the welcome code, the sale, the delivery line and any bundle have been applied. The page price is one line of that sum. A rival offer sheet records every line with a screenshot and a time, so you can set what a new customer pays at three rivals beside what they pay at your store.

The offers you will be set against are being decided now. Klaviyo’s Black Friday guide, dated 26 June 2026, puts teasers 2 to 4 weeks before the sale and the first early access discount in the first week of November. Omnisend, dated 8 September 2026, says to start in mid October. Black Friday is Friday 27 November and Cyber Monday is Monday 30 November. A sheet built this week is finished before your own offer freezes, about 20 November.

The forecast is a category figure, not a rival’s number. A rival’s number sits on its own pages, and part of it only after sign up.

The cheapest page is not always the cheapest first order

Take one 200g soy candle at four invented stores, priced for a UK shopper. Rival B has the lowest page price and the highest first order. Rival A has the highest page price and the lowest.

Ranked by page price, your store is second cheapest. Ranked by what a first order pays, it is third, £3.45 behind Rival A. Rival B’s code excludes its own sale price, so the £22 on the page is the whole discount. Rival A’s free delivery line at £20 holds after its 15% code, so a candle that costs £2 more on the page costs £3.45 less to buy.

Set up a customer each rival has never met

Your own login is the wrong account to test with, and so is any address a rival has seen. Set up a stranger.

• A mailbox only you read, such as a new Gmail address, so you see which tab each email lands in.
• A phone number you control, for rivals that text their code. Reply STOP to opt out.
• A private window on your phone, set to the market you sell in, because price, currency and delivery change by market.
• A sheet with a column for the rival, the line, what you saw, the screenshot and the time to the minute.

Sign up once per rival through the public form any visitor sees, with details that are yours. Stop at checkout before you pay. Never enter payment details that aren’t yours or place an order you won’t take delivery of. Read each rival’s terms first. This isn’t legal advice, and the rules differ by country.

What to record at each rival, in the order a customer meets it

Give every line a screenshot and a time.

Page price and compare at price

Open the product page on your phone and record the price, the compare at price and the date. In Shopify the compare at price is a field the store fills in: Shopify’s help says to set it to the original price, that both amounts can show on product and collection pages, and that only the sale price shows at checkout. A crossed out price is a number someone typed. Screenshot it weekly: a was price that never moves is a label, not a history.

The welcome offer, in the pop up and in the email

Wait for the pop up, screenshot its wording, then submit. Record the offer as promised, then the email when it lands: code, value, minimum spend, excluded products, expiry and minutes from submit to inbox. Both records matter. In Joy Joya’s test of 362 brands, 20 delivered an offer that did not match the pop up, such as 15% promised and 10% in the email, and 158 never sent a welcome email.

Whether the code stacks with the sale

Put a sale item in the basket, go to checkout and enter the code. Screenshot the total before and after. Whether a code combines with a sale is set on each discount, so only checkout answers. Shopify’s help says a code and an automatic discount share a basket only if each is set to combine with the other’s class, and allows up to 5 product or order codes and 1 shipping code per order. Where two codes can’t combine, checkout says “Discount couldn’t be used with your existing discounts”. Copy any refusal word for word, then leave before payment.

The free shipping line, before and after the code

Record the delivery cost at three baskets: just under the free shipping line, just over it, and just over it with the code applied. A threshold can be measured before or after the code, and the third basket shows which. Shopify’s help says the minimum for a free shipping discount counts product prices only, never tax. Record what checkout shows, not what the banner says.

Bundles and multibuys, priced per item

Divide a bundle’s price by its item count and write the price per item beside the single price. Add the bundle’s quantity to the basket, because a multibuy applies only when the basket holds the right items. Shopify’s buy X get Y discounts apply once the customer meets the purchase requirements, as a code or automatically.

Prices and offers shown only after sign up

Create an account if the store offers one, then open the product page you screenshotted logged out. Record any difference in price or offer, and check the account area and the sale page. Shopify lets a store limit a free shipping discount to specific customers or customer segments, so an offer can exist that a logged out visitor never sees. Your account shows what that store shows your account, not what it shows anyone else.

Codes sent by text

Opt in to the text offer with the number you control, and note the minute the text arrives in your time zone. Some pop ups offer a code only for a phone number. In the same Joy Joya test, 53 of 362 brands never sent the text they promised, so a missing text is a line too: record the deadline you gave it. Reply STOP when you finish. Rules on consent and quiet hours differ by country and by US state, and this isn’t legal advice.

The emails of the days after sign up

Log every email for the first 48 hours, then weekly to Black Friday: arrival time, sender, subject, offer, code, expiry and Gmail tab. Then leave a basket, begin checkout and stop before paying; the reminder is another offer, and its code may differ from the welcome code. Klaviyo’s guide describes an early access discount in the first week of November and a November offer that one brand sent exclusively to email subscribers. A rival’s first Black Friday offer may reach your inbox before its site shows it.

Turn each rival’s first order price into a decision

For each rival, write the first order total for your best seller and subtract your own. That gap is what matching costs on one first order. Multiply it by the first orders in your last full week, from your own orders report, and by the weeks the rival’s offer runs. With the £3.45 gap above and 100 first orders a week, matching costs £345 a week. Replace the 100 with your report’s number. The sum prices the move only. The orders you lose by not matching are worth what your own conversion data says, and nobody else’s rate belongs here.

Matching is not always the answer. Where the gap sits entirely in the delivery line, moving your own free shipping line closes it for less than a cut to your page prices.

What Shopify competitor price monitoring apps cover today, and where they stop

Obsession publishes this and builds in the same area, so each line about another tool comes from its own page as it stood on 23 October 2026. We installed none of them.

• Snoopie has a free plan: paste a store, collection or Amazon link, set a threshold, and it alerts by email, Slack or Discord on price moves, added or removed products and collection level changes, with price history as CSV. Its listing does not mention discount codes.
• CompeteTracker and PriceKit track competitor prices and can update yours. CompeteTracker is free for 3 competitors, then $19.99 a month for 10. PriceKit is free for 2 competitors per variant, then $19 a month, with price updates once a day.
• Competitor Price Tracker Pro ($1.99 a month, up to 5 competitor links per product), Prisync ($99 a month for 100 products) and PageCrawl ($8 a month for 100 monitors, with a price mode that reads sale and compare at prices) work from links you give them.
• A scraper on Apify reads store URLs for promotions, discount wording, free shipping thresholds and bundles, listed at $25 per 1,000 stores. Its page does not say which pages it reads or whether it finds codes.
• Panoramata tracks rivals’ newsletters, flows, ads, landing pages, SMS and website changes, from $99 a month. Its homepage does not say how it collects emails.

Most of the price apps start from a link and read the page behind it. Their pages do not claim the welcome code, whether it stacks, the text, the member price or the emails that follow, and those appear only to a customer who signs up. Panoramata and the Apify scraper come at that ground from other sides: one lists rivals’ emails and flows, the other reads promotion wording from public store pages. For the list price of hundreds of products across many rivals, reading the page is the right job.

If you compare 3 rivals on your 10 best sellers, you do not need any of them, ours included. One sheet, refreshed each Monday and Thursday to Cyber Monday, does the job.

Where a sheet by hand stops

• 1 inbox, 1 moment, 1 view. Tuesday’s sheet says nothing about Friday, a rival can change its code the day after you note it, and a new subscriber’s Gmail tab can differ from a loyal customer’s.
• No history before you subscribed. The teasers sent before your sign up can’t be recovered.
• A screenshot is weak proof. The email itself, with its arrival time, settles an argument. A screenshot starts one.
• Ten rivals every morning in sale week is 10 sign ups, 10 baskets and 10 inboxes to read before your day starts.

Obsession’s Price watch is built for that edge, and is in early access with a waitlist.

Your own store is the first row

Rivals are set against what a new customer gets from you, so fill your own row first. Sign up at your store with a new address, enter the welcome code on a sale item and write down the delivery line. A code at its usage limit, or a welcome email that never arrives, is a gap no rival’s price caused. The Black Friday checklist runs the whole path.

For agencies: put the sheet in front of the client before their offer is set

Run the sheet on a client’s rivals through their public sign ups, and on the client’s own store with their OK. On a prospect, use only the public sign up any customer can use. One page per client, with the first order gap at each rival, turns an offer debate into arithmetic.

The same rival promo explains a dip after the sale. A dated sheet puts it in front of the client before it. A client holding the sheet before the 20 November freeze sets their offer with it. A client who first sees it on 1 December reads a post mortem.

Questions