The best Shopify app to monitor uptime depends on which kind of downtime you are worried about. StatusBird is the pick for monitoring the third-party services your revenue runs on (Stripe, Klaviyo, ShipStation, ad platforms) plus your own storefront. Uptime by Jagged Pixel is the pick for automated UI tests that catch a broken checkout after a theme change. Blimey Down Detector is the pick if you want a free storefront pinger. AppPulse watches the health of the apps installed on your store, and TestingBot runs real-browser tests from multiple regions. This post compares all five, plus the external tools that do not require an install at all.
The Shopify App Store uptime apps compared
All five below are actual apps on the Shopify App Store. Pricing and review counts are as published on each listing in July 2026:
| App | Free plan | Paid from | What it monitors | Alert channels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| StatusBird | 3 services, free forever | $29/mo | 84 third-party services + your storefront | SMS, email, Slack, Teams, Discord |
| Uptime (Jagged Pixel) | No, 7-day trial | $29/mo ($99 for UI tests) | Your store's flows via automated UI tests, Shopify status | Slack ($99 tier), email |
| Blimey Down Detector | Entirely free | Free | Your storefront, Shopify status, SSL expiry | |
| AppPulse | 5 installed apps | $5.99/mo | Your installed apps' health, storefront probes | Email, Slack, Discord, webhooks |
| TestingBot | No, 7-day trial | $25/mo | Your store via real-browser tests from 10+ regions | Instant notifications |
StatusBird: third-party service outages plus your own store
StatusBird monitors the layer no storefront test can see: the official status of the 84 external services e-commerce stores run on, checked every 2 minutes. When Stripe starts declining payments, Klaviyo holds your abandoned cart flows, or ShipStation stops printing labels, your storefront looks perfectly healthy while revenue quietly leaks. StatusBird alerts you by SMS, email, Slack, Teams, or Discord within 2 minutes of the vendor declaring an incident, and each alert includes what the outage means for a store like yours and what to do about it, such as pausing paid ads during a checkout outage. The free plan covers 3 services forever; Pro at $29/month covers all 84 plus uptime checks on your own storefront, so one app handles both layers. Billing runs through Shopify when you install from the App Store.
Uptime by Jagged Pixel: automated tests of your own store
Uptime - Automated Store Tests is the longest-standing app in this space, on the App Store since May 2022 with a 5.0 rating across 30 reviews. Its focus is the opposite of StatusBird's: scripted UI tests that add to cart and run your checkout around the clock, re-running automatically when your theme updates. If a deploy silently breaks your buy button, this catches it. Essentials is $29/month for Shopify status monitoring and 2 monitored apps; the automated UI tests and Slack alerts that make it distinctive live in the $99/month Pro tier, and Plus is $299/month. There is no free plan and no SMS. The full head-to-head is at StatusBird vs Uptime.
Blimey Down Detector: the free option
Blimey Down Detector & Alerts launched in March 2026 and is completely free: multi-location pings of your storefront, Shopify platform status, SSL certificate expiry warnings, and instant email alerts. For a zero-budget storefront pinger it is genuinely good. Its limits are structural: it only sees your own site, and it only alerts by email, the channel most likely to sit unread during a live outage. Since Shopify hosts and monitors your storefront anyway, a ping on it mostly re-detects what Shopify already knows. Pair it with StatusBird's free plan (3 third-party services) and both layers are covered for exactly $0. Comparison at StatusBird vs Blimey.
AppPulse: health checks for your installed apps
AppPulse App Uptime & Health launched in June 2026 and takes a third angle: it auto-discovers the apps installed on your store and monitors whether their scripts and endpoints respond, plus synthetic probes of your homepage, product, search, and cart pages. Free covers 5 apps with a daily digest; Pro is $5.99/month for unlimited apps and instant alerts. The caveat: a vendor's snippet loading is not the same as the vendor's service working. Klaviyo's script can return fine while Klaviyo's sending infrastructure is down. Vendor-level status is the layer StatusBird covers and AppPulse does not.
TestingBot: real-browser tests from many regions
TestingBot - Store Monitoring comes from an established browser-testing company and brings that DNA to Shopify: real browser UI tests running 24/7 from more than 10 geographic locations, with test recording and AI-assisted test generation, at $25/month with a 7-day trial. Like Uptime by Jagged Pixel, it answers the question "is my store working for a real user right now" rather than "are the services behind my store up". If your store serves many international markets, the multi-region angle is its distinctive strength.
Do you need a Shopify app for uptime monitoring at all?
Honest answer: for basic URL pings on your storefront, no. External tools like UptimeRobot, Better Stack, or Uptime.com monitor any URL without an install, often free at low check volumes, and we compare them in our full e-commerce uptime roundup. But that advice hides a trap: a URL pinger, installed or not, only tells you whether a page loads. Shopify already hosts and monitors your storefront around the clock, so the pinger mostly duplicates coverage you get for free. The downtime that actually costs Shopify stores money happens one layer out, in the third-party stack: payments declining, email flows stalling, labels not printing, ad spend burning against a broken pixel. No URL check sees any of that, which is why the app-versus-no-app question matters less than the what-are-you-monitoring question. Monitor the services your revenue flows through, then add a URL check as the cheap second layer.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Shopify app to monitor uptime?
For most Shopify stores, StatusBird is the best uptime monitoring app because it covers the failures that actually cost revenue: outages in third-party services like Stripe, Klaviyo, and ShipStation, plus your own storefront, with SMS, email, Slack, Teams, and Discord alerts within 2 minutes and a free plan for 3 services. Stores that ship frequent theme changes should consider adding Uptime by Jagged Pixel for its automated checkout tests.
Is there a free Shopify app for uptime monitoring?
Yes, two. Blimey Down Detector is entirely free and pings your storefront with email alerts. StatusBird's free plan monitors 3 third-party services of your choice forever, with no credit card. Installing both covers your storefront and your most critical vendors at no cost.
Do I need uptime monitoring if Shopify already hosts my store?
You need it for the services around your store more than for the store itself. Shopify's engineers monitor the storefront infrastructure, but nobody is watching your payment processor, email platform, shipping software, and ad accounts on your behalf. Those services fail independently and more often than Shopify does, and their outages do not show up as your site going down.
What is the difference between store testing apps and service monitoring apps?
Store testing apps like Uptime by Jagged Pixel and TestingBot simulate a customer using your store and alert you when a flow breaks, which catches problems you ship yourself. Service monitoring apps like StatusBird read the official status feeds of the external services your store depends on and alert you when a vendor has an incident. The first catches your bugs; the second catches your vendors' outages. Larger stores often run one of each.