Adding Your First Store: A 5-Minute Setup Guide

What You Need Before You Start

One thing: a store URL. That is genuinely the only prerequisite. If you can visit the store in your browser, Bonesaw can monitor it.

You do not need an API key. You do not need the store owner's permission. You do not need to install anything on the store itself. Bonesaw works with publicly available product data from Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, and Big Cartel stores. If the store has a product catalog that visitors can browse, it can be monitored.

No credit card is required either. The free plan lets you get started and see real data before you decide whether to upgrade.

Adding a Store

Head to the dashboard and click the add store button. Paste the store's URL and Bonesaw takes it from there.

Behind the scenes, a few things happen in quick succession. Bonesaw detects which ecommerce platform the store runs on. This matters because each platform structures its product data differently, and knowing the platform upfront means the first scan pulls accurate, complete data. You will see the detected platform on the store's detail page once it is added.

After platform detection, the first scan is queued automatically. You do not need to trigger it manually. Depending on the store's size, this initial scan usually completes within a few minutes. A store with fifty products takes seconds. A store with ten thousand products takes a bit longer, but you will start seeing data appear well before the full catalog is indexed.

The store detail page shows a scan status indicator while the first scan runs. Once it finishes, the status updates and your product data is live.

Your First Scan Results

When the first scan completes, you will see the product count, current prices, and a catalog snapshot. This is real data pulled from the store's live product listings. Prices, titles, product variants, and availability status are all captured.

A few things will not be available yet, and that is normal. Price history requires multiple scans over time. You need at least two data points to see a trend, so the price chart for each product starts building after the second scan. Similarly, anomaly detection relies on baseline data that accumulates over several days. The system needs to learn what "normal" looks like for this store before it can flag something unusual.

Think of the first scan as the starting line. Every scan after that builds on this foundation, adding depth to your data with each cycle.

Three Things to Do Next

Set up a price alert. Monitoring data is useful, but alerts make it actionable. Configure a destination where you want notifications delivered, whether that is email, Discord, or Slack, and create an alert rule for the changes you care about. Price drops, new products, and availability changes can all trigger notifications. The alerts tutorial walks through the full setup, or see the price drop alerts guide if you are focused on tracking deals.

Create a watchlist. Watchlists let you organize the specific products you care about most. Instead of scanning through an entire catalog, you can group products by purpose. Maybe you want a "Competitors" list and a "Seasonal" list, or maybe a single "Watch These" list is enough. Either way, watchlists keep your attention on what matters. They also make the daily digest more useful because it summarizes changes across your lists. The product watchlist guide covers organization strategies that scale.

Add a second store. Monitoring one store gives you data. Monitoring two or more gives you context. Seeing how a competitor's pricing moves relative to another competitor, or relative to your own store, is where monitoring turns into intelligence. If you are unsure which stores to track, the competitor monitoring checklist has a practical framework for choosing.

What to Expect Over the First Week

Day 1. Your catalog is indexed. Prices, titles, variants, and availability status are captured for every product in the store. You can browse the product list and see current data immediately.

Days 2 and 3. If the store is active, you will start seeing changes. A price drop, a new product added, a variant going out of stock. These show up in the activity feed and on the store's detail page. If the store happens to be quiet during this window, that is normal too. Not every store changes something every day.

By day 5 to 7. Baseline data is established. This is when anomaly detection starts working for this store. The system has enough history to know what typical price movements and catalog changes look like, so it can flag things that break the pattern. Your first weekly report will also arrive around this time, summarizing everything that happened across your monitored stores during the week.

From here, the system runs in the background. You check in when an alert fires or when your digest arrives. The goal is not to make monitoring another chore. It is to make sure you find out about meaningful changes without having to look for them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I monitor my own store?

Yes. Some operators use Bonesaw to track their own store alongside competitors. It works the same way. You will see your own price changes, product additions, and catalog shifts in the same dashboard, which is useful for verifying that changes you make are reflected correctly.

How often does Bonesaw scan each store?

Scan frequency depends on your plan. Free plans scan on a standard interval, and higher plans scan more frequently. Regardless of plan, scans happen automatically. You never need to manually trigger a scan, though you can kick one off from the store's detail page if you want fresh data right now.

What if the store is password-protected?

If a store requires a password to view products, it cannot be scanned. Bonesaw works with publicly accessible product data. Stores behind authentication, in development mode, or with restricted access will not return usable data.

What platforms are supported?

Bonesaw supports Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, and Big Cartel. If a store runs on a supported platform, it can be monitored. The platform is detected automatically when you add the store.

Is there a free tier?

Yes. The free plan lets you monitor a limited number of stores with standard scan intervals. You can start with the free plan and upgrade later if you need more stores, faster scans, or features like CSV exports. See the pricing page for the full breakdown.

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Bonesaw is a product of MoonsLink. Monitoring capabilities described in this guide reflect publicly accessible product data collected through standard web protocols. Bonesaw does not access private or authenticated data. All data collection respects robots.txt directives and site access policies.