// Bilby · United Kingdom
Shopify store monitoring in the United Kingdom
Bilby watches UK Shopify stores the way a customer in Manchester would: a nightly visit at 02:00 UK time from our London region, in a real browser, on desktop and mobile, through to the payment step. Billed in pounds, VAT handled through Stripe Tax with your VAT number on the invoice. From £24 a month.
Does Bilby visit my store from the UK, and at what time?
Yes. Every night at 02:00 UK time (GMT or BST, whichever is current) Bilby opens your store from our London region in a real Chromium browser, on a 1440×900 desktop and a 390×844 phone, and visits home → product → cart → checkout to the payment step. Speed is measured from London, not Sydney.
London is one of Bilby’s six regions (Sydney, Virginia, Los Angeles, Toronto, London and Frankfurt); a store is assigned the region nearest its customers, so a UK store’s Core Web Vitals and time-to-checkout reflect what a shopper on a UK connection sees. The visit stops at the payment step: Bilby never places an order, never enters card details and never needs access to your Shopify admin — it visits the public storefront exactly as a customer would.
What breaks on UK Shopify stores that a pinger doesn’t notice?
The things UK shoppers hit that a ping cannot: a Clearpay or Klarna widget that errors on the product page, Royal Mail shipping rates that stop returning at checkout, VAT-inclusive prices that show ex-VAT after a theme update, and a cookie banner that covers the add-to-cart button on a phone. The homepage still returns 200 through all of it.
A pinger asks “is the server up?”. Bilby asks “can a customer buy?” — it presses the buttons, waits for the shipping step to load, reads the checkout for error text, and photographs the exact screen where the visit stalled, with the fix written underneath. The Money check also confirms your GA4 purchase event and Meta Pixel fire on the visit, which matters since Shopify’s August 2026 checkout-script sunset silently broke a lot of tracking.
Do I pay VAT on Bilby, and can I get a VAT invoice?
Bilby is supplied from Australia. Checkout takes your billing address and, if you have one, your VAT number, which prints on every Stripe invoice; Stripe Tax works out any VAT due from that address. A VAT-registered UK business normally accounts for VAT on an overseas supplier’s services itself under the reverse charge (HMRC VATPOSS14300).
Every charge produces a Stripe invoice with the supplier details, the VAT treatment and your number on it, sent to your billing email and downloadable from the customer portal. Cancelling is one click in the same portal; there is no minimum term.
How much does Bilby cost in pounds?
Bilby is £24 a month for one store, Bilby Pro £64 a month for three stores plus the Rivals, Search and AI-visibility checks, and Agency £160 a month for 25 stores with a team seat for every account manager. Yearly billing is ten months’ price — £240, £640 and £1,600. Every plan starts with 7 free nights, card up front, cancel in one click.
The free scan (3 a day, no card, no signup) and the free monthly checkup email cost nothing. The pricing page shows GBP to a visitor from the UK; USD, AUD, GBP, CAD and EUR are all available if you would rather be billed in another currency, and yearly billing is ten months’ price.
What does a UK VAT invoice from a Shopify store need?
A full UK VAT invoice needs your VAT number, a unique invoice number and date, both parties’ names and addresses, a description of the goods, the net amount, the VAT rate and amount for each rate, and the gross total; a simplified invoice is allowed for retail sales under £250. Shopify’s order confirmation is not a VAT invoice by default.
Where to next
The long-form comparison for this market is Best Shopify store monitoring tools for UK stores (2026) — seven other monitors, what each checks, prices verified against their public pages, and when not to pay for any of them. Plans in GBP are on the pricing page, and how the visit works explains the seven things it checks.
Where we visit stores: United States · Canada · European Union · Australia
// Judge the report, not the pitch
See what Bilby finds
in your UK store.
One free visit, the whole report — annotated screenshots, costs, fixes. No signup, no card.
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