Maybe a video clip will help? Please check the 2-minute video explaining what Price2Spy actually is, and how it can help your business.
All questions
All questions
General questions
Sorry, I don't have that much time for reading, Is there a quick explanation what is Price2Spy?
How many competitor sites can you monitor for me?
There is no limit on number of competitors monitored. It can vary from just a single competitor site, till hundreds and hundreds. Btw, our priceplans are based on total number of products (URLs) monitored, not on number of competitors.
I find Price2Spy a great tool, but I'm too busy to set it up myself
No problem, just send us a list containing up to 25 products for your free trial. Please also let us know which competitor stores we should monitor, and we’ll set your Price2Spy account free of any charge so you’ll get automatic emails whenever price change is detected.
Or, do you want to monitor ALL competitor product pricing? Please check Automatch possibilities, or our product crawl features
Do I need any technical knowledge to use Price2Spy?
No. The only technical knowledge you’ll need is to copy / paste the address from competitor’s address. After you enter that address address (URL) into Price2Spy, the rest goes automatically.
Will my competitors know that I'm monitoring their prices?
No, for 3 reasons
- We will never disclose any details of any of our clients.
- Technically speaking, when Price2Spy checks competitor’s Website, it’s done from one of our servers, not your computer. Thus, your competitor has no way of knowing who is checking his prices.
- Our servers are scattered all around the world, so your competitors will have a real hard time figuring out that someone may be monitoring on them
Is it legal to track competitor's prices?
Of course it is. All we’re doing is checking publicly available information, displayed on competitor’s public Website. The point is that we check this information in smart and structured way. What is illegal is price fixing, and that is quite different to price tracking. A side note: price fixing is not illegal in US, while it is in most of the rest of the world.
How do I get my pricing reports?
Price2Spy comes with wide variety of reports which will help determine how are your competitor’s positioned on the market, and how that relates to your own Web store. More concretely, you’ll be able to see
- Price Matrix – listing all products, from all competitors, marking ones which are cheapest / most expensive
- Which products from a certain Webstore have the highest market price
- Which products from a certain Webstore have the lowest market price
- Which products from a certain Webstore have price above the market average
- Which products from a certain Webstore have price below the market average
- Which products are in violation of MAP policy
- Which price checks are failing, and why
All of the above reports you can either pull out yourself (any time you like), or you can instruct Price2Spy to send them automatically (as a daily report in Excel, sent to your mailbox)
I'm too busy to login into Price2Spy each day. Can I get same reports in my mailbox, automatically?
Yes, that’s what Automated Reports are for.
Basically, any report you can pull out from Price2Spy can be turned into an automated report that will be sent to you by email on daily basis (you can specify the exact hour of the day when you’d like the automated report sent). The report itself will be in Excel file attached to this email.
Can I monitor my resellers?
Yes, Price2spy is used by a number of world leading brands who want to control if their resellers are in accordance to MAP (minimal advertised price) contracts.
I would like to monitor my product prices on whole of the Web. Can Price2Spy do it?
‘Whole of the Web’ sounds like utopia, since there are more than 500M websites online. However, what we can do is website discovery service, where we will identify key websites selling your products.
Are there any graphical reports available?
- Pricing Dashboard shows up-to-date (or historic) pricing information
- Historical price chart is a graphical report which will show you price movements over selected period. You can pull it out for any product in Price2Spy.
- Price Change dynamics will show you how often your competitors perform price changes, for various types of products
Can I create reports of my own?
Yes, can create the following
- Custom reports that will be shown in your browser, or sent to you as Excel attachment (we call these ‘Automated Reports’)
- Custom pricing widgets – as part of your Pricing Dashboard
Can Price2Spy monitor any additional information related to the product (shipping cost, delivery time, cashback, seller information, etc)
Yes, Price2Spy can capture such data. Of course, the data applicable varies from one site to another. Please note that this feature is available for our Premium users. Depending on how competitor sites show this information, additional setup costs may apply.
Where can I find Price2Spy case studies
By it’s nature, Price2Spy is a very specific and discrete tool. We will never disclose any of our client’s details. However, we have described several of our client’s cases, so you can compare it to your own organization. On the other hand, since we are Web merchants ourselves, you can check our own success story.
I have competitors who have Websites in several different languages. Can Price2Spy cover that?
No problem at all. All that matters is that competitor’s Website has product name and price listed, that’s all we need.
I have competitor who's using anti-monitoring techniques. Can you do something about it?
Yes, Price2Spy uses highly distributed system architecture, enabling us to crawl / monitor websites from almost any location in the world. In other words, if your competitor is trying to limit access to crawlers / monitoring tools – it will have real hard time preventing Price2Spy to monitor it. In order to overcome the ban, we’re using a number of techniques, with stealth IP traffic being the ultimate method.
There are stores that won't display the price unless the product is placed in cart. Can Price2Spy track such products?
Most likely, it can. We are currently monitoring over 200 such stores. Please let us know about this store, and we’ll analyze it and let you know. Please note that such sites do require Premium Price2Spy user accounts
Can I use Price2Spy on my own store?
Yes you can. If you do this you’ll instantly know if your prices are high or low, compared to your competitors. Even more than that, Price2Spy will provide you with number of reports showing whether your prices are positioned on low-end or high-end.
I'm too busy to enter products / URLs myself. Can you help?
Yes, our product matching team definitely can help. Please provide the list of products, followed by list of competitor sites.
Or, maybe we can try if Automatch will work for you?
I'm already feeding my products to Google? Can I reuse this feed?
Yes, please check our standard integrations page. This will enable you to export your products to your Price2spy account in just few minutes.
Will I be able to have multiple user accounts?
Yes, if you have a Premium Price2Spy account. You will be able able to setup multiple user accounts, each with it’s own account privileges.
Can I define my own repricing rules?
Yes, by default you can define your repricing rules in Price2Spy based on the desired profitability and position on the market. However, if you feel limited by the logic of our default Repricing rules or the variables used for calculating suggested prices, you can send your requirements to support@price2spy.com and we will gladly suggest a custom repricing solution tailored to your needs.
Can Price2Spy help me implement repricing rules on my own store?
Yes, please check our Pricing strategies / Repricing page.
Is my data safe with Price2Spy?
At Price2Spy, we do not use data that belongs to you and offer it to other clients. Each client has its own set-up, so, you can be sure that your data is safe with us. The data which a client adds to her/his account will not be shared with anyone else.
Technical questions
Can Price2Spy identify products where my pricing is not competitive?
Sure, after you define your pricing strategy, Price2Spy will identify products where you have pricing opportunities. More than that, it will suggest new prices, according to the strategy you defined.
Can Price2Spy track prices in any currency?
Yes, we can captures prices in any currency you desire. Depending on your settings, you may wish to display the price in it’s original currency, or converted to another currency, using an exchange rate. Please check details in following tutorial video: working with multiple currencies
My competitor shows several product variations on a single page. Can I monitor the price of a particular variation?
Yes, Price2Spy is the first price monitoring tool that enabled this feature. We call it URL parameters.
Can Price2Spy automatically match products for me?
Yes – it can be done either by Automatch (automated product matching on a single website), or by Multi-Automatch (Automatch performed on several websites at the same time)
My products cannot be matched automatically. Can you still help?
Yes, we did so for more than 680 clients so far, please check our manual product matching services.
Are there any Tutorials available?
Yes, please check our video tutorials page, which should help you setup price monitoring of competitor sites.
What kind of server do I need to run Price2Spy?
No server, software etc needed from your side. Price2Spy is an online service, and all you need to do it sign up and start using it.
What kind of Websites can it track?
Can Price2Spy crawl competitor site for me?
Yes, if there is something uniquely matchable shown on competitor’s product page (usually that’s SKU or MPN), we can use Automatch to perform automated (and continual!) product matching for you.
Or, if you’d like to get whole product assortment of your competitor, please check automated site crawl
Can you track sites where the price is not shown in HTML?
Price2Spy uses highly flexible and uniquely powerful technology, which can track not only plain HTML, but also JavaScript, CSS, Ajax and even websites which show prices as images. Don’t believe it? Do give it a try – please register and specify your competitor’s site.
How often will it check my competitor's prices?
That is up to you to choose.
If you’re having Basic Price2Spy account, the checks take place once a day (or less frequent, depending on how you set it up – it can vary from once a day, to once in 14 days. Most our users choose once a day.
With Premium Price2Spy account, the price check frequency can go up to 8 times a day (each 3 hours)
How will I be notified of a price change?
There are 3 ways
- Automatic email (either once per day, or instantly, whenever price change is detected, no matter what time of day it is)
- If you want to avoid emails, you can login to Price2Spy and check your Pricing Dashboard (if you have setup widgets for showing recent price changes)
- If you go to Reports section you can run any of the reports, using search filter ‘Show only products with price changes in last X days’
How do I know if my competitor's store can be tracked by Price2Spy?
Please check the list of supported stores. If your competitor’s Website is not there, then please suggest us that Website, we will gladly include it.
What kind of information can Price2Spy extract?
By default, Price2Spy can extract product price and product availability. However, our Premium users can also have Price2Spy capture some other information (like shipping cost, seller information, delivery time etc) for them. Depending on how this information is shown on competitor’s product pages, additional setup costs may apply.
Will Price2Spy let me know when a product gets out of stock?
Can I access my Price2Spy data from my mobile phone?
Yes, you can access your Price2Spy account using your mobile phone, and you’ll get a mobile-friendly version of Price2Spy. Or, you can simply download the Price2Spy app for Android.
Can you monitor Websites which have restricted access policy?
Yes, Price2Spy has the ability to monitor such sites from different locations. For example – if you want to monitor a Spanish website, which bans any requests coming from outside of Spain – we’ll monitor it from our Spanish server. Price2Spy has currently it’s servers in more than 15 countries worldwide – the number is growing on nearly monthly basis.
My competitor blocks traffic from automated tools in number of minutes. Can you track him?
Price2Spy has encountered several sites with real smart anti-bot protection. In some cases, they block our server IPs in matter of minutes. In order to be able to monitor such sites, we have mastered ‘stealth IP traffic‘ technology, which enables us to effectively change our IP instantly, over millions of different IP addresses, geographically scattered across the globe.
Can Price2Spy capture data from pages protected by CAPTCHA
The point is to avoid CAPTCHA, so the website you’re monitoring does not detect that it’s dealing with a bot. However, even if CAPTCHA can’t be avoided – it can be handled.
Can I access pricing data from my own software?
Yes, Price2Spy API enables you to get Price2Spy data directly straight into your application.
Do you offer an API integration? And if yes, how can I access it?
Yes, we do. While many other competitors have only customized export of a CSV file, Price2Spy can offer you a real API integration.
Price2Spy API is a standard Web service. You can access it either by SOAP, or via REST interface.
Is there any way to integrate Price2Spy with my own store, with no programming effort?
Yes, if you use one of standard supported eCommerce platforms, you can easily achieve integration.
Can Price2Spy read prices / information shown in images (e.g. capture prices displayed as images)?
Yes, this is one of the price monitoring challenges that we’ve been able to overcome recently. In short – yes, we can capture prices shown as images.
Can Price2Spy notify me of new competitor products?
Yes, if you use Price2Spy crawl service (with periodical recrawls) Price2Spy will notify you of
- New products being added by your competitors
- Products which you competitors have discontinued
Will I be able to have multiple user accounts?
Yes, if you have a Premium Price2Spy account. You will be able able to setup multiple user accounts, each with it’s own account privileges.
How can I reprice (perform price changes of my own products) from Price2Spy?
- You should create a pricing strategy – defining which products are candidates for repricing
- You should implement either Indirect or Direct repricing
Can repricing (as described above) be automated?
We are currently investigating this possibility.
Can Price2Spy monitor posts on Social networks like Trip Advisor, Instagram, Yellow Pages
Please note that Price2Spy is not built for such use case. However, we do offer another specialized service – JustLikeAPI – which is intended for collecting profile information / reviews / comments.
Can Price2Spy submit posts / reviews / comments on social networks?
Commercial questions
How many competitor sites will Price2Spy track for me?
There is no limit in number of competitor Websites. However, the number of Products / URLs monitored depends on the price plan you are using. Please check our price plans.
For your reference, some of our clients have over 550 competitors on their account. On the other one, some clients are monitoring 1 competitor site only.
In essence, it’s up to you to choose how many competitors you want monitored…
What kind of support will I get?
Our support department will answer your calls daily from 9:00AM to 5:30PM (CET) – please check our phone numbers on Contact page.
Of course, you can email us any time at support@price2spy.com – you’ll get our reply within 24 hours.
Further, you’re welcome to contact our staff by online chat (see the button in the top right of the screen)
Is there some kind of free trial, so I can try before I buy?
Yes, you’re welcome to use free 30-day trial package, which will allow you to monitor up to 1000 product URLs, with all the functionality Price2Spy offers. Please sign up here.
Btw, when signing up we won’t ask you for you credit card number, or any other financial information. We’ll get to it once you say you’re happy with Price2Spy and once you’re ready to subscribe for the service.
How can I pay?
You can pay online, by using your credit card, or by Paypal.
Further, you can pay by wire (bank transfer).
Do I need to fill in my credit card details when registering?
No. When registering you’ll be asked about no financial information whatsoever.
What is the difference between Basic and Premium Price2Spy accounts?
Here are basic differences
- Basic account checks prices up to once per day. With Premium account it’s up to 8 times per day
- Prices on certain stores can’t be monitored using standard mechanisms – ie, require more features from Price2Spy engine, available only to Premuim users. However, number of such sites is very limited
- Capturing additional information (like shipping costs, seller information, price before promotion etc) is available only for our Premium users
- Basic accounts can have only 1 customized automated report (sent on daily a basis), while Premium accounts can have 5 such reports.
- Last but not least, Price2Spy API, which enables your own software to interface Price2Spy, is available with Premium user account.
Please check price plan comparison for the detailed list of features available with Premium Price2Spy account.
Is Automatch included in standard Price2Spy priceplans?
No, Price2Spy is an additional service, typically having 2 components
- Setup (one-off) costs, which will most likely be per competitor site (not per number of products)
- Monthly costs (in addition to your regular Price2Spy monthly fees) – depending on the number of products / competitor sites and the frequency of Automatch checks.
Will I be able to have multiple user accounts?
Yes, if you have a Premium Price2Spy account. You will be able able to setup multiple user accounts, each with it’s own account privileges.
I do not want a Premium priceplan. Can I still have multiple Price2Spy user accounts?
Technically – no. However, your users may share account credentials – and they will be able to use Price2Spy at the same time. Please note that this means that you will not be able to track which user made changes to the account, if needed.
How do repricing add-ons affect my monthly fee?
We have 2 repricing methods available, and both of them affect your monthly fee (Direct repricing is more powerful, thus more expensive than Indirect repricing). Please check price plan comparison.