Docs / Site Tools
Site Tools
Site Tools by FreshClick, formerly Uptime Monitor, watches your BigCommerce store around the clock and audits its health, SEO and AI readiness. It alerts you when the store goes down, checkout fails or orders stop, and shows you how to fix what it finds.
Features, pricing and a free trial: Site Tools for BigCommerce.
Overview
What each plan includes
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
What you get depends on your plan. The website monitor and its alerts work on every plan. The store checks and audits need the 7-day trial or a paid plan.
| Area | What it covers | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Monitor | Website Monitor, History, BigCommerce Status, Response Codes, maintenance windows, down and recovery emails, Peak mode. | Every plan |
| Expiry and store activity alerts | SSL and domain expiry, High abandoned carts, Low orders. | Every plan |
| Site Health | Store score, Fix these first, What Changed, Orders, Catalog, Store Setup, Page Speed, Errors & Scripts, Checkout, Accessibility, Security. | Trial and paid |
| SEO | SEO Audit, Products, Categories, Audited Pages, Broken Pages, Store Schema. | Trial and paid |
| Google, Bing and AI | Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools reports, Shopping Readiness, AI crawler access, AI readiness, llms.txt. | Trial and paid |
| Reports | Weekly summary email, Monthly Report. | Trial and paid |
During the trial you can see everything, but fixes are locked and checks refresh once a day. See Trial.
Installation
Install the app
Storefront Nothing. Site Tools never touches your theme or storefront code unless you turn on a storefront feature yourself.
Install from the BigCommerce marketplace. Installing creates your account, starts a 7-day free trial and sends you a welcome email. There is nothing to set up first:
- Your storefront is monitored straight away. We add your store's own storefront as the first monitor, checked every minute.
- The first scan starts on install. The top bar shows Running your first scan, and the store score appears once at least three sections have results.
- SSL and domain expiry reminders are on from the start.
Store activity alerts and every store check are off until you turn them on in Email Notifications. Google, Bing and Merchant Center data needs you to connect them.
Monitor
Website Monitor
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
The live state of your storefront: online or offline and for how long (Up for or Down for), Last load time, and a homepage screenshot. If the latest screenshot looks different from the one before, a link shows you both.
- Today uptime
- The share of today's checks that passed, in your store's time zone.
- Total uptime
- The share of all checks that passed.
- Average response
- The average time your store took to answer today, in seconds. Load times today charts it through the day.
- Checks today
- How many checks passed and how many failed. Availability today shows the failed ones along the day.
Further down are Store checks (Checkout, Page speed (mobile), JavaScript errors and Broken pages at a glance), Server Events, Downtime today, Last outage and the full Check log.
The BigCommerce server card compares your median response time today with the other stores we monitor on the same BigCommerce server, and flags a server where many stores are down at once (Having problems). If they are down too, the problem is BigCommerce's, and the down email says so.
Monitor settings
Storefront Nothing on your storefront.
- Check website every
- How often we check your store, in minutes. The default is 1. This box only appears when interval changes are switched on for your account.
- Timeout
- How many seconds to wait for a response before the check counts as failed, up to 120. The default is 5.
Peak mode
Storefront Nothing.
For your busiest days, Peak mode makes every monitor on the store check each minute, so you hear about an outage within a minute or two. Set it in Store checks on the Email Notifications page.
- Off
- Monitors use their own interval.
- Black Friday to Cyber Monday
- Turns Peak mode on by itself from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, whole days, and off again after.
- On now
- Turns it on straight away, until you set it back to Off.
While it is on, an On now label shows beside the setting and the Website Monitor shows Peak mode: checking every minute.
History
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Uptime, average load time, succeeded and failed requests and response codes for each day, with a daily uptime strip. Pick a day under Every day to see its detail. It lets you answer "was this us?" with a timestamp rather than a guess.
BigCommerce Status
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Components and Incidents from status.bigcommerce.com. When your store goes down, check here first.
Response Codes
Storefront Nothing. Reference only.
What each HTTP status code means, for reading the codes in your check log.
Maintenance windows
Storefront Nothing.
Planned work shouldn't page anyone. On the Calendar page, press Add, pick the website, give the window a name under Information (for example "Server Maintenance"), and set a Start Date and End Date. While a window is in progress, checks for that website are skipped and no alerts go out. Each window shows as In Queue, In Progress or Ended.
Adding and importing monitors
Storefront Nothing.
Your monitors are your BigCommerce storefronts. The main one is added when you install; turn on another on the Storefronts page. Adding or importing any other website address is staff-only, so you won't see Add or Import on your account. Export downloads your websites as a CSV file.
Alerts
Who gets alerts
Storefront Nothing on your storefront. Alerts go to your team.
Every alert goes to each person on your BigCommerce account who has access to the app.
- In BigCommerce, go to Account Settings › Users and edit the user.
- Under Single Click Apps, tick Site Tools by FreshClick and save.
- Ask them to open the app once from BigCommerce. They then appear under Recipients on the Email Notifications page and start receiving alerts.
You can also invite people from the Team page.
Down and recovered
Storefront Nothing.
We email when your store stops answering, returns a server error or an unexpected status code, and again when it comes back. If a second location we check from can still reach your store, we hold the alert and check again, for up to three checks in a row, so a blip on our side doesn't wake you. You get one email per change, not one per failed check.
Email Notifications
Storefront Nothing, unless you turn on the outage notice.
Every alert setting lives on the Email Notifications page, under Tools. Only team admins can change them.
- Domain expiry
- Emails 30, 7 and 1 day before your domain registration expires. Domains bought through BigCommerce show "Renewed by BigCommerce" in the top bar instead.
- SSL certificate expiry
- The same reminders for your SSL certificate. Both are on by default, and the top bar shows both dates.
- High abandoned carts
- Emails when abandoned carts reach your Alert at number within the hours you pick under Within (1 to 24). A sudden spike usually means checkout or a payment gateway is broken. The default is 10 carts in 1 hour.
- Low orders
- Emails when orders fall under your Alert under number within the hours you pick under Within. A quiet spell in trading time often means customers can't complete checkout.
- Active from / Active until
- Each alert only fires between these times, so a quiet night doesn't wake anyone. Both alerts are off by default.
Store checks
Storefront Only Outage notice for shoppers adds anything to your storefront. Checkout monitoring puts a product in a temporary cart.
These are extra checks beyond "is the site up". Each one is off until you switch it on, and its emails go to the same people. They need the trial or a paid plan.
- Checkout monitoring
- Every hour we add a product to a new cart and load checkout, then delete the cart. No order is placed. It appears in your store's cart activity, which is why it is off by default. Emails after two failed checks in a row, and again when it works.
- Visual change alerts
- Emails when a new screenshot (taken about every 12 hours) shows a blank page, or a page that looks very different.
- Broken page alerts
- Each week we check your sitemap pages and email you about new ones that are missing.
- Price and stock alerts
- Emails within the hour when a price is cut by half or more, set to zero, a sale price is above the price, or a best-seller sells out.
- Order drop alerts
- Emails within the hour when orders fall well below a normal day, stop coming in, declined and incomplete orders jump, or a burst of failed checkouts looks like card testing. A normal day is the same weekday over the last 4 weeks. Each kind of email is sent at most once a day.
- Check out-of-stock products too
- We check and count in-stock products only. Switch this on to audit sold-out products as well. They then count towards your price tier, and the setting shows you the effect first.
- Weekly summary email
- See Weekly summary.
- Outage notice for shoppers
- When BigCommerce has an outage on your server, shows shoppers a small bar saying the store platform is having technical problems, and removes it when the outage ends. It adds a script through Script Manager, so the app needs edit access to scripts. Subscribers only.
- Peak mode
- See Peak mode.
Site Health
Store score
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
The Overview is the app's home. Its Store score rolls the checks into one number out of 100: Your store is in great shape at 90 or more, A few things need attention from 60 to 89, Your store needs attention below 60.
- Uptime is shown but not counted. It depends on your hosting, not on your site.
- Any High problem caps the score at 69. A store with payments off or orders stopped can't read as "in great shape".
- What makes up your score lists 13 sections, each out of 100 and weighted by how much it matters to sales: Checkout, Orders, Store setup, Catalog, Speed, Errors & scripts, Security, SEO audit, Product SEO, Category SEO, Broken pages, AI visibility and Accessibility. A section not measured yet is left out, not counted as zero.
- Score over time charts the daily score once there are two days of data.
The tiles under the score link to the Website monitor, Orders today, Google, Core Web Vitals and This week. The Health Score page scores nine areas, including Uptime, so its number can differ from the Overview's.
Fix these first
Storefront Nothing, unless you apply a fix.
The biggest problems across every section, worst first, up to eight at a time. Each shows a High, Medium or Low label and a guide to fixing it.
- Fixed
- Press it once you have dealt with an issue. We re-run that check and the issue goes if it is sorted. Subscribers only, and only where the check can be re-run.
- Ignore
- Hides the issue from the list. It still counts towards your score. Show ignored lists them, and Restore brings one back.
- View
- Opens the page that found it.
On the trial and the old Monitor plan a failing check shows its name and status, and the fix reads Subscribe to view fix.
What problems cost you
Storefront Nothing. Estimates only.
Over the last 30 days, the cost of your outages (what your store normally takes in those hours of the day) and the Google visits lost on pages that are fading. It uses your BigCommerce takings, so it needs the app to be allowed to read orders. Treat the figures as estimates.
What Changed
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Changes in your BigCommerce store next to what moved: your score, orders, Google rankings and Google's own updates, speed and SEO, and DNS changes. A drop sits beside the change that caused it. The Overview's This week card shows the latest.
Orders
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
A store can be online and still not taking orders. Every hour we compare today with a normal day, which is the same weekday over the last 4 weeks, in your store's time zone. These checks start once there are 4 weeks of orders to compare with.
- Orders today, Normal by now, Incomplete orders and Declined payments show where you are.
- Orders are down shows when orders are under 40% of normal (for a store that normally has at least 5 by now).
- No orders for shows when orders stop for much longer than usual at this time of day.
- Incomplete orders or Declined payments are up shows at 5 or more and over three times normal. It usually means a payment or checkout problem.
- Possible card testing shows when 10 or more checkouts fail in an hour, at least 5 from the same IP address or email, and at least five times your normal rate. Someone may be trying stolen cards, which can get your payment account fined or frozen. It has its own fix guide.
Emails for these come from Order drop alerts.
Catalog
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
We read your whole catalog from BigCommerce once a day (more often if you subscribe, as changes arrive by webhook) and list the products and categories with problems. Open a problem to see the products; each links to edit it in BigCommerce. Refresh now re-reads it, at most once an hour, for subscribers.
| Problem | Level |
|---|---|
| Price is zero | High |
| No product image | High |
| Out of stock but visible | Medium |
| No weight | Medium |
| Not in any category | Medium |
| Description under 50 words | Medium |
| Duplicate SKUs | Medium |
| Copied descriptions | Medium |
| Empty categories | Medium |
| Only in hidden categories | Medium |
| Not on any storefront | Medium |
| No GTIN or UPC | Low |
| No brand | Low |
| Images without alt text | Low |
| Description images hosted outside BigCommerce | Low |
| Some options out of stock | Low |
The same page lists Price and stock mistakes from the hourly check.
Store Setup
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Under Can customers pay and get their order? we read your BigCommerce settings and flag what would stop orders.
- Payment methods: none switched on, or a gateway left in test mode (both High).
- Shipping zones: a zone with no shipping methods (High).
- Webhooks: inactive ones, which can make the abandoned cart and order alerts miss events.
- Promotions: switched-on promotions that have ended, whose coupon codes are used up, or that end within 24 hours.
- Store profile, Storefronts and App permissions, for reference.
Order emails checks your SPF and DMARC records, so mail from your store is more likely to reach the inbox. Theme shows your active theme.
Page Speed
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Core Web Vitals from real shoppers shows what real shoppers on Chrome experienced over the last 28 days, from Google: Loading (LCP), Responsiveness (INP) and Layout shift (CLS), each in Google's three bands. Good is 2.5s or less for LCP, 200ms or less for INP and 0.1 or less for CLS. Google uses these when ranking pages. Small stores may not have enough visits for Google to report them.
Below that, Google PageSpeed runs once a day on mobile: a performance score, largest paint, layout shift and blocking time, charted over 30 days. A benchmark compares you anonymously with stores that have a similar theme and catalog size.
App speed cost
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
What each app costs your homepage estimates how much each app slows the homepage. Once a week we load it with each app's scripts blocked in turn and show the load time each adds, its blocking time, requests and errors. If that test hasn't run, it shows an estimate from Google's daily lab test instead. Numbers vary between runs, so small differences are noise.
Errors & Scripts
Storefront Only if you press Move to on a cookie consent flag.
- JavaScript errors: uncaught errors when we load your homepage in Chrome, with first and last seen. Copy error gives you a report for your developer or the app's support team. A Known issue notice appears when the same app is erroring on other stores too.
- Insecure content: http files on your https homepage.
- Cookie consent: flags tracking scripts filed as Essential or Functional, which run before shoppers accept cookies. Move to Analytics or Targeting changes the script's category in Script Manager. It can't change scripts an app added. Subscribers only.
- Scripts on your store: the Script Manager inventory, with duplicates marked.
Checkout
Storefront Nothing visible. The test puts a product in a temporary cart and deletes it.
Turn on Checkout monitoring in Store checks. Every hour we add a product to a new cart, load checkout, confirm it offers a payment method, and delete the cart. No order is placed. The page shows each check, a strip of the last 48, and any JavaScript errors on the way. You get Checkout problem on your store after two failed checks in a row, and an email when it works again.
Customer sign-in is separate. Once a day we load your sign-in and create account pages and check their forms are there. We never sign in or create an account.
Accessibility
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Automatic WCAG 2.2 A and AA checks (axe) run once a week on your homepage, a product page and a category page. Problems found lists them, and Check these by hand covers what software can't judge. Automatic checks find roughly a third of issues, so treat them as a starting point, not a certificate. The European Accessibility Act applies to stores selling to EU shoppers.
Security
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
- Security basics: SSL certificate and domain expiry, http to https, insecure content and security headers.
- DNS: checked daily. We email you once if your nameservers or mail servers change, or your store stops pointing at BigCommerce: the signs of a hijacked domain or a move gone wrong. Behind a proxy such as Cloudflare, the address won't be BigCommerce's, and that's fine. There is no setting for this alert.
- Hack and spam check: hidden links, pharmacy, casino, loan or adult spam text, scrambled scripts, frames from unknown sites, and a homepage that traps the Back button.
SEO
SEO Audit
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Once a week we check your homepage and up to 45 product, category and brand pages. Can Google find your store? covers robots.txt, http to https and the sitemap. Page issues lists what the sample has, worst first. Open one to see which pages. Products and Categories score every product and category page, and Audited Pages lists the sample with the checks each failed.
Broken Pages
Storefront Pressing Add 301 adds a redirect to your store.
Each week we check the pages in your sitemap. For each page that no longer loads, pick where it should go (a suggested product or category, or Homepage) and press Add 301. Changed URLs without a redirect lists products and categories that got a new address with nothing redirecting the old one. Adding redirects is for subscribers. Emails come from Broken page alerts.
Store Schema
Storefront Adds structured data to every page of your store.
Google's product results and AI shopping answers show return and delivery details when your store states them in structured data. Answer the questions, press Add to my store and Site Tools adds it through Script Manager. Update on my store changes it later and Remove takes it off. Subscribers only.
- Country codes
- Two-letter codes you deliver to, separated by commas, for example GB, IE.
- Policy
- Returns within a set number of days, Returns at any time or No returns.
- Days to return
- The return window, 1 to 365 days.
- Return postage
- Free, Customer pays or A fixed fee.
- Fixed fee
- The fee, when return postage is a fixed fee.
- Standard delivery price
- Enter 0 if delivery is always free.
- Free delivery over
- Your free-delivery threshold. Leave it blank if you have none.
- Days to dispatch
- How long you take to send an order, up to 30 days.
- Delivery takes (days)
- The fastest and slowest delivery, in days.
Your store name, logo and phone number come from BigCommerce (Settings, Store profile). Barcodes (GTIN) and brands are set on each product. What we added shows the result; check it with Google's Rich Results Test after Google next visits.
Google and Bing
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only, and read-only: we can never change anything in your Google account.
Open Google › Setup, press Connect Google Search Console, sign in in the new tab and pick your property if we can't match it (Use this property). The Setup page also walks you through verifying your store and submitting your sitemap. Your first figures appear within a day, then refresh daily. Google's figures run 2 to 3 days behind.
| Page | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview | Clicks, impressions, click rate and average position for the last 28 days; Quick wins; Top searches. |
| Rankings | Every search you appear for, and how each moved. |
| Top Pages | Your best pages, and pages seen but not clicked. |
| Content to Refresh | Pages that lost 30% or more of their clicks against the 28 days before, and pages competing for the same search. |
| Indexing | Why Google skips pages, in Google's own words. |
| Sitemaps | The sitemaps Google has for your store. |
| Devices & Countries | Where your Google visitors search from, and Google Images clicks. |
| Rich Results | Special results your pages earned, such as product snippets and merchant listings. |
| Shopping Readiness | See below. |
Shopping Readiness
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Problems Google would flag checks every product against Google's product data rules, the ones that most often get products rejected in Merchant Center and free listings. It works without connecting anything. Missing barcodes, brands and images are flagged per product, each linking to edit it in BigCommerce.
What Google Merchant Center says shows the products Google has actually disapproved or limited, with Google's reason, read once a day. Press Connect Merchant Center, sign in in the new tab and choose your account (Use this account). It's separate from your Search Console connection. Turn emails on sends an email when disapprovals jump, and Disconnect removes the connection.
Bing
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only, and read-only.
Bing's index feeds Microsoft Copilot, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and much of ChatGPT's web search. In Bing › Setup, follow the steps to add your store to Bing Webmaster Tools, generate an API key under API Access, paste it and press Connect Bing. Pick your site if needed (Use this site). Figures arrive within a day, then daily.
Bing has Overview, Rankings, Top Pages, Crawl & Index, Sitemaps and Backlinks. Backlinks shows the pages other sites link to, which Google's tools don't.
AI
AI Overview
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
How ready your store is to be found and recommended by AI assistants. We check once a week, alongside the SEO audit. Fix these first lists what most limits you.
Crawler Access
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Whether your robots.txt lets each AI crawler in. AI search and answers decide whether your products can appear in AI answers. Blocking one hides you from that tool. A second list covers assistants opening your page when a shopper asks, and AI training is your choice: blocking it doesn't remove you from search or answers.
robots.txt can allow a crawler while a CDN or firewall setting (such as Cloudflare's "Block AI bots") still turns it away. Firewall test asks for your homepage using each crawler's name. Press Run the test (or Run again); it is for subscribers.
Product Readiness and Content Readiness
Storefront Nothing. Reporting only.
Product Readiness lists products, least ready first. AI shopping answers need text to quote, a barcode and brand to match the product, images and reviews. Content Readiness shows whether AI can read and quote your pages, and How to Get Recommended is an ordered guide to the fixes.
llms.txt
Storefront Nothing. We generate the text; we don't publish it.
llms.txt is a short Markdown file some AI tools read to understand a site. llms.txt writes one from your categories and best sellers. Press Copy, then check the shipping and contact links match your store's pages. Google says it doesn't use llms.txt and it doesn't affect rankings, so treat it as optional. BigCommerce can't serve a plain text file at /llms.txt from the control panel, so your developer would need to add it.
Public status
Status page and badge
Storefront Only where you paste the snippet.
A public, no-login status page for a website shows whether it is working (All systems working or We are having problems), 90 days of daily uptime and recent incidents. It is only available for a website with the public widget turned on, at uptime.freshclick.co.uk/panel/status-page.php?id= followed by the website's ID.
The Widget page gives you the uptime badge for your own site as PHP Code, Javascript Code (requires jquery) or an iFrame; replace the server ID with your own. Publishing your uptime is a straightforward trust signal on B2B and trade stores.
Reports
Weekly summary
Storefront Nothing.
Turn on Weekly summary email in Store checks. Every Monday you get your store score, outages and what they cost, Google clicks, what went up and down, and the top 3 fixes.
Monthly Report
Storefront Nothing.
One printable page per month: uptime, incidents, load time and the store score. Pick a month, then press Print or save as PDF. It also lists issues fixed this month against those still open. For subscribers.
- Agency name
- Puts your agency's name on the report.
- Logo address
- A full https:// address of an image. Anything else isn't saved.
- Monthly report email
- Early each month, everyone on your team gets a link to last month's report. The link needs a sign-in to open.
Only store admins can change the branding and the email setting.
Account
Team
Storefront Nothing.
Under Invite someone, enter an Email, choose a Role and press Send invite. They get a link to choose a password, which expires after 7 days. Members see monitors and reports. Admins can also change settings and manage the team. People lists everyone, with Make admin, Make member and Remove. Under Waiting to join, Resend sends a new link and the old one stops working, and Revoke cancels the invite. Only admins can invite or change people.
Storefronts
Storefront Nothing.
On a Multi-Storefront store, each BigCommerce storefront has its own website monitor, health checks, trial and subscription. Press Start free trial (or Turn on) to switch one on, View to look at it, Subscribe to pay for it. Turning one off stops its subscription at the end of the paid period and keeps its history. There is no second trial. Switch between storefronts from the menu at the top of the sidebar.
Storefront and currency checks run daily on the extra storefronts:
- a storefront that doesn't load, isn't on https, or has an invalid SSL certificate;
- a missing sitemap, or one that lists another site;
- broken or one-way hreflang links between storefronts;
- products only on switched-off storefronts, and a storefront with no category tree;
- a currency exchange rate of 0, or one still at 1.0 after 30 days.
Profile
Storefront Nothing.
Your email address, password, language and light or dark Theme. Your username can't be changed.
Pricing and subscription
Plans and prices
Storefront Nothing.
Site Tools is priced per storefront by the number of in-stock products we check. Yearly billing gives you two months free.
| Tier | Products checked | Monthly | Yearly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | Up to 1,000 | £6.99 | £69.90 |
| Growth | Up to 5,000 | £11.99 | £119.90 |
| Pro | Up to 25,000 | £17.99 | £179.90 |
| Scale | Over 25,000 | £24.99 | £249.90 |
Your tier follows your product count. Until your products are counted, the price reads "from £6.99".
Trial
Storefront Nothing.
The 7-day trial shows everything. One-click fixes (Fixed, Add 301, Add to my store, Move to, the firewall test, Refresh now and the outage notice) unlock when you subscribe, and checks and data refresh once a day until then. Each store gets one trial, and reinstalling doesn't start another. When the trial ends without a subscription, only Payments, Storefronts, Profile and Report an Issue stay open.
Uptime Monitor subscribers
Storefront Nothing.
If you subscribed to Uptime Monitor before it became Site Tools, your plan carries on with the website monitor and its alerts. The checks still run and the menu shows their counts, but the detail is locked, and you get the 7-day trial of the full package. Moving to a Site Tools plan ends the old subscription straight away, with no refund for the rest of that month, and you then pay in pounds.
Payments
Storefront Nothing.
Subscribe, switch between monthly and yearly, update your card and download invoices on the Payments page. If a payment fails, a Payment failed banner with Pay now appears, and the app keeps working for 3 days after your paid period ends. After that it stops until the invoice is paid.
Cancelling
Storefront Nothing.
Press Cancel subscription on Payments. Everything keeps working until the end of the period you have paid for, and you aren't billed again. Uninstalling the app also stops the subscription renewing at the end of the paid period, but it deletes your monitors, history and settings straight away.
Getting help
Contact us
Storefront Nothing.
Use Report an Issue in the app to send us your name, email, a summary, the page URL and the details, or email support@freshclick.co.uk. Include your store hash and the Pin shown under your email in the sidebar. Change Log lists what's new.
Contact BigCommerce
Storefront Nothing.
For problems on BigCommerce's side, the Contact BigCommerce page lists their Support, Sales and Social channels.