Questions people ask before installing

How fast does a change arrive in the other store?

A change in the store that owns the catalogue reaches the receiving store within seconds: stock, variants, fields and your own metafields travel on the webhook that Shopify sends when you save.

Images are the exception, and it is a deliberate one. They are copied when a product is first created in the receiving store. Adding images to a pair that already exists would duplicate them, because the platform renames files whose names are taken, so image differences are reported to you and left alone.

How often is the whole catalogue checked?

Every hour StoreTwin compares what changed since the previous check. Once a day it compares the whole catalogue of both stores, product by product and field by field, and names every difference by product and by field.

The daily check runs once every twenty-four hours; the exact hour moves, because the schedule restarts with every release. Both checks run on every plan, including the free one.

What is never copied?

Price is not synced. It is set once, when a product is first created in the receiving store, because a variant without a price would go on sale at zero - after that the app never touches it again. Two stores usually exist because they sell in different markets, so moving prices between currencies produces nonsense.

Orders and customers are never read at all - the app does not request access to them. Metafields written by other apps into their own namespace are not read, compared or written: they belong to that app, and a sync app rewriting them starts a fight that runs every hour and that nobody wins. A metafield in an ordinary namespace that only the receiving store has is compared and reported, and left where it is - the app writes metafields into one namespace only, the custom one Shopify uses for fields you add by hand.

Can it delete something in my store?

No delete operation exists anywhere in the sync, and that is a property of the code rather than a setting that could be flipped by mistake. A product, variant, image or metafield that exists only in the receiving store is reported as a difference and left where it is. One field behaves differently and it is worth knowing before you rely on it: tags are written as a complete set, so a tag added only in the receiving store - by you or by another app - is removed the next time that product is repaired. If a local label has to survive, keep it somewhere the sync does not manage: a collection, or the source store itself.

Which store pays?

One plan, on the store that receives the catalogue. Source stores are always free, and incoming connections are unlimited on every plan, including the free one. The plan is decided by one number: how many products are synced into that store.

What happens if I uninstall?

Copying stops immediately and nothing is removed from either store: everything already copied stays exactly as it is. Access tokens are erased on uninstall, and the rest of the data belonging to your store is deleted within the period Shopify requires.

Where is my data kept, and what exactly?

On our own server in Germany. The line worth drawing is between what passes through and what stays:

Passes through, never written to disk: the full catalogues of both stores. To compare them we read them into memory for the length of one check and drop them when it ends.

Stored while your stores are paired: which product in one store corresponds to which in the other, the products waiting for your decision, your plan, and your store's contact address.

Stored for 30 days, then deleted automatically: the reports of what each check found - naming the product, the field and the value on each side - and the journal of every write the app made, which keeps the fields it wrote and what stood there before. That journal is what makes the sync verifiable: without it "we changed nothing else" would be a claim you cannot check.

Access tokens are encrypted at rest and erased when you uninstall. Orders and customers are never read at all - the app does not ask for those permissions.

Can the sync stop by itself?

Yes, in two situations. The first: if a connection tries to apply sixty changes or more in a single minute, StoreTwin pauses it on its own and emails you. That is a brake against a runaway edit - a bad import or a script gone wrong - rewriting a whole catalogue while you sleep.

A legitimate bulk edit, a seasonal price change or a supplier feed can reach that number honestly, so this pause clears itself: writing resumes after a minute, and during a long busy stretch the pause repeats and gets longer each time - up to an hour - until the store goes quiet. Nothing needs to be pressed. The checks keep running the whole time and every difference stays visible in the app. The connection page shows this limit before you turn syncing on, so it is not a surprise.

One case does wait for you, and it is a stop rather than a pause: a batch of stock updates where most counts would be set to zero. That is the signature of a broken import about to be copied over a healthy catalogue, so the connection stops before writing anything and shows the reason. When you have looked at the source store, press Resume syncing there.

Does the free plan really audit any catalogue?

Yes. The audit covers your whole catalogue, including one that another sync app keeps: pair the stores, leave the connection in checking-only mode, and read what actually differs. Syncing on the free plan is limited to twenty-five products you pick.

One case where the full audit does not run: a catalogue too large to hold in a single comparison - hundreds of thousands of products, or a large catalogue with long descriptions. The connection says so instead of auditing part of it silently, and the hourly checks carry on. That ceiling is the same on every plan, paid ones included.