Question 1

How does Kairos work?

Accepted Answer

Kairos automatically blocks suspicious traffic (a.k.a. bots) from visiting your storefront and polluting your analytics with sessions you don't want to serve. Verified good bots and AI agents from Google, Meta, OpenAI etc. are automatically allowed access. In addition, you as a merchant can define rules for blocking traffic from selected continents or individual countries that you don't ship to anyway. These rules are in effect both for the storefront and the checkout flow. Specifically for the checkout, you can also block micro-orders (cart less than a certain value), specific products via tags, specific email domains or situations where the buyer shipping or billing country doesn't match the buyer's true origin. Kairos provides full insights into your session traffic, allowing you to fine-tune your rules accordingly.

Question 2

Once I install Kairos, what happens?

Accepted Answer

As soon as you install Kairos and activate the app embed with a few clicks, you are protected from most attacks. Via a tight integration with Cloudflare, we assess each request's browser, ip address, origin etc. and in milliseconds determine if it's a legitimate request. Expect an immediate drop of ~10% of your session traffic, sessions that weren't real visitors to begin with. Extend your protection further using your own rules: block specific countries you don't serve anyway, and protect your checkout using sanity checks to block micro-orders or bogus email addresses.

Question 3

Will my Shopify Analytics finally be clean?

Accepted Answer

Yes, sessions blocked by Kairos, either because of bots or visits from countries you choose not to serve, will not appear in your Shopify Analytics or in any 3rd-party analytics (like GA4), resulting in true numbers for you as a merchant to run your business on.

Question 4

Why do Shopify Analytics still say "bot" for some sessions?

Accepted Answer

Shopify Analytics' "bot" attribution includes search engine crawlers (Googlebot, BingBot, etc.), AI agents (OpenAI, ChatGPT, etc.), social media link preview generators, verified price comparison scrapers, and site monitoring services that Kairos doesn't block because they could be vital for your store operations. They are a natural part of your store activity. You can always exclude those from your metrics calculations yourself by filtering on the "Human or bot" flag.

Question 5

Shopify already provides a risk level indicator. Why should I care about bots?

Accepted Answer

While Shopify already provides risk indicators for orders, the orders are still placed and may potentially lock up your inventory until handled by your internal team. This handling takes time and leads to lost sale opportunities if the stock is depleted and the products cannot be ordered by actual customers. Handling fraudulent transactions is no small feat as well. Manual reviews, refunds, and chargeback resolutions may consume hundreds or thousands of hours per year and non-refundable transaction fees and costly chargebacks add a financial burden as well.

Question 6

How does Kairos compare to the competition?

Accepted Answer

This is not your usual run-of-the-mill, low-effort storefront blocking app that says “blocked” on the storefront and does little else to protect against anything but the most naive bots. Kairos is an entirely different approach that essentially sets up a Shopify native embedded firewall to block unwanted traffic, but also blocks analytics and ad attributions until we are satisfied with the visit being legitimate and in line with any rules you have set up. Only then is the session attributed in Shopify, Google, Meta etc. Kairos protection also extends all the way through checkout, giving you additional control over the checkout experience: block direct checkout attempts, micro-orders, specific products, email domains, and more.

Question 7

Why not use a Cloudflare O2O setup?

Accepted Answer

Because this is a more comprehensive solution and without the DNS hassle. Kairos is still using Cloudflare behind the scenes for traffic categorization, only integrated with the specifics of Shopify. With Kairos, it's easier to set up additional rules for e.g. geo-blocking without risk of breaking anything else. In addition, the protection extends all the way through checkout, which is external to your shop domain and would not be part of a Cloudflare setup anyway.

Question 8

Does Kairos impact my storefront performance?

Accepted Answer

Not at all. There are some minimal javascript packages being downloaded asynchronously on a customer's first visit to your store. These will typically load in milliseconds and not interfere with anything performance related. Everything else is handled by Shopify's infrastructure and our serverless setup, designed to handle millions of requests per day.

Question 9

I have multiple Plus stores, do I need separate subscriptions for each?

Accepted Answer

No. If you have more than one Plus store, you can subscribe to the Plus plan, which allows you to define your store setup, so additional stores in your Plus organization may install Kairos for free, sponsored by the one original subscription.

Question 10

Is Kairos available to try for free?

Accepted Answer

Kairos comes with a 14-day free trial during which you can try out all features and determine if it is of value to your business. You can also install Kairos in development/sandbox stores for free. We are happy to provide more insights or a product walkthrough. Please reach out to us via hello@espressoapps.com

Question 11

I represent a Shopify agency. Do you have a solution partner program?

Accepted Answer

We do provide perks for agencies as registered solution partners. Please reach out to us via hello@espressoapps.com for more information.

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