Everything store owners & agencies ask

PathHog continuously proves your WooCommerce “critical path” — the exact steps a customer takes from product page to a completed order — still works, by running it in a real browser every hour and after every update, with zero real orders or side effects.

Pick a plan and create your account, then pay (annual) on Stripe's secure checkout. You're brought straight back to connect your store, download the lightweight connector plugin, and install it on your WordPress site. Open WP-Admin → PathHog, paste the license key from your dashboard to activate, and you're done — the first check runs automatically and you can hit “Test now” any time. About five minutes end to end.

Yes. Every visitor gets one free manual scan — a full real-browser check of your public checkout — with no account and no plugin. It shows exactly what PathHog catches before you commit to anything.

No. You install one plugin and paste a key. PathHog doesn't change your theme, your checkout, your products or your settings. The connector only adds a hidden payment method that is invisible to real shoppers and only appears for our signed runner.

Never. The connector registers an invisible mock payment gateway that only activates when a cryptographically signed PathHog runner header and nonce are present. During a run, WooCommerce transactional emails are suppressed at the hook level, and immediately after the order-received screen is verified, our atomic cleanup endpoint purges the test order from HPOS, restores inventory stock, and returns a signed cleanup receipt. A run that can't verify its own cleanup is marked failed.

No. Checks run on PathHog's cloud runners — not on your machine and not inside WordPress. Each run is a single short, isolated headless-Chromium session against your public store, rate-limited and scheduled so it never floods your server.

No. The test order is deleted during atomic cleanup before the run is marked passed, and emails are suppressed, so it never lands in your order list, revenue reports or customer inbox. Stock is restored to exactly where it was.

The run is marked failed and you're alerted, so a stray test order can never sit silently in your store. The cleanup step returns a signed receipt that we verify before counting a run as passed.

That's the core reason PathHog exists. Many checkout bugs are silent — a tracking pixel or address-autocomplete script throws an Uncaught TypeError that degrades mobile conversion even though desktop orders still submit. PathHog monitors pageerror, console.error and failed network requests throughout every step and alerts you when your health score drops, even if the order technically completed.

The full critical path: the product page loads and add-to-cart works, the cart calculates shipping and tax correctly, the checkout form hydrates and is interactive, a real order is placed through the mock gateway, the order-received page renders, and the test order is atomically cleaned up. Every step records timings, JavaScript errors and failed requests.

Yes. PathHog works with both the WooCommerce Checkout Blocks and the classic shortcode checkout, and runs in a real browser viewport so mobile-specific JavaScript failures are caught.

Yes — on every plan, by default. The connector hooks into WordPress's upgrader_process_complete action, so whenever any plugin, theme, WooCommerce or WordPress core package updates (manually, via WP-CLI, or through auto-updates), it sends a signed webhook and PathHog queues an immediate real-browser check. If something broke, you find out in minutes, not when a customer complains.

Yes. A gateway plugin update is just another plugin update as far as the post-update trigger is concerned, so a check runs right after it. The check itself uses our invisible mock gateway, so it never touches your real processor.

You choose: every paid plan lets you set 15, 30 or 60-minute checks per store — the plans differ by how many stores you can connect, not how often they run. Every plan also runs automatically after updates and on demand.

Yes. The connector explicitly declares compatibility with High-Performance Order Storage (custom_order_tables) and registers both a classic WC_Payment_Gateway and an AbstractPaymentMethodType integration for WooCommerce Checkout Blocks.

WordPress 6.2+, WooCommerce 8.0+, and PHP 8.0+. The connector is a single, auditable file with a clean uninstall.

By email, Slack, or a custom webhook — all editable per store in the dashboard. Alerts fire on a real status change (a regression or a recovery), and two-strike confirmation re-runs once before paging you, so you're not woken by a flaky one-off.

Yes. The dashboard shows every check with its result, trigger and timing; expand any check to see the step-by-step detail, the errors found, and failed requests. You can export a store's check history to CSV.

A screenshot of every step, the complete console and network logs, and a signed cleanup receipt confirming no real order or stock change occurred.

There's no recurring free tier, but everyone gets one free manual scan so you can see exactly what PathHog catches before you connect anything.

Your plan, and the connector enforces it. Starter is $99/yr for 1 store with hourly checks, Growth is $199/yr for up to 3 stores checked as often as every 30 minutes, and Scale is $299/yr for up to 5 stores checked as often as every 15 minutes. All plans are billed annually and auto re-check after every update. The Agency plan (a white-label client fleet) is coming soon.

Each store gets a unique license key, shown in your dashboard. You paste it into the connector plugin's settings page, which validates it against PathHog and activates the store. The key is what ties a specific store to your plan's limits.

Yes, any time, from the store's Settings tab in the dashboard. It removes the store and its check history and frees up a slot on your plan.

After you pick a plan and create your account, you're taken to Stripe's secure checkout to pay for the year. The moment payment is confirmed you come right back to connect your store and download the connector. No paid plan is active until payment completes — creating an account alone doesn't start billing or monitoring.

Annual only — no month-to-month. Starter is $99/yr, Growth is $199/yr, and Scale is $299/yr, each billed once a year (roughly $8–$25 a month depending on plan).

Stripe is the merchant of record for your purchase and calculates, collects and remits any applicable sales tax or VAT. The tax shown at checkout is handled entirely by Stripe — you won't get a separate tax bill from us, and there's nothing for you to file on the transaction.

Stripe Checkout accepts major cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover) plus Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link, depending on your region. Your card details are entered on Stripe's secure page and are never seen or stored by PathHog.

In the dashboard, open a store's Settings → Manage billing to reach the Stripe customer portal. There you can upgrade, downgrade, update your card, or cancel. Cancelling stops the next renewal and keeps your plan active until the end of the paid period.

A 14-day money-back guarantee on your first payment, and you can cancel any time before a renewal to avoid being billed again. Full details are on the Refund Policy page.

It's a 0–100 summary of the latest run. 100 is a clean pass; it drops when steps slow down, JavaScript or console errors appear, or network requests fail — even if the order still completed. The trend over time matters more than any single number, which is why the dashboard shows a health and speed sparkline.

Every run has its own shareable report page with a scrubbable step-by-step screenshot replay (the filmstrip), full per-step timings, every console message and failed request, and the signed cleanup receipt. It's built for sending proof to a client or a developer without giving them dashboard access.

Paste the exact key from your dashboard (a store's Settings → Connector license), and make sure the store URL in the plugin matches the URL you connected. Each key is tied to one store and your plan's limits, so a key from a different store won't activate.

Yes, on the Growth and Scale plans, which include staging environments. Add your staging URL as its own store and point a connector at it, so you can catch a broken checkout before it ships to production.

No, by design. Alerts go to email, Slack, or a custom webhook — and a custom webhook already covers Discord, Microsoft Teams, Zapier, PagerDuty and more. This keeps setup simple and avoids the cost and flakiness of SMS.

Every runner request is signed with HMAC-SHA256 and a timestamp, valid for a 120-second window, and each nonce is single-use so a captured signature can't be replayed. Your store's signing secret is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and is only delivered to your activated plugin.

The public scan is rate-limited per IP, blocks private/loopback hosts and non-standard ports, and never places an order — it loads your checkout read-only. The full order-placing flow only works through the signed connector on a store you own.