If you mostly pitch stores that opened this week, switch from StoreCensus to a launch-day feed such as Vetted Leads or FisherLeads. If you sell to established Shopify and WooCommerce stores and lean on revenue bands, app installs and automations into your cold email tool, stay where you are, because StoreCensus does that job well.
Everything below about another tool comes from that tool's own pages, read on 15 October 2026. Treat each price and limit as "as of October 2026" and check the pricing page before you pay, since these pages change.
Who should switch from StoreCensus, and who should stay?
It comes down to which store you want to email.
StoreCensus calls itself a searchable database of Shopify and WooCommerce stores for lead generation, research and enrichment. Its homepage counted 4,752,699 stores. New stores are added every week, through weekly crawls with change detection. So it is a census in the plain sense of the word: a count of the stores that already exist, kept up to date.
Plenty of freelancers want something narrower. A web designer selling a first redesign, an ads person offering to set up a pixel, an SEO freelancer offering a first pass on product pages: all of them do best with a store in its first days. The owner is still building and the gaps are easy to spot. Most of the other pitches haven't arrived yet. A weekly database can include those stores, but it is built to cover the whole market rather than to catch the first day.
| If you are... | Lean towards |
|---|---|
| Pitching stores in their first week (setup, first ads, first SEO pass) | A launch-day feed: Vetted Leads or FisherLeads |
| Selling to established stores filtered by revenue band or installed apps | Stay on StoreCensus, or look at Store Leads |
| Prospecting by any technology, not only online stores | BuiltWith |
| After one file you keep instead of a subscription | StoreRadar |
| Needing phone and WhatsApp numbers across many store platforms | BootLeads |
How do the StoreCensus alternatives compare?
One row per tool, Vetted Leads included. Competitor details are as of October 2026, from each company's own pages. Our prices depend on your currency, so they live on the pricing page rather than here.
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | Free option | How fresh | Platforms | Contact data | AI writes the outreach |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vetted Leads | Starter (see pricing) | 10 contacts once plus the newest 50 leads each day, no card | Launch day: found when the site's first certificate is issued; nothing older than 7 days enters the feed | WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, Framer, Webflow and custom sites | Every email checked with its mail server before it reaches the feed; social links where the site has them | Yes, Freddy drafts the first message on Pro |
| StoreCensus | Starter, $49 per month, Shopify only, 2,000 credits | Free plan with 3 testing credits; no exports listed | Weekly crawls; new stores added every week | Shopify and WooCommerce | Store contact emails (1 credit); decision-maker contacts (2 credits) from Professional | Not stated |
| FisherLeads | Premium, $50 per month, 5,000 exports | Free to browse, no card; free browser extension | Claims launch day | Over 30, including Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Magento, Squarespace, Wix and custom sites | The public contact it finds, usually an email plus social profiles | Yes, Finn, on the Business and Enterprise plans |
| Store Leads | Premium, $75 per month, no CSV export, no API | Free account with a limited preview | Updated weekly, typically on Sundays | 415 ecommerce platforms | Non-personal emails, phone numbers and social accounts | Not stated |
| BuiltWith | Basic, $295 per month | Free single-site lookups; no trials of paid plans | Technology trends updated weekly | Any technology, 127,000+ tracked | Emails found on the website, phone numbers, names and titles where they can be found | No |
| StoreRadar | Not checked (its site could not be read) | Not checked | Not checked | Shopify only | Not checked | Not checked |
| BootLeads | Starter (no price shown on its page) | Search for free, no card | New stores added daily | Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Magento, PrestaShop, BigCommerce | Email, phone and WhatsApp where found | Not stated |
What do you actually get on each StoreCensus plan?
This matters more than the headline price, because the WooCommerce half of StoreCensus is not on its cheapest plan.
| StoreCensus plan (as of October 2026) | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month | Shopify and WooCommerce data, 3 testing credits, 50 actions, search, filter and preview, 1 seat. No exports, automations or API listed |
| Starter | $49 per month | Shopify only, 2,000 credits per month, unlimited searches, unlimited exports of unlocked leads, basic filters, CSV exports, 2 automation flows. No API, CRM or decision-maker contacts listed |
| Professional | $99 per month | Shopify and WooCommerce, 5,000 credits, decision-maker contacts, built-in CRM, 10 automation flows, Apollo, Instantly.ai, SmartLead.ai and Zapier integrations, API, 2 seats |
| Growth | $149 per month | 8,000 credits, 25 flows, filtered-search and bulk export APIs, up to 5 seats |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom |
Credits are how you pay for contacts. A store's contact email costs 1 credit and a decision-maker contact costs 2. So Starter's 2,000 credits buy up to 2,000 store emails a month, all on Shopify stores. Extra credits are $8 per 1,000, and unused credits roll over.
If WooCommerce stores are a big part of who you sell to, the StoreCensus plan to compare against is Professional at $99 per month, not Starter.
When StoreCensus is the better pick
StoreCensus is the stronger choice in several situations, and an alternatives list that hides them would not help you choose.
- If you want Shopify and WooCommerce in one place with history behind them. It keeps historical snapshots, so you can see how a store has changed, not only how it looks today.
- If you filter hard. It has 100+ filters, including the tech stack and the apps or plugins a store has installed.
- If you sell by size. It shows revenue bands (its own heuristic estimates) and growth signals. Vetted Leads has no revenue estimates at all.
- If your outreach runs on automation. Its automation flows push leads into Instantly and SmartLead, and it has a built-in CRM and an API. Vetted Leads has no CRM integrations.
- If you need bulk data. StoreCensus licenses data in bulk, while Vetted Leads keeps a much smaller history, because nothing older than 7 days enters its feed.
If your best clients are stores with steady sales that want a migration, a plugin audit or a conversion project, StoreCensus is built for finding them, and you should probably stay with it.
What are the other StoreCensus alternatives?
Vetted Leads
Vetted Leads reads the public certificate transparency logs, where new HTTPS certificates are recorded as they are issued, so a site shows up when it gets its first one (Wikipedia has a plain explainer on Certificate Transparency). It then visits the site, checks it is a real business, and lists what the site is missing: no ad pixel, no analytics, no email tool, no meta description, no contact form, no booking tool, no reviews widget, or images without alt text. Pro also says what each gap costs the business.
Every email is checked with its domain's mail server before it reaches the feed, and only addresses the server confirms are kept. On 15 October 2026 the feed held 3,170 WordPress, 2,297 Shopify, 1,392 WooCommerce and 944 Wix sites. As of 16 October 2026 it held 35,727 leads, 1,991 of them launched in the previous 24 hours.
On Pro, Freddy drafts the first message from the site's gaps. On the paid plans, an MCP connector lets Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor search the feed, and CSV export is free and uncapped on both. You can start with 10 free contacts once and the newest 50 leads each day, no card. There is a side-by-side page too: Vetted Leads vs StoreCensus.
FisherLeads
FisherLeads is the closest to Vetted Leads in what it sells: a live feed of newly launched online stores and business websites with founder contact details. It claims launch day, covers over 30 platforms, and publishes its methodology and an accuracy audit. Premium is $50 per month with 5,000 exports. Business, at $150 per month, raises that to 20,000 exports and adds Finn, its AI prospecting workspace. Enterprise, at $250 per month, adds webhooks and Zapier. Browsing is free with no card, there is a free browser extension, and it has directories of new businesses by trade and country.
Store Leads
Store Leads is the big general database: 13,825,170 active stores across 415 platforms on its homepage, with estimated monthly sales, visits and page views, app installs, and CRM links to HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce and Outreach. Data is updated weekly, typically on Sundays (Pacific time). Premium is $75 per month but has no CSV export and no API; both start on Pro at $250 per month. A free account gets a limited preview.
BuiltWith
BuiltWith is a technology lookup more than a store database. It tracks 127,000+ technologies across over 370 million active domains, so you can build a list of every site using a given tool, store or not. Its own help page puts Basic at $295 per month, with 2 technologies. Single-site lookups are free for good; the paid plans have no trial. It fits when your offer is tied to one technology, such as moving stores off a particular platform.
BootLeads
BootLeads is an ecommerce leads database built from public storefront pages, and it says it does not buy data from third parties. It covers Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Magento, PrestaShop and BigCommerce, and adds new stores daily. Alongside email it lists phone and WhatsApp numbers where found. Search is free with no card. Its page names a Starter plan but shows no price, so check that yourself.
StoreRadar
StoreRadar is a Shopify-only store database, sold mainly as a one-time file. Its site could not be read directly when we checked, so we are not quoting its prices or claims.
Why does a store's first week matter for your pitch?
A store that opened three years ago has made its choices. Somebody built the site, there is an email tool it half uses, and the owner has a habit of deleting cold emails. A store that opened on Monday is still deciding.
Shopify and WooCommerce stores also come together differently. A Shopify owner adds apps from Shopify's own app store on top of a theme. A WooCommerce owner assembles the shop from WordPress plugins, so what is missing depends on which plugins they have got round to. Either way, the gaps you can see from outside map straight onto things a freelancer sells:
| Gap on the new store | What you can offer |
|---|---|
| No ad pixel | Pixel setup before the owner spends anything on ads, so the first campaign records who visited and who bought |
| No analytics | Analytics setup, so the owner can see where the first visitors come from |
| No email tool | A welcome flow and an abandoned-cart email |
| No meta description | Written descriptions for the home page and top products |
| No contact form | A simple contact or wholesale enquiry form |
| No reviews widget | A reviews app or plugin, and a plan to collect the first few reviews |
| Images without alt text | Alt text on product images, for screen reader users and image search |
Be accurate about meta descriptions when you pitch. Google may use the meta description for the search snippet, but it can also write its own from the page. Promise a better chance at a clear snippet, not a guaranteed one.
How do you pitch a store you found this week?
Keep the email short, and make it about their site rather than your agency.
- Pick one or two gaps, not all eight. A list of everything wrong reads like an audit nobody asked for.
- Say what you saw, plainly. "Your product pages have no meta description" is something the owner can check. "Your SEO needs work" is not.
- Offer something small first. A screen recording or a two-line fix is easier to say yes to than a proposal.
- Send it in the first week. Finding a store early only helps if you also write early.
A sample, for a new WooCommerce candle shop with no meta descriptions and no analytics:
Subject: Your new candle shop
Hi Ada,
I came across your shop this week. Congratulations on the launch, the soy range looks lovely.
Two small things I noticed. Your product pages have no meta description, so Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds. And there is no analytics on the site yet, so you can't see where your first visitors are coming from.
I set both up for new WooCommerce stores, usually within a day. Would a two-minute screen recording of what I'd change be useful?
Sam
On Vetted Leads Pro, Freddy writes a first draft like this from the gaps it found on that site. Edit it before you send; you know your offer better than any draft does.
For more on working new stores, read how to find new Shopify stores and reach them first.
Which StoreCensus alternative should you pick?
- New stores in their first week, on any platform: Vetted Leads or FisherLeads. Vetted Leads checks every email with its mail server and lists each site's gaps. FisherLeads covers more platforms and publishes an accuracy audit.
- Established stores, sized and filtered: stay on StoreCensus, or compare Store Leads if you need its scale and CRM links.
- Leads by technology: BuiltWith.
- Phone and WhatsApp numbers as well as email: BootLeads.
If you want to see a launch-day lead before you decide, try Vetted Leads free. You get 10 contacts once and the newest 50 leads each day, with no card.
Questions people ask
Does StoreCensus have a free plan?
Yes. As of October 2026 its Free plan costs $0 per month and includes Shopify and WooCommerce data, 3 testing credits, 50 actions, search, filter and preview, and 1 seat. No exports, automations or API are listed on it.
Does the cheapest StoreCensus plan include WooCommerce stores?
No. As of October 2026 Starter, at $49 per month, is Shopify only. WooCommerce data starts on Professional at $99 per month, which also adds decision-maker contacts, a built-in CRM and an API.
How often does StoreCensus add new stores?
StoreCensus says new stores are added every week, through weekly crawls with change detection. It is a general database rather than a launch-day feed.
Which StoreCensus alternatives are free to start?
Vetted Leads gives 10 contacts once and the newest 50 leads each day, no card. As of October 2026 FisherLeads is free to browse with no card, BootLeads lets you search free with no card, Store Leads offers a free account with a limited preview, and BuiltWith offers free single-site lookups.
Can I find Shopify and WooCommerce stores the day they launch?
Yes. Vetted Leads finds a site when its first certificate is issued, in the public certificate transparency logs, and only lets sites up to 7 days old into its feed. FisherLeads also claims launch day. StoreCensus and Store Leads both update weekly.
Does any StoreCensus alternative write the outreach email for you?
Vetted Leads does on its Pro plan: Freddy drafts the first message from the gaps found on each site. As of October 2026 FisherLeads lists Finn, its AI prospecting workspace, on its Business and Enterprise plans. StoreCensus does not state an AI writing feature.