Find your product feed URL
Monitoring needs an existing, publicly accessible HTTPS product feed. A store homepage, product page, admin screen, or file on your computer is not a feed URL.
1. Look where your feed is generated
Check the feed-export app, plugin, or service that prepares your product data for shopping channels. Look for a hosted feed link, export URL, or scheduled-fetch URL. The exact label depends on your provider.
If an agency or developer manages your feed, ask: “Do we have a public HTTPS XML, CSV, or TSV product feed URL that an external monitoring service is authorized to fetch?” A direct channel integration may not expose a separate feed URL.
2. Check what the link returns
Open the link in a private browser window. It should return or download product data without a login, not an HTML storefront or an admin page. This is an initial check; monitoring may still fail if the provider blocks automated requests.
- HTTPS is required. Private-network addresses are not supported.
- Use XML (RSS or Atom product feed), CSV, or TSV, up to 2 MB and 5,000 products.
- Product IDs must be unique and nonempty for product-level comparisons.
- The URL should keep returning an updated feed rather than a one-time download.
3. Keep credentials out of the URL
Do not paste passwords, API keys, secret tokens, expiring signed links, or confidential data. If the feed requires authentication, it is not supported by this monitoring service. Do not remove access controls from a private feed just to connect it.
You can instead download an authorized export and use the free local checker. The file stays in your browser; this does not enable daily monitoring.
4. Save the feed in your workspace
Activate monitoring access, enter a feed name and URL, confirm you are authorized to monitor it, and save. One feed is supported per account; saving replaces the existing configuration. Allow up to an hour for the first scheduled check while access is active.
The first successful check supplies a report. Product-level comparisons need two successful checks of the same feed URL with valid snapshots. Later checks run roughly daily. If fetching fails, the dashboard shows the error; a failed fetch is not a clean report.
No feed URL yet?
Use the free checker with a manual export while you investigate your existing export options. FeedPreflight does not create, host, repair, or submit your product feed.