The 10 country blocker apps digital sellers get recommended, compared

Why digital products slip through Shopify's own settings

For physical products, the country problem solves itself. If you don't ship to Germany, nobody in Germany can finish checkout, because there's no shipping rate to pick. Shopify Markets and shipping zones lean on that address.

A download has no shipping address. Shopify skips the shipping step for products marked as not requiring shipping, so your shipping zones never come into play. Merchants keep discovering this the hard way: one Community thread is from a seller who'd removed Russia from Markets and still sold a digital product to a buyer there.

What's left at checkout is the billing country: the address the buyer pays with. It's also the address that matters for the rules most digital sellers are worried about. EU and UK VAT on digital services looks at where the customer is, and the billing address is one of the standard pieces of evidence for that. Publishing and licensing contracts are about where you sell to. Sanctions are about who you sell to. A tool that checks something else, like the visitor's IP, is checking a proxy for the thing you actually care about.

How I compared them

I scored each app on seven things that decide whether it can enforce a country rule on digital products. Each one is worth two points for yes and one point for partly. A feature gets nothing when the listing doesn't mention it, so a low score can mean "not stated" as well as "no". That's the fair way to do it when you can only go by what each developer publishes.

• Checks the billing country at checkout. The thing your tax and licensing rules are about.
• Doesn't depend on the visitor's IP. A VPN changes the IP country in seconds; it doesn't change the card's billing address.
• Leaves the store browsable. Blocking a whole country from your homepage also blocks the people who could legally buy your physical products, travellers, and press.
• Can leave physical products selling everywhere. A rule for downloads shouldn't stop a T-shirt order.
• Can target chosen products or collections. Rights deals often cover one course or one album, not your whole catalogue.
• Has a free plan you can use on a live store. Not just on development stores.
• Blocks checkout if the check itself fails. Shopify's default is to let checkout through when an app's rule errors or times out. For compliance, that's the wrong way round.

The short answer

All eleven side by side

Green means the listing says yes, amber means partly or with a condition, and grey means the listing doesn't say. Scroll sideways on a phone.

Three kinds of app wearing the same label

The phrase "country blocker" covers three different tools. Once you see which kind an app is, most of the comparison sorts itself out.

• IP and visitor blockers: Blockify, MIDA, Bloky, BM Country Blocker, Securify, Ultimate Country Blocker. They look up the visitor's IP when a page loads and block or redirect by country. Several add fraud screening at checkout, but those checks are about the email, phone, name or order risk, not a billing-country rule.
• Checkout-rule apps: Cart Lock, BCV and DigiBorder. They run on Shopify's servers when the buyer completes checkout. What they check differs: Cart Lock is a general rule builder whose country conditions are about shipping, BCV checks the billing country for the whole cart, and DigiBorder checks the billing country for the digital products in it.
• Storefront restrictions: Addify Country Restrictions and Locksmith. They hide products, prices or pages from visitors in some locations. Good for catalogue control, but nothing on either listing says it checks who pays.

The VPN test

Here's the scenario every IP-based app struggles with. A buyer in Germany wants your course, and you aren't registered for EU VAT. They switch on a VPN set to the United States, because they want the course and the VPN is one tap away. The IP blocker sees a US visitor and lets them in. They pay with their German card and billing address.

The IP apps on this list all advertise VPN and proxy detection on some plan, and that helps. But detection is a guessing game against commercial VPNs and residential proxies, and it only ever tells you where the connection comes from. A billing-country rule doesn't need to win that game. It reads the address the buyer is paying with. To be fair the other way: a buyer can type a false billing address, and no checkout rule can verify residency. For VAT and licensing purposes, though, the billing address is the evidence you're expected to rely on, and you've acted on it.

Each app, reviewed for digital sellers

DigiBorder. Built for one job: a billing-country rule for products that don't require shipping. Free blocks one country forever, with no billing approval. Basic ($4.99) adds allowlists, any number of countries, mixed carts and your own message. Strict ($14.99) is where it pulls away: rules by collection or product tag, up to three collections with different country lists, US/Canadian/Australian state blocking, a required login, a check that the shipping country is allowed too, and fail-closed checkout if the rule can't run. Weak spots: it's new, with no reviews yet, and it does nothing about bots or traffic. Read the full DigiBorder breakdown.

Blockify. The giant of the category, with over 1,800 reviews and Built for Shopify status. It's an excellent fraud and bot blocker, and the free plan's two IP/country rules are genuinely usable. For digital products, though, it's built on the visitor's IP, and its checkout blocking is about email, phone and name. You'd also block blocked countries from your whole store. Blockify vs. DigiBorder.

MIDA Fraud Filter. Newer than Blockify but already near 570 reviews, and arguably the better value at $9 for unlimited rules. Fake-order blocking and conditional checkout blocking sit on the $19 plan. Same verdict for digital sellers: strong at fraud, but its country logic is IP-based and the listing doesn't mention the billing country. MIDA vs. DigiBorder.

Bloky. Unlimited country blocking from $9.99, plus customer blacklists at checkout on Pro. The "free plan" is for development and partner stores only, so on a live store you start at $9.99. Country rules are IP-based. Bloky vs. DigiBorder.

BM Country Blocker. Ranks first in App Store search for "country blocker" and is the cheapest full-featured IP blocker here: $3.99, or pay-as-you-go capped at $4. It lists checkout validation for suspicious orders, but not which address it checks. For a digital rule that's a gap. BM vs. DigiBorder.

Securify. Listed as completely free, Built for Shopify, with VPN and Tor blocking. For a free visitor blocker it's hard to argue with. It's still an IP blocker, and the listing doesn't describe any billing-country check. Securify vs. DigiBorder.

Ultimate Country Blocker. The app Community repliers recommend most often in digital-product threads, though it has no reviews of its own yet. Usage-based pricing from 100 free visits a month. It says blocked visitors are stopped at checkout as well, which is a step closer, but the listing doesn't say it uses the billing address. Ultimate Country Blocker vs. DigiBorder.

Cart Lock. A flexible checkout-rule builder with 30-plus conditions and product and collection targeting. Its country conditions are about shipping, and a download has no shipping address, so the rule has nothing to read. It's also paid-only on live stores. Cart Lock vs. DigiBorder.

BCV: Billing Country Validator. The closest thing to DigiBorder on this list, and cheaper at $2.99. It checks the billing country against an allowlist or blocklist. What it doesn't mention: anything about digital versus physical items, product targeting, or a free plan. A rule for the whole cart will also stop physical orders you may be happy to take. BCV vs. DigiBorder.

Addify Country Restrictions. Hides chosen products, prices or add-to-cart buttons from visitors in some countries. Useful for catalogue control, and it can target individual products. There's no checkout enforcement on its listing, so anyone who gets past the storefront check can still buy. Addify vs. DigiBorder.

Locksmith. Superb access control that's been around since 2014: lock any product or page behind tags, passcodes, purchase history or location. It's priced for that power, from $12 to $199 depending on your Shopify plan. For a country rule on downloads it's more tool than you need, and still a storefront lock. Locksmith vs. DigiBorder.

The IP blockers against each other

If you've decided you also want a visitor blocker, against bots or card-testing traffic, here's how the six stack up against each other. None of them changes the digital-product verdict, because they're answering a different question.

• Best free: Securify, the only one listed as entirely free, or MIDA if four rules are enough and you may upgrade later.
• Best value paid: MIDA at $9 with unlimited rules, or BM at $3.99 if you just need the basics.
• Most proven: Blockify, by a long way on reviews and years in the store.
• For more detail, see Blockify vs. MIDA, Blockify vs. BM Country Blocker and Securify vs. Blockify.

The checkout apps against each other

This is the comparison that matters for digital products, because these three actually act at the point of sale.

BCV is cheaper, and if you sell only digital products and want one rule for everyone, it'll do the basic job. Cart Lock is the more flexible rule engine for physical stores. DigiBorder is the only one that's specifically about digital items in a cart that may also hold physical ones, and the only one where you can start free and grow into per-collection rules. More in Cart Lock vs. BCV.

What they cost

Lowest paid plan per month, from each listing. Usage-based apps can cost more on busy stores; Locksmith and Addify charge more on bigger Shopify plans.

Price alone flatters the IP blockers, because their cheapest plans block visitors, not billing countries. If you compare what it costs to enforce a billing-country rule on digital items, it's DigiBorder free for one country, $2.99 for BCV's whole-cart rule, and $4.99 for DigiBorder with any number of countries.

Why DigiBorder comes out on top for digital products

• A free plan that enforces something real. Several apps have free tiers, but they're visitor blockers or development-store trials. DigiBorder's Free plan stops digital checkouts from one billing country on a live store, with no time limit and no billing approval.
• No IP, so no VPN arms race. The rule never looks at where the connection comes from. It reads the billing country at checkout, on Shopify's servers, before the order exists.
• Your store stays open. Visitors from blocked countries can still browse, read, subscribe to your newsletter and buy physical products. Only the restricted digital sale is stopped.
• Per-product rules. On Strict you can limit the rule to collections or product tags, and give up to three collections different country lists: one course licensed for North America, another for worldwide.
• Fail-closed when it counts. Shopify lets checkout through if an app's rule fails or times out. On Strict, DigiBorder blocks instead, so a rare error never becomes an unchecked sale. Strict can also require the shipping country to pass and the billing country to match the market the buyer shops in.
• Express wallets are covered. Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal, including the buttons on product and cart pages.

The honest limits, because you should know them before installing anything: checkout rules only run in Shopify's online checkout, so POS sales, orders created in the admin or by other apps, subscription renewals and order edits aren't checked. That's a Shopify limitation that applies to every app on this list. And the rule uses the billing country the buyer enters; it doesn't check the card's issuing country.

Which one should you install?

• You sell digital products and must not sell to some countries (VAT, rights, sanctions): DigiBorder. Start on Free if one country is enough.
• You're fighting bots, scrapers or card testing: an IP blocker. Blockify or MIDA if you want the strongest, BM or Securify for low cost.
• You sell physical products and need many checkout conditions: Cart Lock.
• You want to hide certain products from some regions: Addify, or Locksmith if you also need gated content.
• You want both: install an IP blocker for traffic and DigiBorder for the sale. They don't conflict, because they check different things at different moments.