Cordon vs Blocky
Blocky is an established fraud-prevention and country-blocking app for Shopify. Like Cordon, it promises to keep unwanted visitors away from your storefront. This page walks through the practical differences so you can pick based on the problem you actually have.
Descriptions of Blocky below are based on its public App Store listing as of July 2026. Where the listing is silent, we say so rather than guessing.
Where Blocky is strong
- Established app with a solid review history
- Straightforward country and IP blocking that many merchants find sufficient
- Fraud-focused positioning with rule-based controls
Criterion by criterion
| Criterion | Cordon | Blocky |
|---|---|---|
| VPN / proxy detection data | Live commercial detection data refreshed continuously; catches residential proxies and Tor exits, with a tunable fraud-score threshold | Rule and list based blocking; the public listing does not describe live commercial proxy scoring per request |
| Where blocking happens | Detection decision at the edge in under 50ms, delivered through a theme app extension; optional Cloudflare edge worker (Plus) blocks before the request reaches the store | Storefront-level blocking, applied while the page loads, as is standard in this category |
| Storefront performance | Tiny storefront footprint, no injected script tags, built to keep Lighthouse scores intact | Adds storefront JavaScript; measure your Lighthouse scores before and after installing any blocker |
| SEO safety | Verified search engines and good bots (Google, Bing, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Ahrefs) are always allowed and cannot be blocked; spoofed crawlers from the wrong network are caught | Crawler handling is not prominently documented; verify how it treats Googlebot before enabling aggressive rules |
| Privacy / GDPR | IPs are SHA-256 hashed with a daily-rotating salt; raw IPs never sit in the visitor log; DPA available | Check the vendor's data processing terms for how visitor IPs are stored and for how long |
| Scraper-specific detection | Headless markers, request-velocity detection, spoofed-crawler checks, datacenter ASN blocks, and an anti-scraping decoy mode on Plus | Oriented toward fraud and country blocking rather than behavioral scraper detection |
| Failure behavior | Fails open: if the service hiccups, real customers shop normally | Failure behavior is not documented on the public listing |
Verdict
Blocky is a reasonable pick for simple geographic and IP-based blocking, and its fraud framing resonates with merchants who mostly fight chargebacks from known regions.
Cordon's case is stronger when the threat adapts: proxy pools that rotate IPs, scrapers running headless browsers, spoofed crawlers. Those need live detection data and behavioral checks, plus the guarantee that Google is verified at the network level and always allowed.
Try Cordon on your own traffic
The honest test beats any comparison table: install it, watch the live visitor log for a week, and see what it catches. Free plan included.
Free plan included, 7-day free trial on paid plans. Cancel anytime.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cordon a Blocky alternative?
Yes. Cordon handles the same country, IP, and fraud-blocking jobs and adds live VPN and proxy scoring, scraper detection, ASN-level rules, and hashed IP logging for GDPR.
Which is better for stopping checkout fraud?
Both can block the countries and IPs where your fraud clusters. The difference is disguised fraud: orders placed behind residential proxies or VPNs. Cordon scores those against live commercial data on the Growth plan and up.
Will either app block Google?
Cordon cannot block verified search engines even if you try; crawlers are verified by network, not just user-agent. For any other blocker, test with Google Search Console's URL inspection after enabling rules.
Do I need the Growth plan for VPN blocking on Cordon?
Yes. VPN, proxy, and Tor detection starts at Growth ($19/mo). Country, IP, and basic bot blocking work on every plan including Free.