Why some sites show a Cloudflare error in StoreViewer
Last updated: June 2026
In this article
What you're seeing
Some websites display a Cloudflare error page — typically a "403 Forbidden" or "Access Denied" screen — when loaded inside StoreViewer, even though they open normally in your regular browser.
This is not a bug in StoreViewer. It's a deliberate security measure applied by the website itself.
Why it happens
Cloudflare's bot protection analyses incoming requests and blocks traffic it considers non-human or suspicious. When StoreViewer loads a site in a webview pane, certain signals in that request — such as the browser user agent string, the absence of browser cookies, or the lack of prior browsing history on that domain — can trigger Cloudflare's defences.
Ironically, this can affect competitor sites more than your own, because your own stores are typically already logged into or cookied in your regular browser sessions, whereas competitor URLs are being loaded fresh.
What you can try
Load the site in a pane first without a path Clear the URL bar path so StoreViewer loads just the root domain (e.g. https://www.competitor.com with no path appended). This gives Cloudflare a chance to serve a standard homepage response before you navigate deeper. Once the homepage loads, type a path into the URL bar to navigate from there.
Visit the site in your regular browser first Open the site normally in Safari or Chrome to establish a session and accept any cookies or challenges. Then return to StoreViewer and reload that pane. In some cases, shared cookie storage between Chromium-based browsers and StoreViewer's webview can help.
Try reloading the pane individually Click the reload icon on the specific pane rather than reloading all panes simultaneously. Staggered requests are less likely to be flagged than simultaneous requests from the same IP.
Wait and try again Some Cloudflare blocks are temporary rate-limits rather than hard bans. Waiting a few minutes and trying again often resolves it.
When none of these work
Some sites have Cloudflare configured aggressively enough that they'll block webview-based requests regardless. This is a limitation of how those sites are configured and is outside StoreViewer's control.
If this is affecting one of your own storefronts rather than a competitor site, it's worth checking your Cloudflare settings — specifically Bot Fight Mode and Security Level. Setting Security Level to "Essentially Off" for traffic from known internal IP addresses, or adding your office IP to the Cloudflare allowlist, will prevent your own stores from blocking StoreViewer.
This doesn't affect most sites
The majority of e-commerce sites — including most Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce stores — load without issue in StoreViewer. Cloudflare blocks are more common on large enterprise sites with aggressive security configurations. If you're primarily using StoreViewer to view your own regional stores, you're unlikely to encounter this regularly.
Need help? Email sales [at] storeviewer.app