Importier Plan Limits: What Counts as One Product?
Importier Plan Limits: What Counts as One Product?
The most common question about Importier plan limits is some version of: "I only have 80 products, but I have already used 120 of my plan allowance. What is happening?" The answer is almost always that the merchant is thinking about the limit the wrong way. Understanding exactly what triggers a count is the difference between staying on your current plan and paying for an upgrade you do not need.
This guide walks through the five surfaces that count toward your Importier plan limit, explains the per-product dedup that protects merchants who use multiple features on the same catalogue, and covers how variants are counted.
The Five Things That Count Toward Importier Plan Limits
A product counts toward your monthly allowance the first time any of the following five surfaces touches it in a given billing month.
- A description is generated for it. This applies during a CSV, Excel, or PDF import, and when you use Add Missing Descriptions to generate content for existing Shopify products.
- A title is generated for it in Title Optimizer. Running the GMC-preset transformation across your catalogue counts each product whose title is generated.
- An FAQ is generated for it in FAQ Generator. The count fires per product, not per FAQ: generating five FAQs for a single product counts that product once.
- It is processed from a marketplace URL. This includes Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Walmart, Etsy, and any supplier website you import from using Importier's Any Site option.
- It is imported to Shopify as the final step of a CSV, Excel, PDF, or marketplace flow. The count fires at the push step, which is when you confirm the import and send products to your store.
The critical word across all five surfaces is "first time." A product counts once per billing month, regardless of how many of these surfaces touch it. The dedup resets at the start of each new billing month.
When Each Surface Fires the Count
The timing of the count matters, and it differs between content generation and Shopify import. Knowing this helps you plan usage when you are close to your monthly limit.
AI description generation counts at generation time, not at push time. If you generate descriptions for 50 products during a CSV import session and then decide not to push them to Shopify, those 50 products have already counted toward your monthly allowance.
Add Missing Descriptions (Store Scanner) works the same way. When Importier generates descriptions for existing products in your catalogue, the count fires at generation. You do not need to apply the new content for the count to apply.
Title Optimizer counts each product whose title is generated, at generation time. Running a transformation across 200 products counts 200 products whether you apply the result or not.
FAQ Generator triggers the count when FAQs are generated. Generating ten FAQs for a product still counts that product once.
Marketplace import fires the count as soon as a product is processed from its URL, even if you review the import results and choose not to push some products to Shopify. Scraping 30 AliExpress product pages and pushing 25 counts 30.
CSV, Excel, and PDF import counts at the Shopify push step, not during configuration. If you set up the import wizard, generate descriptions, and close the browser before confirming, those products have not yet counted. The count fires when you confirm the push.
How the Dedup Protects Merchants Who Use Multiple Features
Most merchants who hit unexpected plan limits assume that using multiple Importier features on the same products multiplies the count. It does not. The per-product per-billing-month dedup prevents exactly that.
Once a product has counted in a given billing month, for any reason, additional actions on that same product within that month do not count again.
A Concrete Example
Suppose you run a clothing store and import 100 new products from a supplier CSV at the start of the month. The import counts 100 products.
Later that month, you run Title Optimizer across those same 100 products to clean up formatting from the supplier file. That run counts zero additional products because all 100 already counted during the import.
Then you add FAQs to those same 100 products using FAQ Generator. Still zero additional count. The total for the month: 100 products, not 300.
Importier's counting model rewards merchants who use the full feature set on the same catalogue. Importing, generating descriptions, optimising titles, and adding FAQs to the same 100 products in a single month costs 100 products of your plan allowance, not 400.
Importier counts the product, not the action performed on it. This is the insight most merchants miss, and the reason the plan limits are more generous in practice than they look on paper.
This differs from how many subscription tools work, where each discrete action subtracts from a credit balance. The dedup resets at the start of each new billing month. Products that counted in January count fresh in February if you run any of the five surfaces on them again.
Variants Do Not Multiply
A product with five colour variants counts as one product toward your Importier plan limit. This applies across all five counting surfaces.
The plan allowance figure (50 products on Starter, 200 on Growth, 1,000 on Scale) always refers to products, not variant rows. A 50-product Starter plan allows you to import 50 products regardless of how many variants each one carries.
This matters most for fashion, homewares, supplement, and fragrance merchants, where most products have four to eight variants. A clothing store with 50 parent products and an average of six variants each has 300 variant rows in the supplier CSV, but only 50 products toward the Importier plan limit.
Marketplace import follows the same rule. Importier's marketplace import handles per-variant scraping to capture variant-specific images, prices, and barcodes accurately. That per-variant extraction does not multiply the count.
- 50 products × 6 variants = 300 counted
- Each feature action charged separately
- Title run on same products counts again
- Variant row = separate product toward limit
- 50 products × 6 variants = 50 counted
- Per-product dedup across all five surfaces
- Title, FAQ, description on same products count once
- Variant row is part of the parent product
If you have previously used import tools that counted variants as separate products, recalculate your expected usage under Importier's model. Your actual monthly product count will be significantly lower than you expect.
How to Check Your Current Plan Limit in Importier
Your plan usage is visible in the Importier plan dashboard, accessible from the main navigation inside the app. The dashboard shows your current plan and monthly allowance, products used so far this billing month, and your reset date.
- 01Open Importier from your Shopify adminSelect Importier from the Apps section of your Shopify store
- 02Navigate to the plan dashboardThe dashboard link appears in the main navigation inside the app
- 03Check products used this monthThe dashboard shows how many of your monthly allowance you have consumed to date
- 04Note your billing month reset dateThis is when the dedup resets and your allowance refreshes to zero
- 05Plan large batches around the resetSchedule large Store Scanner runs or marketplace scrapes for just after your reset date if you are near your limit
Importier does not currently send usage alerts when you approach your limit. Checking the dashboard before large batches is a practical habit, particularly for marketplace imports and Store Scanner runs, which can process more products than a single CSV import.
If you are close to your limit mid-month and have a large import scheduled, you have two options: wait for the billing month to reset, or upgrade your plan before running the batch. Upgrading mid-month gives you immediate access to the higher allowance.
Which Plan Matches Your Monthly Product Count
Choosing the right plan depends on how many products you touch per month across all five counting surfaces, not just how many products exist in your store.
The Explore plan (free) allows 10 products per month. It suits merchants who want to test Importier's import and content generation features on a small batch before committing to a paid plan.
The Starter plan ($9/month) allows 50 products per month. This works for merchants running small, regular imports. A gift retailer adding 20 to 30 new products from a supplier invoice each month is a typical fit.
The Growth plan ($29/month) allows 200 products per month. This is the most common entry point for merchants importing from multiple suppliers regularly, or for merchants running Store Scanner to generate descriptions across a mid-size existing catalogue.
The Scale plan ($99/month) allows 1,000 products per month and adds Scheduled Imports (up to 2 automated schedules) and Variant Descriptions. Merchants running weekly supplier imports, managing catalogues above 500 products, or needing automated recurring imports should consider this tier.
The Enterprise plan ($499/month) allows 5,000 or more products per month and adds Marketplace Import, API Access, and up to 10 Scheduled Import schedules. This suits high-volume importers, multi-channel merchants importing from multiple marketplaces, and agencies managing product content across multiple client stores.
One planning note: because the dedup resets monthly, a Growth plan merchant who imports 200 new products in June and then runs Title Optimizer and FAQ Generator on those same 200 products still within June stays within their allowance. But if they import 50 more new products in July, those 50 count fresh. The 200 from June do not carry over.
Key Takeaways
- A product counts once toward your monthly allowance the first time any of the five Importier surfaces touches it: description generation, title generation, FAQ generation, marketplace processing, or Shopify import.
- Per-product per-billing-month dedup means using multiple Importier features on the same products in the same month counts once, not multiple times.
- Variants do not multiply. A product with eight variants counts as one product toward your plan limit.
- Content generation (descriptions, titles, FAQs) counts at generation time. File-based imports (CSV, Excel, PDF) count at the Shopify push confirmation step.
- Check your current usage in the Importier plan dashboard before running large batches. No alerts fire automatically when you approach your limit.
Try Importier free at importier.app.
Related Articles
Set up your first import in under five minutes.
Importier brings products into Shopify with AI descriptions, category metafields, and data enrichment on every run.
