Block Countries and Regions

Country blocking is the highest-impact protection layer for most merchants. Shieldy supports country, state/province, and city-level rules.

Block an entire country

1. Open Block rules → New rule.
2. Rule type: Block.
3. Criteria: Location → Country.
4. Pick the country from the dropdown (ISO-3166 list with flags).
5. Save.

The free plan supports 4 location rules.

Redirect instead of block

For a softer user experience, redirect blocked countries to a custom page:

1. Rule type: Redirect.
2. Location: pick country.
3. Destination URL: e.g. /pages/international-shipping.
4. Save.

Block a state or province

Available on the Premium plan and above:

1. New rule → Location → State/Province.
2. Pick country first, then state.
3. Save.

Block a city

City-level rules work for major metros (~85 % geolocation accuracy):

1. New rule → Location → City.
2. Pick country → state → city.
3. Save.

Whitelist mode (allow only specific countries)

If you ship to 3 countries:

1. Rule type Whitelist.
2. Location → Country.
3. Add each allowed country.
4. Save.

Any visitor outside the whitelist is blocked or redirected by default.

Pair with VPN detection

Country blocking by IP geolocation has one weakness — VPN users mask their location. Combine country rules with VPN/Proxy detection:

1. Open Bot Killer.
2. Enable Auto-block VPN/Proxy (Premium plan).
3. Enable Auto block Tor (Enterprise).

This catches masked traffic from blocked countries.

SEO safety

Always whitelist legitimate search-engine crawlers:

• Googlebot
• Bingbot
• Applebot
• DuckDuckBot

Shieldy auto-whitelists verified crawler IPs by default.

See also

• Block IP addresses
• VPN / Proxy blocker
• Visitor Analytics