Shopify Flow is Shopify's native automation engine. It performs actions for you when an event occurs in your store: tagging a customer, hiding an out-of-stock product, alerting your team to a suspicious order. All without writing a line of code, and at no extra cost, as Flow is now included on all Shopify plans and no longer just on Shopify Plus. The promise can be summed up in one sentence: anything you do manually several times a week in your back-office can probably be delegated to a workflow.
In brief
- What it is: a no-code automation engine integrated into the Shopify admin, based on the trigger, condition, action triptych.
- On which plans: all, from Basic to Plus. The Flow app can be installed for free from the App Store.
- What it replaces: some manual back-office tasks and several small paid apps for tagging, alerting, or inventory management.
- Its main limitation: Flow orchestrates your store's internal logic; it doesn't modify the checkout or discount rules, and doesn't handle loops.
- Typical time savings: repetitive tagging, alerting, and out-of-stock management tasks account for the majority of hours recoverable on an active back-office.
Table of Contents
What exactly is Shopify Flow?
Shopify Flow is an official Shopify application that listens to events in your store and triggers automatic actions in response. It lives directly in your admin, next to orders and products, and requires no technical skills: the interface works by visually assembling blocks.
The important, and often misunderstood, point is its availability. Flow was long a commercial argument reserved for Shopify Plus. This is no longer the case: the application is now free and installable on any plan. If you're on a Basic or Grow plan and thought you weren't eligible, you're missing out on one of the few efficiency levers that costs nothing.
What Flow concretely replaces: improvised macros in a spreadsheet, reminders in a shared calendar, manual stock checks on Monday mornings, and a good portion of small paid applications that do just one thing. An active back-office quickly accumulates a dozen of these micro-tasks, each insignificant in isolation, but costly when combined.
The boundary remains to be drawn: what is delegated to the machine, and what is kept for human decision. This is the first trade-off we enforce on accounts we take over.
“We systematically refuse to automate the cancellation of an order based on a fraud score. A false positive costs more than a thirty-second human verification. Flow tags and alerts; it doesn't decide.”
Florian Pohl, co-founder of Stellar Projects
How a workflow works: trigger, condition, action
Every Flow workflow relies on three building blocks, always in the same order. A trigger detects an event. One or more conditions filter the cases to be processed. One or more actions are executed. This is the tool's reference vocabulary, and it's enough to describe any automation, from the simplest to the most elaborate.
A useful formulation for designing a workflow even before opening the interface: “when this happens, if that is true, then do this.” If you can't fill in all three boxes, the workflow isn't ready.
The most useful triggers
Shopify exposes several dozen native triggers, but a handful cover most real needs: order created, order paid, order fulfilled, product created or updated, inventory level changed, customer created, refund created, subscription renewed. In addition, there are scheduled triggers, which allow a workflow to be launched at regular intervals rather than in response to an event. This makes recurring audits possible, for example, a weekly check for products without images.
Conditions
Conditions are filters applied to event data. Order amount greater than a threshold, high fraud risk indicator, product belonging to a given collection, customer with a specific tag, metafield value. Flow supports multiple branches, which allows several cases to be handled in a single workflow instead of multiplying copies.
Available actions
The most common actions relate to tags (add or remove a tag on an order, customer, product), notifications (internal email, Slack message), catalog (hide or republish a product, modify a metafield) and orders (cancel, mark, capture a payment). Flow relies on Shopify's Admin API, which explains the richness of its scope. Third-party app connectors further extend the list: Klaviyo, review tools, loyalty platforms, logistics solutions.
Ten concrete automations to implement
Here are ten proven workflows, formulated using the trigger, condition, action triptych. They are intentionally simple: in automation, value comes from the accumulation of small, reliable workflows, not from a single, complex system.
- Tag VIP customers. Trigger: order paid. Condition: total spent by customer exceeds your VIP threshold. Action: add the “VIP” tag to the customer, which then feeds a marketing segment.
- Alert on a high-risk fraud order. Trigger: order created. Condition: high risk level. Action: tag the order “to be checked” and notify the team by email before preparation.
- Hide an out-of-stock product. Trigger: inventory level changed. Condition: available quantity equals zero. Action: remove the product from the sales channel. A second workflow re-publishes it upon restock.
- Tag new customers for the welcome flow. Trigger: customer created. Condition: no previous orders. Action: add a tag used as an entry criterion in your Klaviyo welcome sequence.
- Notify on a high-value order. Trigger: order paid. Condition: amount greater than your average cart multiplied by three. Action: Slack message or email to the manager for priority processing.
- Request a review after delivery. Trigger: order delivered. Condition: product belongs to a targeted collection. Action: trigger the review request via your customer review tool's connector.
- Isolate orders for manual review. Trigger: order created. Condition: shipping address outside usual area, or unusually high quantity of the same item. Action: tag the order and suspend preparation.
- Manage pre-orders. Trigger: order created. Condition: the order contains a product tagged “pre-order.” Action: tag the order, notify logistics, and exclude the order from the standard shipping flow.
- Segment customers at risk of churn. Trigger: scheduled, once a week. Condition: last order more than six months ago. Action: add a re-engagement tag for use in email campaigns.
- Reapply a loyalty tag on the anniversary date. Trigger: scheduled, daily. Condition: customer's signup date equals today's date, previous year. Action: tag the customer to trigger an anniversary offer.
A real case: two-part payment for the MINI E-Bike 1 pre-order
Recipe No. 8 deserves to be detailed, because it shows the moment when Flow stops being a convenience and becomes the only solution. Angell, which designs and markets MINI electric bikes under a license agreement with the BMW group, was launching the MINI E-Bike 1 for pre-order. For a premium bike priced at nearly 3,500 euros, requiring full payment several months before delivery is a massive conversion barrier. The brand therefore wanted a precise sequencing: a 30% down payment at the time of order with a first invoice, then a call for funds and a second invoice for the balance once the bikes were received in stock.
No pre-order application on the market reliably managed this scenario. We built it with Flow: a workflow tags the customer and the order at the time of the down payment, splits the purchase into two stages, and manages the issuance of the two invoices via the Sufio connector. Between the two deadlines, an automatic email is sent to the customer just before the call for funds, to give them the option to withdraw and be reimbursed before the balance is debited.
This is exactly the scenario where the arbitration leans towards Flow rather than an application: the need was not a standard feature, it was a business rule specific to the brand, with an invoicing constraint and a legal right of withdrawal. An application gives you what it has planned. A workflow gives you what you have decided.
If your subject is wholesale, the logic of restocking and professional orders obeys different rules. We address these separately in our guide on managing wholesale orders on Shopify, with recipes dedicated to B2B.
Flow, Functions, apps, or Zapier: which one for what?
This is the question that comes up most often once the principle is understood. The four tools don't compete with each other; they occupy different layers of your store. Choosing the wrong level is the primary cause of abandoned automation projects.
| Tool | What it's for | When to choose it |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Flow | No-code internal logic: tags, notifications, catalog, metafields | Your rule is expressed as "when, if, then" and stays within the Shopify ecosystem |
| Shopify Functions | Custom checkout logic: discounts, shipping, payment | You need to modify the behavior of the purchase funnel itself |
| Applications | Complete, ready-to-use features | The need is for an entire product (reviews, loyalty, subscriptions), not just a rule |
| Zapier or Make | Connection to tools outside Shopify | You need Shopify to communicate with an ERP, CRM, or external spreadsheet |
Our arbitration rule: always start with Flow. It's free, reversible, and sufficient in most cases. Only switch to Functions if the need relates to the checkout, and to Zapier or Make only if the data needs to leave Shopify. To identify the applications that are genuinely useful alongside Flow, our selection of essential Shopify applications provides a starting point.
The limitations of Shopify Flow and how to work around them
Flow is powerful within its scope and frustrating outside of it. Knowing its four structural limitations prevents wasting hours trying to force a tool that isn't designed for the task.
- No loops. Flow cannot repeat an action on a list of items. Processing each line of an order, for example, requires a workaround or custom development.
- Limited debugging. The execution history indicates that a workflow was triggered and if it succeeded, but it doesn't replace real logs. For a workflow with multiple branches, error analysis remains laborious.
- Dependency on connectors. An action on a third-party tool only exists if the editor has published the corresponding connector. Without a connector, you need to use a webhook or an Admin API request.
- No complex inter-store logic. If you operate multiple Shopify stores with shared rules, Flow quickly reaches its ceiling. This is where external orchestration takes over.
When these limitations become a blocker, two directions: Shopify Functions for anything related to checkout, and custom development via the Admin API for everything else. Our ultimate Shopify guide places these building blocks within the overall architecture of a store.
Where to start: your first workflow in 5 minutes
The best first workflow is one you can verify immediately. Don't start with your most ambitious automation; start with one whose result you'll see within the hour.
- Install the Flow app from the Shopify App Store. Installation is free and takes less than a minute.
- Start from a template. Flow offers a library of ready-to-use templates. "Tag high-risk orders" is an excellent first case: useful, with no side effects, immediately verifiable.
- Check the trigger and condition. Adjust the threshold or tag to your store's vocabulary. A poorly named tag today becomes a debt in six months; choose a convention and stick to it.
- Test on a real order, then check the workflow's execution history to confirm it triggered correctly.
- Activate, then move on to the next one. One reliable workflow per week is better than ten approximate workflows deployed on the same day.
Frequently Asked Questions about Shopify Flow
Is Shopify Flow free?
Yes. The Flow app can be installed for free from the Shopify App Store and its use incurs no additional cost. Only third-party applications you connect to your workflows may be paid.
On which Shopify plans is Flow available?
On all Shopify plans, including entry-level plans. Flow was exclusive to Shopify Plus for several years, which is why many merchants still believe it's inaccessible. This is no longer the case.
Do you need to know how to code to use Shopify Flow?
No. The interface works by visually assembling blocks and requires no development knowledge. A basic understanding of conditional logic is more than enough. Advanced cases, particularly the action of sending a request to the Admin API, however, do require a technical profile.
What's the difference between Shopify Flow and Zapier?
Flow automates your Shopify store's internal logic. Zapier, like Make, connects Shopify to hundreds of external tools. If your rule stays within Shopify, Flow is sufficient and costs nothing. If the data needs to go to an ERP, CRM, or spreadsheet, Zapier or Make take over.
How many workflows can be created?
There is no functional limit that blocks normal use. The real limit is organizational: beyond about twenty active workflows without a naming convention or documentation, no one on the team knows what's running or why anymore.
Can Shopify Flow send emails?
Yes, for internal notifications to your team. For emails intended for customers, Flow acts as a trigger, not a sender: it applies a tag or calls a connector, and your email platform handles the sending and design of the message.
Need to automate complex processes?
Flow covers most back-office automations. Beyond that, when the logic involves checkout, multiple stores, or external business tools, technical arbitration becomes structural and should be prepared upstream. This is one of the projects we undertake for the Shopify projects we support. Let's talk about your store; we respond within 48 hours.
