Shopify Flow in 2026: Plans, Triggers, Actions and Workflows That Pay Off

Shopify Flow is Shopify's free automation app. It watches your store for events, such as a new order, a low stock level or a new wholesale company, and runs a sequence of steps in response: tag the order, email the warehouse, hold fulfillment, post to Slack or update a metafield. You build each automation as a workflow made of a trigger, optional conditions and one or more actions.

Flow is not a Plus-only tool anymore, despite what many older articles say. As of October 2026, Shopify's Help Center states that Flow "is a free app available on the Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus plans." Two features are gated: the Send HTTP request action needs Grow or higher, and tasks created by custom partner apps need Plus. Usage limits also scale with your plan's API limits.

For most stores, Flow replaces a handful of paid single-purpose apps and a lot of manual admin work. The trick is starting with workflows that remove real, repeated effort and then building from there.

This guide explains how Flow works, what each plan can do, how connectors and templates help, and eight practical workflows you can set up in an afternoon. It is part of our Shopify resource hub.

How Shopify Flow works

Every workflow has three building blocks, described in Shopify's Flow documentation:

• Triggers start a workflow. Most are store events, such as Order created, Product created, Customer created, Company created, Product variant inventory quantity changed, Customer abandons checkout, Fulfillment order ready to fulfill, Return requested or Subscription contract created. A Scheduled time trigger runs a workflow on a schedule, and a Workflow error occurred trigger lets you alert on failures.
• Conditions decide whether to continue, using data from the trigger: order total, shipping country, customer tags, product type, inventory level, metafield values and so on. Conditions can branch into different paths.
• Actions do the work. Shopify's action list runs to dozens of entries, including adding or removing tags, updating metafields and notes, holding or moving fulfillment orders, cancelling or archiving orders, publishing or unpublishing products, purchasing shipping labels, sending internal emails and invoices, and B2B actions such as sending a B2B access email or updating a company location's payment terms.

Flow also includes logic actions that make workflows more capable: Wait (pause before the next step), For each (loop over a list), Count and Sum, a family of "Get data" actions that pull in orders, products, customers or metaobjects, Send Admin API request for anything the built-in actions don't cover, and Run code for small JavaScript transformations. Log output and Fail workflow run help with debugging.

To use Flow, install the free Shopify Flow app from the App Store. It then appears in your admin under Apps.

What each plan can do

Send HTTP request is the action you use to call an outside system that has no Flow connector, such as your own ERP endpoint or a webhook in an automation tool. If that is central to your plans, it is one more reason Basic stores outgrow their plan. Our Shopify pricing plans guide covers the other differences.

Templates, connectors and Sidekick

You don't have to start from a blank canvas. Shopify's Flow App Store listing describes "hundreds of workflow templates for ecommerce tasks," covering marketing, fulfillment, inventory, fraud prevention and more. Templates are a good way to learn how Shopify structures conditions, even if you end up editing most of them.

Connectors extend Flow beyond your store. Shopify describes them as a way "to use features from third-party services," either as triggers based on app data or as actions that send information to apps. Shopify's own documentation gives Slack and Google Sheets as examples, and many App Store apps (email platforms, review tools, helpdesks, loyalty programs) add their own Flow triggers and actions. Check an app's listing or documentation for Flow support before you buy it.

Shopify has also connected Flow to its AI assistant. Since the Winter '26 Edition (December 2025), Sidekick can build automations from a plain-language description, which you then review and turn on. Treat a generated workflow like a draft: read every condition before you activate it.

Eight practical workflows

1. Low stock alerts

Trigger: Product variant inventory quantity changed. Condition: the new quantity is below your reorder point and the previous quantity (the trigger provides it as inventoryQuantityPrior) was at or above it, so you get one alert rather than one per sale. Action: send an internal email or a Slack message to whoever buys stock.

2. Hide sold-out products, then bring them back

Shopify offers a template for this: "Publish and unpublish products based on inventory level." It uses the same trigger to unpublish a product when stock runs out and republish it when stock returns. Skip this for products you want to keep indexed for search; marking them sold out on the page is often better for SEO.

3. Hold risky orders

Trigger: Order created. Conditions: check the order's risk assessment, or combine signals you trust, such as a high order value with a mismatched billing and shipping country. Actions: hold the fulfillment order, add a "review" tag and email the person who checks fraud. This keeps risky orders from shipping automatically while you look at them.

4. Tag VIP and repeat customers

Trigger: Order created. Condition: the customer's order count or total spent passes your threshold. Action: add a VIP tag. That tag can drive customer segments, email flows and discount eligibility.

5. Route orders with special requirements

Tag orders that contain fragile, oversized or personalized items, or that ship to specific regions, so your team or your 3PL can filter them. Add an order note with handling instructions in the same workflow.

6. Onboard B2B buyers

When a company is created, send the B2B access email automatically, set default payment terms on its location, and notify your sales rep. With native B2B now on every plan, this workflow alone saves wholesale teams a lot of copy-and-paste.

7. Chase overdue wholesale payments

Use a scheduled workflow to find B2B orders past their due date and send a payment reminder, then tag the company so sales knows before the next order.

8. Weekly reporting to a spreadsheet

Use the Scheduled time trigger with Get order data and a Google Sheets connector action to append a weekly row of orders, revenue or returns. It is not a replacement for analytics, but it is useful for numbers a team checks every Monday.

Building workflows that don't cause problems

• Test on a small scope first. Add a condition that limits a new workflow to orders with a test tag, then widen it.
• Watch for loops. A workflow that updates a product can trigger another workflow listening for product updates.
• Name workflows clearly with the trigger and outcome, such as "Order created: hold high-risk."
• Alert on errors with the Workflow error occurred trigger, so a failing workflow doesn't fail silently.
• Review after app changes. Removing an app can break workflows that use its connector.

For processes that go beyond what Flow can model, such as two-way sync with an ERP or complex order orchestration, see our articles on Shopify order management apps and real-time sync between Shopify and other systems.

Where to start if you have never used Flow

The fastest way to get value is to look for work your team repeats every week, then automate the dullest piece first. A sensible first month looks like this:

1. Week 1: install Flow, turn on a low stock alert from a template, and add a Workflow error occurred alert that emails you.
2. Week 2: add order tagging for anything your team currently filters by hand, such as gift orders, international orders or orders with a specific product.
3. Week 3: add a fraud hold for orders that match the risk signals you already check manually.
4. Week 4: review the run history for each workflow, fix false positives, and only then add customer tagging or B2B workflows.

Keep a simple list of active workflows with an owner for each. When staff change or apps are replaced, that list is what stops a forgotten automation from tagging, holding or cancelling orders nobody expects it to touch.

Conclusion

Shopify Flow gives every paid plan a capable, free automation tool. Begin with alerts, tags and fraud holds, add B2B and reporting workflows as you grow, and move up to Grow if you need to call outside systems with HTTP requests. When Flow alone can't cover a process, a small custom app can add its own triggers and actions; our Shopify app development team builds those integrations.

Frequently asked questions