Shopify Flow

How does Shopify Flow work?

Every workflow has the same shape: a trigger, optional conditions, and one or more actions.

• Triggers are events. Flow has more than 80 of them, covering orders, customers, products and inventory, fulfillment, returns, discounts, draft orders, subscriptions, B2B companies and metaobject entries. A "Scheduled time" trigger runs a workflow on a timetable instead of after an event.
• Conditions check the data the trigger carries: order total, customer tags, shipping country, product type, metafield values. They can branch with and, or and nested checks.
• Actions change something: add or remove tags, hold or cancel an order, update inventory or metafields, send an internal email, post to Slack, or call an app.

A few steps turn simple rules into small programs. "Get data" actions fetch up to 100 records, such as all unfulfilled orders older than three days. "For each" loops over them. "Wait" pauses a workflow before the next step. "Run code" runs a short JavaScript function to reshape data. "Send Admin API request" calls a GraphQL Admin API mutation that has no ready-made action.

Apps extend Flow with their own triggers and actions. Klaviyo, Gorgias, Slack, Asana and dozens of others publish connectors, so a workflow can start in one app and act in another.

Workflows run asynchronously, shortly after the event. They can't change the outcome of a checkout that is in progress. That job belongs to Shopify Functions.

Which Shopify plans include Flow?

Flow is free and installed from the Shopify App Store on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus. Some features depend on the plan:

• "Send HTTP request" works on Grow, Advanced and Plus, not Basic.
• Triggers and actions from your own custom app work only on Shopify Plus.
• Copying a workflow from one store to another needs Plus.
• How much work Flow can do scales with the plan's API rate limits.

Many older articles still say Flow is Plus only. That stopped being true some time ago.

What can you automate with Flow?

Most useful workflows are small operating rules that used to wait in a developer's backlog:

• Tag customers once lifetime spend passes a threshold, so they enter a VIP segment.
• Hold orders that Shopify marks as high risk and alert the team.
• Email the buyer or the warehouse when a product's inventory drops below a set level.
• Hide a product when it sells out and show it again when stock returns.
• Cancel unpaid orders after a set number of days, using a scheduled trigger and "Get data".
• Add an order note or tag for a shipping method that needs special handling.

On B2B stores we often use Flow for account housekeeping: tagging new companies and their contacts, notifying the sales rep who owns the account, and flagging orders that need a manual check before fulfillment.

What are Shopify Flow's limits?

As of October 2026:

• 1,000 workflows per store, active and inactive together.
• A warning appears once more than 10 active workflows share one trigger.
• "Get data" returns at most 100 items per action, and "For each" fails above 1,000 items.
• Up to 40 Wait steps and 90 days of waiting per workflow.
• "Run code" gets 5 seconds and 10 MB of memory, with no imports or network calls.
• "Send HTTP request" waits 30 seconds for a reply and can retry for up to 24 hours.
• Run history is kept for 14 days. Version history goes back one year.

Flow also slows down stores that use too many resources and marks those runs as "Rate limited". Shopify doesn't publish the exact threshold.

Flow, Functions or a real integration?

Use Flow for "when this happens, do that" rules on Shopify data, where a short delay is fine.

Use Shopify Functions when the rule must apply during checkout, such as hiding a payment method or blocking an order under a minimum value. Flow reacts after the fact and can't stop a purchase.

Use a proper integration, built on the Admin API and webhooks, when another system is the source of truth, data moves in both directions, or failures need queuing, logging and reconciliation. An ERP integration built out of Flow HTTP requests will work until the first outage, then lose data quietly.

How do you build a Shopify Flow workflow?

1. Write the rule in one sentence: when X happens, if Y is true, do Z.
2. Look for a template in Flow's library, or describe the rule to Sidekick, which can draft workflows from plain language.
3. Choose the trigger, then add conditions. Check the exact field names in the trigger's data.
4. Add actions, keeping each workflow to one job.
5. Name it clearly and use the note field to say why it exists and who owns it.
6. Test it. Test runs use real store data and stop before any action changes something.
7. Turn it on, then check run history after the first real events.

What are the common Flow mistakes?

• Expecting Flow to block a checkout. It runs after the event.
• Building an integration in Flow instead of rules.
• Letting tags multiply with no naming convention.
• Stacking many workflows on one trigger with conditions that overlap.
• Nobody owning the workflows, so no one knows why orders get tagged.
• Never checking run history, so a broken workflow fails silently.

When do you need help with Flow?

Most Flow work should stay with the operations team. That is what it was built for. Bring in a developer when workflows have grown into an undocumented system, when you need custom triggers or actions from a private app, or when it is unclear whether a rule belongs in Flow, a Function or an integration. Our Shopify development team usually starts by mapping what each workflow does before changing any of them.