What is Shopify Flow and what is it used for?
Quick Answer: Shopify Flow is a visual workflow automation tool built into Shopify for automating ecommerce operations. Available on Shopify ($79/month) and higher plans, it uses triggers, conditions, and actions to automate order processing, inventory management, customer tagging, fraud review, and fulfillment workflows.
What Is Shopify Flow?
Shopify Flow is a built-in visual automation tool for Shopify merchants. It uses a trigger-condition-action model to automate operational tasks that would otherwise require manual intervention or custom code. Shopify Flow was originally exclusive to Shopify Plus but became available on standard Shopify plans ($79/month) in 2023.
How It Works
Flow automations consist of three elements:
- Triggers: Events that start the workflow (order created, customer created, product inventory changed)
- Conditions: Logic checks that filter when the workflow should act (order total > $500, customer tag includes "VIP")
- Actions: Operations performed when conditions are met (add tag, send notification, hide product)
Key Capabilities
- Order management: Auto-tag high-value orders, flag suspicious orders for review, route to specific fulfillment locations
- Inventory management: Alert when stock drops below threshold, auto-hide out-of-stock products, reorder notifications
- Customer segmentation: Auto-tag customers based on purchase behavior, total spend, product categories
- Fraud prevention: Hold high-risk orders for manual review, cancel orders matching fraud patterns
- Loyalty programs: Award points, update VIP tiers, trigger reward notifications
Third-Party App Integration
Shopify Flow connects with third-party apps from the Shopify App Store:
- Klaviyo, Mailchimp (email triggers)
- Gorgias, Zendesk (support ticket creation)
- ShipStation, ShipBob (fulfillment routing)
- LoyaltyLion, Smile.io (loyalty programs)
Availability and Pricing
As of April 2026, Shopify Flow is included at no additional cost on:
- Shopify plan: $79/month
- Advanced: $299/month
- Shopify Plus: $2,300/month
Flow is not available on Basic ($39/month) or Starter ($5/month) plans.
Limitations
Shopify Flow is limited to Shopify store operations. It cannot automate actions outside the Shopify ecosystem without third-party app connectors. For cross-platform automation (connecting Shopify to non-Shopify tools), merchants typically use Zapier, Make, or n8n alongside Flow.
Related Questions
Related Tools
Shopify Flow
Native ecommerce workflow automation tool built into Shopify for automating order management, inventory, customer tagging, and fraud prevention.
Workflow AutomationKlaviyo
Ecommerce marketing automation platform for email and SMS with deep Shopify integration and predictive analytics.
Marketing AutomationZapier
Automate workflows between apps without coding—connect 9,000+ tools with simple, reliable automation.
Workflow AutomationActivepieces
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Workflow AutomationRelated Rankings
Best Human-in-the-Loop Automation Platforms 2026
Eight platforms are ranked here on a single mechanism: how a person enters an automated path, and what the system can prove afterward about the decision they made. Moxo scores 7.7 and ranks first; Camunda 8 scores 7.2, Microsoft Power Automate 7.1, Pega 6.9, n8n 6.7, Zapier 5.9, Kissflow 5.8 and ServiceNow 4.8, scored 22 September 2026 on the five weighted criteria. Those criteria cover the step type, the approver's account or licence, the routes available on a rejection, the audit record, and the meter that charges for the decision, and none of them can tell a review from a rubber stamp, so the methodology adds a check readers can run on any product in a few minutes: whether the decision record tells a considered approval from an instant one. Every figure was read from a vendor-owned surface and carries its own date.
Best Automation Platforms for AI Orchestration 2026
This ranking answers one question: how many real business applications can an AI agent act on out of the box? It evaluates nine platforms as of August 2026 on the reach they give an agent, not on the workflow logic they can express. That boundary is deliberate, because two neighbouring pages on this site answer different questions. Best Process Orchestration Platforms 2026 scores multi-step process control, error handling and state management. Best AI Agent Platforms 2026 scores building and hosting the agent itself. This page scores the layer between them: the connective tissue that lets an agent already built elsewhere reach the applications a business actually runs on. A platform that leads one of those pages can place low here, and two of them do. Scores derive from application and action catalogue counts, the exposure model each platform uses to publish those catalogues to an agent, setup effort, failure handling and cost per agent action. Every figure was retrieved from a vendor-owned surface on 11 August 2026 unless an earlier date is stated against it.
Dive Deeper
Moxo vs Lindy in 2026: Who Presses Approve When the Agent Asks
Lindy, founded in 2023, sells an AI teammate that lives in Slack and in each person's inbox; Moxo, whose predecessor Moxtra was co-founded in 2012, runs multi-party processes where approvals are steps only a person can close. Moxo wins three rounds to two: who closes the step, work across companies and the record. Lindy wins reach and testing. Vendor pages and docs read 28 September 2026.
Moxo vs Kissflow in 2026: What an Outside Approver Costs, and What the Record Proves
Moxo and Kissflow both sell approvals to people who do not write code, and each wins one round outright: Moxo's Web and Headless SDKs run the approval inside the buyer's own product, under the buyer's own sign-in. Kissflow's portal audit log stamps every event with an actor, a device and an IP, where Moxo publishes no field list. Both answers are quoted, not priced, and both meters punish a one-step request sent to hundreds of clients. Cost, the decision record, rejection routes, AI metering and governance, verified 14 to 23 September 2026.
Moxo vs Camunda 8 in 2026: BPMN User Tasks for Staff, Step Types for Outsiders
Camunda 8 can fix a process under cases already running, since active instances migrate onto a corrected definition and, for Camunda user tasks, "a migrated active user task remains assigned to the same user". Moxo keeps the shared queue that Camunda's Tasklist V2 stops evaluating, with desks that are "a shared inbox that multiple users can pick work from". Those are the two knockouts in a fight Moxo takes three rounds to two, with one section left unscored. Portability, AI review gates and a published price decide the rest, verified 14 to 23 September 2026.