Shopify Email Automation: Every Messaging Template Explained
Shopify email automation now lives in the Shopify Messaging app (the app formerly called Shopify Email), under Apps > Messaging > Automations. It offers 11 ready-made email automations in four groups; three of those automations can also send SMS, and you turn each one on from a template. Automated emails count toward the 10,000 free emails a month that come with the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, except abandoned checkout emails, which are always free.
Template names and audience rules come from the Shopify Help Center page on creating marketing automations, pricing from Shopify Messaging email pricing (read October 23, 2026). Shopify moved marketing automations into the Messaging app and Shopify Flow on March 24, 2026, and renamed the Marketing section of the admin to Growth on June 17, 2026, so guides that send you to Marketing > Automations describe a menu that is gone.
Marketing automations and order notifications are different things
Two kinds of automatic customer email are easy to confuse. Order and shipping confirmations are customer notifications, edited in Settings > Notifications; they are what people searching for “Shopify transactional emails” are after.
Marketing automations are the ones in Shopify Messaging. By default they go only to customers subscribed to email marketing and count toward your monthly sends, with abandoned checkout as the exception to both (see the table).
All Shopify Messaging automation templates
| Group | Template | Sends when | Channels | Counts toward free 10,000? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recover site visitors | Convert abandoned product browse | A customer views at least one product and leaves without adding it to the cart | Email, SMS | Yes |
| Recover abandoned cart | Products are in the cart but checkout was not started | Email, SMS | Yes | |
| Recover abandoned checkout | Checkout was started but not completed | Email, SMS | No, always free | |
| Welcome new subscribers | Welcome new subscribers with a discount email | A customer subscribes through a form on your online store | Yes | |
| Welcome new subscribers with a discount series | Same trigger: a discount email, then 2 brand emails, then a reminder if no purchase | Yes | ||
| Post-purchase | Drive online customers to your nearby retail locations | A first-time, online-only customer pays for an order and lives near one of up to 8 retail locations | Yes | |
| Thank customers after they purchase | After the first and second purchase | Yes | ||
| Upsell customers after their first purchase | After the first purchase | Yes | ||
| Win back customers | A set time after the last order (uses the Customer joined segment trigger) | Yes | ||
| Customer appreciation | Celebrate customer birthday | On the birthday stored in the birth date metafield, with a discount code | Yes | |
| Welcome VIP customers | The customer joins your VIP segment (default: third order and $1,000 USD spent, or tagged VIP) |
Yes |
A few rules sit behind that table:
- Automations send only to subscribed customers by default. The one exception you can choose: in a Recover abandoned checkout email you can change the To: field to All customers.
- The birthday automation reads a birth date metafield, so it sends nothing until you collect birthdays, for example with a custom field in the Shopify Forms app.
- The retail template requires at least one retail location with a valid address.
- If you approve tactics in Campaign Autopilot, the automations it creates are labeled in Messaging and run next to the ones you built.
On cost: emails are counted per recipient address, the free 10,000 are shared with your campaigns, and above that you pay $1 per 1,000 emails up to 300,000. A store sending two campaigns to 4,000 subscribers (8,000 emails) has about 2,000 emails left for automations before paying anything; abandoned checkout emails are extra and free.
Turn on an automation step by step
- Go to Apps > Messaging and click Automations.
- Click Create automation and choose a template.
- For the three recovery templates, pick the channel: Email or SMS (for SMS the edit button is Edit SMS).
- Click Edit email and make your changes. A recovery email can also be switched on unedited with Turn on automation; the welcome, post-purchase and appreciation templates go through the editor.
- Click Send test, enter your own address, click Send and check the email on your phone.
- Click Turn on, then Turn on again in the dialog. Save without turning on keeps your edits for later.
To change when an automation sends, open it, click Edit workflow, make the change and click Apply changes. Editing workflows and templates needs a desktop browser; the Shopify mobile app can only create the three recovery automations. Turning an automation off (Turn off automation) cancels every workflow still in a wait step, so nobody gets the remaining emails.
Which three to start with
If you are starting from zero, our order is:
- Recover abandoned checkout. The shopper already entered contact details and nearly paid, the emails are free, and you can include non-subscribers. Our Shopify abandoned cart guide explains how it differs from the cart and browse templates and how to time them.
- Welcome new subscribers with a discount series. It sends a discount, two brand emails and a reminder to people who subscribe through a form on your online store, so set up Shopify Forms on the store first. The welcome email series article covers what to write in each email. (If you would rather show a discount popup, our Pop Up Discount app adds the visitor as a Shopify customer and hands the code over through Shopify Flow.)
- Win back customers. Pick the gap that is normal for your products (a coffee store and a furniture store need very different waits) and let the template ask lapsed buyers back. See win-back email for the timing.
Leave the birthday and VIP automations until you have the data and the customers for them.
When you need Flow or another app
Shopify Messaging covers the templates above and the timing inside them. Anything else goes to Shopify Flow: Shopify’s Help Center points you to a Flow workflow for custom automations and for automations that involve a third-party app (for example, a discount code issued by another app). If the 11 templates and Flow do not cover what you want to send, our Shopify marketing automation comparison weighs the native tools against Klaviyo and others.
Three setup mistakes
- The same abandoned checkout reminder running in Shopify Messaging and in another email app, so the shopper gets two.
- A welcome series switched on in a store with no signup form, so it never sends.
- Trying to fix a workflow from the phone: the mobile app cannot edit automations.
The Shopify email marketing hub links every guide in this series.
FAQ
Are Shopify automated emails free? Automated emails are included in the 10,000 free emails a month on Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus; after that they cost $1 per 1,000. Abandoned checkout automation emails are always free and do not count toward the limit.
Can Shopify send automated emails to customers who did not subscribe? Marketing automations send only to subscribed customers by default. The abandoned checkout automation is the exception, because you can set its To: field to All customers.
Where did Marketing > Automations go? Since March 24, 2026, marketing automations live in the Shopify Messaging app under Apps > Messaging > Automations, and custom automations live in Shopify Flow. The Marketing section of the admin was renamed Growth in June 2026.
Can I send automations by SMS? Three templates can send SMS: convert abandoned product browse, recover abandoned cart and recover abandoned checkout. You choose SMS as the channel when you create the automation.