How to Set Up Abandoned Checkout Emails in Shopify

To set up abandoned checkout emails in Shopify, go to Apps > Messaging > Automations, open the abandoned checkout automation, choose who gets it and how long to wait, check the email, and turn it on. Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer enters an email address. The Shopify Messaging template sends its reminder 10 hours after that, and only to customers subscribed to email marketing unless you change the recipient setting.

Below: the exact setup steps, the two settings that decide how many people you reach, what the email should say, and a break-even model for adding a discount. Everything comes from Shopify’s Help Center, checked on October 22, 2026. We have not tested these emails in a live store, and the recovery and discount figures are a hypothetical model, not measured results.

Legacy email or the new Messaging automation: which one you have

Shopify is moving abandoned checkout emails from an old setting to an automation in the Shopify Messaging app. Which one your store uses changes where you click.

Question Legacy abandoned checkout email Shopify Messaging automation

Where it lives Settings > Checkout (template under Settings > Notifications > Orders > Abandoned checkout) Apps > Messaging > Automations

Who it goes to by default Whatever your existing settings say Email marketing subscribers; you can change the To: field to All customers

Timing Set in your existing settings Template waits 10 hours; settings carry over if you migrate

Adding a discount Edit Liquid links in the template by hand Add a discount in the email editor

Design control Notification template Section-based editor with an abandoned checkout product section

Counts toward Messaging email allowance Not applicable No: abandoned checkout automation emails are free

Can you switch back? Not applicable No: Shopify says activating the new automation is permanent

Built from Shopify Help Center pages on abandoned checkouts, migrating to the new automation, and Messaging pricing, checked October 22, 2026.

Shopify says the legacy email stays available until it is removed, and it gives no removal date. It recommends the Messaging automation for more control over who receives the email and when. Because the switch is one-way, read your current settings before you migrate so you know what will carry over.

How to turn on abandoned checkout emails, step by step

Admin paths below are as Shopify documents them on October 22, 2026. Editing workflows and templates needs a desktop; on mobile you can only create the three abandoned automations.

If you are setting up the Messaging automation for the first time

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Apps > Messaging.
2. Click Automations, then View templates.
3. Select the Abandoned checkout template (listed as “Recover abandoned checkout” under Recover site visitors).
4. Click Edit to change the subject line, preview text, sender address, content or discount. This step is optional, but do it.
5. Use Send test in the email editor to send yourself a copy.
6. Click Turn on automation, review the notice, and click Continue.

If your store already shows “Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify”

1. Go to Apps > Messaging > Automations and edit the Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify automation.
2. Select Send abandoned checkout emails automatically.
3. Choose a group in Send to and a delay in Send after.
4. Save, then customize the email template.

Shopify’s page does not list the options in those two menus, so check them in your own admin. To change the wait on the newer automation, open it and click Edit workflow; Shopify’s migration guide also says the wait can be changed through Shopify Flow. If you already use Flow, our guide to the Shopify Flow automations worth setting up first explains how its triggers and Wait steps behave.

Who will actually get the email

Most of the reach is decided by one field. By default, Shopify sends marketing automations only to customers subscribed to email marketing. Many people who abandon a checkout never ticked that box, so they get nothing.

You can change the To: field to All customers. Before you do, check the email consent rules that apply where your customers live. Those rules differ between the US, Canada and other markets, and this article does not interpret them.

Shopify also skips the email in these cases, whatever your setting:

• The customer completed the purchase before the email went out.
• A payment processing error occurred, or Shopify Payments blocked the payment as high risk.
• Shipping isn’t supported to the customer’s address.
• The customer entered a phone number instead of an email address.
• The products are unavailable, or every item is free with no shipping fee.
• The checkout came from the Shop app, POS or a third-party channel. Recovery works only for the Online Store and Buy Button channels.
• A more recent abandoned checkout from the same customer is still in its wait time.

Two more filters sit before the email. Shopify says checkouts it flags as suspected card testing or bot activity do not create abandoned checkouts at all. And for Shopify B2B, abandoned checkouts are off by default until the store owner asks Shopify Support to turn them on.

A worked reach example

Here is a hypothetical store with 400 abandoned checkouts a month that include an email address. All the shares below are our assumptions.

Step Subscribers only (default) All customers

Abandoned checkouts with an email 400 400

Skipped by Shopify’s rules (assumed 10%) 40 40

Eligible checkouts 360 360

Share who are marketing subscribers (assumed 30%) 108 emails sent 360 emails sent

Recovered orders at an assumed 8% of recipients 8.6 28.8

Recovered revenue at a $60 order $518 $1,728

Hypothetical store. The 10% skip rate, 30% subscriber share and 8% completion rate are assumptions, not Shopify data. Calculated with a formula and again per order in Python.

The point is the ratio, not the dollar figures: with a 30% subscriber share, the default setting reaches 30% of eligible checkouts. Check your own subscriber share before you judge whether the automation “works.”

What a good abandoned checkout email should say

The new automation includes an Abandoned checkout section that shows the items the customer left in that checkout, so you do not need to rebuild the product list. Your job is the words around it.

• Subject line: plain and specific, such as “You left something in your cart.” Shopify’s editor lets Sidekick generate subject lines and body text; read them before you send, because the AI does not know your return policy or stock levels.
• One clear button back to the checkout.
• The answer to the likely doubt: delivery time, shipping cost, return window, or how to reach you. Unexpected costs are a common reason people stop, as we cover in how to reduce cart abandonment without constant discounts.
• A real person to reply to: set a sender address that someone reads.
• No fake urgency. Only mention low stock or a deadline if it is true.

Start with one email and no discount. Once you have a few weeks of results, decide whether a discount earns its cost, using the model below.

Should the email include a discount? The break-even maths

A discount does not only go to people who needed it. It also goes to everyone who would have come back anyway. So it has to bring in enough extra orders to pay for the money you give away on all of them.

If m is your contribution margin before the discount (as a share of order value) and d is the discount, the number of recovered orders must rise by at least:

Required lift = m / (m minus d) minus 1

Contribution margin 5% off 10% off 15% off 20% off

25% +25.0% +66.7% +150.0% +400.0%

35% +16.7% +40.0% +75.0% +133.3%

50% +11.1% +25.0% +42.9% +66.7%

Extra recovered orders needed for a discount to break even. Our formula, checked with exact fractions and again with a whole-order count-up loop in Python. Assumes the discount applies to the full order value. The thinner your margin, the more a recovery discount has to lift sales just to stand still. Hypothetical model.

Worked example: 10% off at a 35% margin

Take 1,000 recovery emails, a $60 order and a 35% contribution margin ($21 per order). Assume 80 people complete checkout with no discount. That earns 80 x $21 = $1,680.

With 10% off, each recovered order keeps $21 minus $6 = $15. To match $1,680 you need 112 orders, which is 40% more than 80.

• If the discount lifts recoveries to 100 orders: 100 x $15 = $1,500. You lose $180.
• If it lifts them to 112: $1,680. You break even.
• If it lifts them to 120: $1,800. You gain $120.

All of those counts are assumptions. The lesson holds anyway: at typical small-store margins, a 10% or 15% recovery discount needs a large jump in completed checkouts to pay for itself. Our guide to markup vs margin shows how to work out your own margin first.

How to add the discount without surprises

• It replaces other codes. Shopify says the recovery discount replaces any discount code the customer had already entered. A customer with a bigger code may lose it.
• Say it in the email. On the legacy email, Shopify says the code does not add a message about the discount, so write one into the template.
• Create the code first. In the legacy template, the code must already exist and should avoid special characters so it works in the checkout link.

What it costs to send

Abandoned checkout automation emails are free and do not count toward Shopify Messaging’s monthly allowance. Other automations, including abandoned cart and product browse emails, do count.

Shopify lists 10,000 free emails at the start of each month on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. After that, it charges $1 per 1,000 emails from 10,001 to 300,000, with lower rates above 300,000. Unused free emails don’t roll over.

Example: a store that sends 8,000 campaign emails, 2,500 abandoned cart and browse emails, and 1,200 abandoned checkout emails in a month uses 10,500 counted emails. That is 500 over the allowance, or $0.50. The 1,200 checkout emails add nothing. If you are weighing Shopify Messaging against a separate email platform, our Klaviyo vs Omnisend comparison covers pricing and automation in those tools.

Abandoned checkout vs abandoned cart vs browse emails

Shopify Messaging has three recovery automations, and they catch different moments.

Automation Who it targets Channels Counts toward allowance

Recover abandoned checkout Started checkout, did not place the order Email, SMS No (email)

Recover abandoned cart Added products to the cart, did not start checkout Email, SMS Yes

Convert abandoned product browse Viewed at least one product, did not add it to the cart Email, SMS Yes

From Shopify’s Messaging automation and Flow trigger pages, checked October 22, 2026. SMS has its own pricing, not covered here.

Shopify’s cart and browse templates skip customers who received any of these three emails in the last 14 days, so one shopper does not get three reminders in a day. Set up the checkout email first, since those visitors were closest to buying. If many visitors never reach checkout at all, look at the store itself first; our guide to why a Shopify store gets traffic but no sales walks through the usual causes.

One overlap to watch: if Shopify’s Campaign Autopilot suggests an abandoned checkout tactic while you already run one, Shopify says to pause or edit your existing automation before approving it, or dismiss the suggestion.

Sending a recovery link by hand

For a large order, a personal note can beat an automated one. Go to Orders > Abandoned checkouts, open the checkout, and click the customer’s email address. Your email app opens with the recovery link.

Be careful with that link. Shopify says anyone who has it can continue the checkout, and it cannot be disabled or expired after you send it. Send it only to the customer.

Also note that Shopify deletes abandoned checkouts older than three months, and you cannot delete one by hand. If you need to keep the details, create a draft order with them.

How to tell whether it is working

Performance data appears on the Automations page in Shopify Messaging. Shopify also has an Abandoned checkouts emails report in the Growth section of reports, showing sessions, completed orders, conversion rate and sales.

• Compare against a baseline. Some people would have come back without the email. Before adding a discount, note your recovered orders for a few weeks without one.
• Track the subscriber share. If reach is low, the cause is usually the default recipient setting, not the email copy.
• Watch for turned-off workflows. Turning an automation off cancels any workflows waiting to send, so pending reminders are lost.

What you should check next

1. Open Apps > Messaging > Automations and see whether you have the legacy email or the new automation.
2. Note your current Send to and Send after settings before migrating, since the switch is permanent.
3. Decide on the To: field after checking the consent rules for your markets.
4. Write one plain email with no discount, send yourself a test, then turn it on.
5. After a few weeks, use the break-even table to decide whether a discount is worth testing.

Frequently asked questions

How long after abandonment does Shopify send the email?

A checkout counts as abandoned after more than ten minutes without payment once the customer has entered an email. The Messaging template then waits 10 hours. You can change the wait by editing the workflow.

Do abandoned checkout emails cost extra?

No. Shopify says abandoned checkout automation emails are always free and do not count toward the 10,000 free monthly emails. Abandoned cart and browse emails do count.

Why did a customer who abandoned checkout not get an email?

The most common reason is that they are not subscribed to email marketing, the default audience. Other reasons include buying first, unavailable products, a blocked high-risk payment, or a checkout from a channel other than the Online Store or Buy Button.

Can I go back to the old abandoned checkout email after switching?

No. Shopify says activating the new abandoned checkout automation is a permanent change.

Can I send a text message instead of an email?

Shopify lists SMS as a channel for its recovery automations. SMS has separate pricing and consent requirements, so check both before you turn it on.

The takeaway

Turn on the abandoned checkout automation, check who it reaches, and keep the first email plain and helpful. It costs nothing to send. Add a discount only after you know your baseline and your margin, because at small-store margins a discount has to lift recoveries a lot just to break even.

Sources

• Shopify Help Center, “Recovering abandoned checkouts”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Migrating to the new abandoned checkout automation”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Adding discounts to abandoned checkout recovery emails”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Marketing automations” (Shopify Messaging). help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Creating and managing marketing automations”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Shopify Messaging email pricing”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Email templates” (Shopify Messaging). help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, Flow trigger “Customer abandons checkout”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, Flow trigger “Customer left online store without making a purchase”. help.shopify.com
• Shopify Help Center, “Email automations” (Campaign Autopilot). help.shopify.com

Last reviewed: October 22, 2026. Admin paths, default settings, sending rules and email pricing match Shopify’s Help Center as checked on that date.

How this article was made: researched and drafted with AI assistance, with every factual claim checked against the sources above. The 400-checkout store, its 10% skip rate, 30% subscriber share, 8% completion rate, $60 order, 35% margin and the email volumes in the cost example are hypothetical assumptions, and the recovery and discount results are modelled, not measured.

Related guides

• How to reduce cart abandonment without constant discounts
• Shopify Flow: 7 automations worth setting up first
• Free shipping threshold: how to set it without losing margin
• How to analyze your Shopify sales export with ChatGPT or Claude