Shopify abandoned checkout emails: when none is sent, and how to test yours

What Shopify counts as an abandoned checkout

Shopify records a checkout as abandoned when the shopper has entered an email address, has not paid, and the checkout then stays unfinished for more than ten minutes. Shopify notes that cart contents are not saved. Recovery works only for checkouts made on the Online Store and Buy Button channels, so someone who started a purchase at a point-of-sale terminal or on a third-party channel never receives a recovery email, whatever your settings say.

The email itself carries a link back to the unfinished checkout. You can edit the template to add a logo or change colours, and you can send the link by hand from the abandoned checkout record.

Where the setting lives and what it controls

The automation is called abandoned checkout emails by Shopify and sits under Messaging automations. Its settings let you turn sending on, choose which category of visitor receives the email, and choose how long after abandonment it is sent. The documentation does not list the recipient categories or delay options in the page, so read them on your own screen and record what you see before changing anything. For a business-to-business store the feature is off by default, and the store owner has to ask Shopify Support to activate it.

• Confirm the automation is switched on.
• Write down the recipient category and the delay.
• Note whether the store is a business-to-business store.

The cases where no email is sent

Shopify lists the situations where it does not send a recovery email. Several of them look like a fault from the owner's side, so check an actual abandoned checkout against this list before suspecting the setting.

• The customer completed a purchase before the email was due.
• A payment processing error occurred.
• Your shop does not ship to the customer's address.
• The customer gave a phone number instead of an email address.
• None of the products in the checkout is available to buy.
• Everything in the checkout is free and the customer did not reach the shipping page, or shipping is also free.
• Shopify Payments blocked the payment as high risk.

A three-scenario test you can run yourself

You can test the path with your own email address and a low-value product, always stopping before payment. Run three scenarios and write down the time you started each one. Scenario one is an eligible checkout with your email address that you leave open past the delay. Scenario two is a checkout with only a phone number. Scenario three is a checkout to an address you do not ship to. Only the first should produce a reminder; the other two should produce none.

The case where a shopper finishes the purchase before the email is due is a documented exception, but proving it on your store needs a completed order. Shopify says customers cannot place live orders while its payment test mode is on, and an order paid for and then refunded may still carry fees from your payment processor. So the test above leaves that case to Shopify's published rule instead of asking you to run it.

If the first scenario fails, check whether the email arrived in spam. A reminder in the spam folder means the store setting works and the fault is mail delivery, which is a separate email authentication job, not a setting change.

• Use only your own address; never test with a real customer's details.
• Record when each email arrived and whether the link opens that checkout.
• Remember that anyone with the link can continue the checkout, so do not forward test links.

What fixes it, and what does not fit

Fixes are almost always settings: switching the automation on, choosing the recipients and delay you intend, activating the feature on a business-to-business store through Shopify Support, or repairing a template that dropped the recovery link. Shopify does not recover checkouts from other channels, and marketing consent and email privacy rules are for you or your adviser; they are not something a settings fix decides.

How the paid check is accepted

The fixed job for this problem is accepted on three test results that you run, each stopping before payment, and we interpret: an eligible checkout produces one reminder after the configured delay and its link opens that checkout, a phone-number-only checkout produces none, and a checkout to an address you do not ship to produces none, matching the documented exceptions. The settings we write down must match what your admin shows after you apply them. We never log in to your store.