Shopify automation, with Shopify Flow first.
The jobs your team repeats every week, done by your store instead: fraud checks, stock alerts, customer tags, late orders. Shopify Flow first, because it’s free, then an app only where Flow stops.
What Shopify Flow does for free
Flow is Shopify’s own automation app, free on every plan from Basic to Plus (Shopify). A workflow starts from something that happens (an order placed, stock running low, a customer tagged) or a schedule, checks conditions, and acts: tags an order, hides a product, sends an email or a Slack message, or updates another app.
A few limits depend on the plan. Sending a request to another system needs Grow or above (Shopify), and custom app actions need Plus. Since December 2025, Sidekick can draft a workflow from a plain sentence (Shopify).
Shopify Flow examples we set up
- Risky orders: cancel and restock high-risk orders, or hold them for a look before payment is captured, with the team told in Slack or by email (Shopify).
- Known bad actors: orders from addresses you’ve blocked canceled and tagged, and customers who return most of what they buy flagged.
- Low stock: an alert when a variant runs low, and a product hidden when it sells out, then shown again when it’s restocked.
- Late orders: anything not shipped in two days flagged to whoever ships it.
- Big orders: a Slack message when an order passes a value you set, so someone can add a note or upgrade the shipping.
- Customer tiers: customers tagged by what they’ve spent, so Klaviyo and your support team see your best customers.
- Refunds: a refund over a set amount tagged and turned into a support ticket.
- Wholesale: wholesale customers and their orders tagged, so they ship, invoice and report apart from retail.
Where Flow stops
Flow can’t send customers their own emails, and its code step can’t reach outside Shopify (Shopify). Past that, we add the least that does the job:
- An app you may already pay for, where it has its own Flow trigger (back-in-stock, reviews, returns).
- Mechanic, for jobs Flow can’t express, like scheduled reports, emailed files or bulk edits (Mechanic).
- Zapier or Make, for a tool that doesn’t connect to Flow, like some accounting software.
- Custom code, only when none of these will do.
How it works
- Book a call. Tell us what your team does by hand, and which apps you run.
- A written scope: each workflow, what starts it and what it does, and what it would replace.
- The build, tested on your real orders and products before it’s switched on.
- The handover: a list of every workflow, what it does and how to turn it off. They run in your store, and they’re yours.
FAQ. Straight answers.
Is Shopify Flow free on my plan?
Yes. Flow is a free app on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. A few actions depend on the plan: sending a request to another system needs Grow or above, and some app actions need Plus.
Can’t Sidekick build these for me?
It can draft one from a sentence, and for a simple workflow that’s often enough. What it doesn’t do is decide what’s worth automating, test the workflow against your real orders, or notice when two workflows and an app fight over the same tag.
Will it clash with our apps?
It can, which is why we start by listing what your apps already do. Two systems tagging, hiding or emailing on the same event is the most common way an automation goes wrong.