On 1 July 2026, some Shopify Plus merchants will open their stores and everything will look fine. Orders will be coming in. The checkout will be loading. But quietly, in the background, logic that took months to build will have stopped running entirely.
No error messages. No failed orders. Just silence where there used to be rules.
That is the specific risk with the Shopify Scripts shutdown. It does not break loudly. It fails silently, and depending on what your Scripts were doing, the consequences range from minor inconvenience to serious commercial damage.
Here is exactly what happens, who is affected, and what you need to do before the deadline.
What are Shopify Scripts?
Shopify Scripts are small Ruby programs that run server-side during the checkout process. They were introduced for Shopify Plus merchants as a way to customise checkout behaviour: applying conditional discounts, filtering shipping options, hiding or reordering payment methods.
They run in a sandbox environment called the Script Editor, and because they execute before the customer sees the checkout, they can manipulate what is shown and what logic is applied.
For years, Scripts were the primary tool for complex checkout customisation on Shopify Plus. Automatic BOGO discounts, tiered pricing based on order value, hiding payment options for certain customer groups, showing specific shipping rates for specific products. All of this was typically built in Scripts.
They got the job done. But they were always a workaround, not a platform-level solution.
What exactly stops working on 30 June?
Shopify is retiring the Script Editor and all Scripts running inside it. After 30 June 2026, no Scripts will execute. They will not throw errors. They will not pause the checkout. They will simply stop running.
There are three types of Scripts, and all three are affected:
Line item Scripts run on the cart and checkout to apply discounts, modify prices, bundle products or validate cart contents. These cover the vast majority of Scripts in use today.
Shipping Scripts filter, reorder or customise the shipping options shown to a customer at checkout. A store that only wants to show next-day delivery to customers in certain postcodes, or that hides standard delivery once an order is above a certain weight, would typically use a shipping Script.
Payment Scripts control which payment methods are displayed. Common use cases include hiding pay-later options for orders above a certain value, or showing specific payment methods only to verified trade customers.
All three stop executing after 30 June. The checkout continues to run, but the logic does not.
What does a broken Script actually look like?
This is the part that catches merchants off guard. The checkout does not go down. Customers can still complete purchases. So how does a broken Script show up?
It depends on what the Script was doing.
If you had a Script applying automatic discounts, those discounts simply stop applying. Customers who expect the offer will complete checkout at full price or abandon. You may not notice until you see a drop in conversion or a spike in customer complaints asking where their discount went.
If you had a Script filtering shipping options, all your configured rates will now show regardless. A customer who should only see a specific carrier based on their location will suddenly see every option available on your account. That might mean showing international rates for domestic orders, or surfacing a carrier you specifically did not want displayed to certain segments.
If you had a Script controlling payment methods, all payment methods will now be shown to everyone. If you were hiding certain options for compliance reasons, or showing trade-specific payment terms only to verified wholesale accounts, that logic disappears.
None of this generates an error. The store keeps trading. The problem compounds quietly until someone notices.
How do you know if your store uses Scripts?
If you have been on Shopify Plus for more than a year or two, there is a reasonable chance Scripts are in play somewhere. The Script Editor was the standard recommendation for checkout customisation before Shopify Functions existed, and any agency or developer building checkout logic before 2023 would almost certainly have used Scripts.
To check: log into your Shopify admin, go to Apps, then look for Script Editor in your installed apps. If it is there and has active scripts, you are affected.
If you have inherited a store, or you are not certain what is running in your checkout, this is worth verifying now rather than in late June. Development agencies tend to build Scripts and not document them thoroughly, particularly on older stores.
What replaces Shopify Scripts?
Shopify's answer is Shopify Functions: a modern API-based framework that handles checkout customisation in a fundamentally different way. Instead of server-side Ruby scripts running in a sandbox, Functions are WebAssembly modules deployed as custom Shopify apps and executed by Shopify's infrastructure at specific points in the checkout lifecycle.
The architecture is different, but every use case that Scripts covered has a Functions equivalent:
- Line item discounts: Discounts API
- Cart bundling and modifications: Cart Transform API
- Cart and checkout validation: Cart and Checkout Validation API
- Shipping customisation: Delivery Customization API
- Payment method filtering: Payment Customization API
The migration is not always a direct 1:1 port. Some logic needs rethinking given the different execution model. But every use case can be rebuilt, and in most cases the result is more capable than the original Script.
Functions also unlock capabilities that Scripts never had: geo-specific checkout logic, automatic VAT handling, custom checkout UI components, and spend-based tier benefits displayed inline in the checkout. If you are going to do the migration, it is worth doing it properly rather than just replicating the old behaviour.
Do you need Shopify Plus to use Functions?
For custom app Functions, which is the route for bespoke logic unique to your store, yes, Shopify Plus is required. Checkout UI Extensions, which handle custom components displayed in the checkout, are available on all Shopify plans.
If your store is on a standard Shopify plan and has been using Scripts, the plan question is something that needs addressing as part of any migration work. In some cases, an App Store app will handle the use case without needing a custom Function.
How long does a migration take?
It depends on how many Scripts you have and how complex the logic is. A single straightforward discount Script can be migrated in a few hours. A store with multiple Scripts covering layered discount logic, shipping rules and payment filtering will take longer, particularly if the existing Scripts are not well documented.
The process involves more than just rewriting the code. Each Function needs to be built as a custom app extension, deployed to a development store, configured in Shopify admin, and tested thoroughly before going anywhere near production. There is also a decommissioning step for the original Script once the replacement is confirmed working.
The bigger risk is leaving it too late. Agencies capable of doing this work properly are already fielding requests, and anyone contacting them in the final week of June is going to have a difficult conversation about capacity and timelines.
If you have not started yet, the time to act is now, not in late June.
What to do next
- Check your Script Editor:confirm whether your store has active Scripts and what they are doing.
- Map your use cases:understand what each Script is responsible for before writing a line of replacement code.
- Assess whether an app covers it:for common use cases, an existing App Store app may be faster and cheaper than a custom Function build.
- Start the migration:the audit, build, test and deploy process takes time. Do not compress it into the final two weeks.
If you want a second opinion on what you have running and what it would take to migrate, we can help. We have already built Functions in production for a number of Shopify Plus clients, and we know exactly what is involved.
The deadline is fixed. The work is manageable if you start now.
