Shopify Checkout Customisation: One Page Checkout, Extensions and Thank You Pages

Key Takeaways

• Every Shopify plan can change the checkout's logo, colours, fonts, layout and form fields in the checkout and accounts editor; the information, shipping and payment steps can only take app blocks, custom Functions and the Branding API on Shopify Plus, from £1,800 a month.
• One page checkout has been the default since 2 October 2023, and every plan can switch to the three page layout in Settings, then Checkout; your customisations and checkout analytics carry across either way.
• The thank you page and order status page are open to every plan except Starter: app blocks for surveys and upsells, web pixels, Checkout Blocks content, a Buy again button and self serve returns, all without Plus.
• The deadlines have passed. checkout.liquid stopped working on the checkout pages on 13 August 2024 and on the thank you and order status pages on 28 August 2025, Shopify Scripts were deprecated on 30 June 2026, and script tags stop running everywhere on 1 March 2027.
• Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay switch on automatically with Shopify Payments in the UK, Klarna is a local payment method inside Shopify Payments, and Shop Pay Installments now covers UK orders from £50 to £30,000; after we added Klarna for a client selling expensive wedding dresses, conversion rate rose by 23%.
• Shopify's conversion claims for its checkout, 15% better on average and up to 36%, and 50% better with Shop Pay than guest checkout, come from a study it commissioned in April 2023, so treat them as Shopify's figures rather than a benchmark for your store.

Quick Answer

Shopify checkout customisation works in layers. On every plan you can change the logo, colours, fonts and layout in the checkout and accounts editor, choose one page or three page checkout, set which form fields are shown, and add app blocks, pixels and content to the thank you page and order status page. On Shopify Plus you can also place app blocks on the information, shipping and payment steps, run custom Shopify Functions for discounts, delivery and payment rules, and style the checkout through the Branding API. The old routes, checkout.liquid and Shopify Scripts, have been retired, so everything now runs through the editor, apps and Functions.

Table of Contents

• The Checkout Editor: What Every Plan Can Change
• One Page Checkout vs Three Page Checkout
• Checkout Extensibility: Apps, Blocks and What Needs Plus
• Customising the Thank You Page and Order Status Page
• Payments, Shop Pay and Buy Now Pay Later at Checkout
• Customer Accounts and Requiring Login
• Abandoned Checkout Recovery on Every Plan
• When Checkout Customisation Needs Shopify Plus
• Scripts, checkout.liquid and the Deadlines That Have Passed
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Checkout is the one page on a Shopify store you cannot edit in the theme. That protects conversion, because Shopify's checkout is tested on more orders than any theme developer could run, but it confuses merchants who want to add a trust badge, hide a field or put an offer on the thank you page. This guide sets out what each plan can change, what moved to Shopify Plus, what the thank you page can do now, and which deadlines have already passed. Every plan rule below was checked against Shopify's help pages and developer documentation in October 2026.

The Checkout Editor: What Every Plan Can Change

The checkout and accounts editor opens from Settings, then Checkout, through the button to customise the checkout. Shopify's help page says standard customisations are available on every plan from Basic upwards, and that on every plan you can add your logo, set a background colour, and change the colours and fonts of the checkout, thank you and order status pages, with some of that branding carried into customer account pages. The style settings cover logo alignment and width, a colour palette with separate colours for the main content, header, order summary, buttons and accents, heading and body fonts, transparent input fields and the error message colour. One change to note: since 5 February 2026 you can no longer add a background image to the header or main content area, only to the order summary, and removing an existing one is permanent.

The editor has three sidebars, described on the editor help page: Sections for functionality and app blocks, Settings for appearance, and Apps. Customising checkout differently for specific markets needs the Advanced or Plus plan. The form options are available to all plans: contact method by email or phone, whether first name is required, whether company name, address line 2 and shipping phone are hidden, optional or required, and the email and SMS marketing opt in boxes, which cannot be preselected for SMS.

Sources: Shopify's checkout apps page, its Checkout Blocks page and the Shopify Functions documentation. The pricing page summarises the same split as Limited checkout customisation on the three lower plans and Full on Plus.

One Page Checkout vs Three Page Checkout

One page checkout became Shopify's default on 2 October 2023, and from 16 November 2023 every plan could choose between it and the older three page flow of information, shipping and payment. The help page says the layout switch sits in Settings, then Checkout, that customisations carry across both layouts and that checkout analytics stay available. Three things to check if you switch: the header layout differs, so a background image may display wrongly; new wording appears in the theme content editor; and the editor preview does not update live, so save and view the store.

Which converts better is your test to run, not Shopify's to promise. What the research does say is that length matters: Baymard's checkout usability benchmark found the average checkout shows 23.48 form elements when an ideal one can be reduced to as little as 12, and its meta analysis of 50 studies puts average cart abandonment at 70.22%, with extra costs the leading reason among people who were ready to buy. One page checkout removes page loads; it does not remove fields, so the form options above are where the gains usually are. Our guide to abandoned cart statistics covers the numbers in detail.

Checkout Extensibility: Apps, Blocks and What Needs Plus

Checkout extensibility is Shopify's name for customising checkout through apps and Functions rather than code in the checkout page itself. The split by plan is precise. Shopify's checkout UI extensions reference states that extensions on the information, shipping and payment steps are available only to stores on Shopify Plus, while its technologies page says thank you and order status page extensions are available to every plan except Starter. In practice that means a non Plus store can install a checkout app, but only its blocks for the thank you, order status and customer account pages will have anywhere to go.

Within the editor, app blocks go into highlighted areas with a limit of three apps per area, according to the checkout apps page, and only one post purchase app can be active at a time. Post purchase offers, the upsell or survey shown after payment and before the confirmation page, are open to every plan except Starter through App Store apps, but Shopify's developer guide still describes the feature as beta and restricts custom post purchase apps to Plus.

Shopify Functions replaced Scripts for logic at checkout. The Function APIs cover discounts, cart transforms for bundles, delivery customisation to rename, reorder or hide delivery options, payment customisation to do the same for payment methods, cart and checkout validation to block an order server side, and order routing. Any plan can use public App Store apps built on them; only Plus can run custom apps, and the help page on payment and delivery customisation describes the advanced options as Plus features. Styling through the GraphQL Admin API is also Plus only, per the checkout styling documentation.

Checkout Blocks is the middle ground. Shopify's own free app has been available on every plan since 11 December 2024, but the help page is clear that merchants below Plus get only the dynamic and static content blocks on the thank you and order status pages; custom fields, reordering payment and delivery methods, order value limits and the branding editor are Plus.

Customising the Thank You Page and Order Status Page

The thank you page is the most under used page on most stores, and since 21 May 2024 it has been open to every plan except Starter. Shopify's customisation options page lists what can change: app blocks for surveys, upsells and custom content; header and footer text, links or images through Checkout Blocks; web pixels for tracking; branding through the editor; the Buy again button, which can be hidden; self serve returns; and the store policy links in the footer. Two things cannot be done: customising the pages per market, and hiding individual items inside a bundle.

The order status page is also a customer account page. Customers can view it without signing in for a limited time, after which the link expires and they sign in or request a new one. That makes it the natural home for a post purchase survey, which is the cheapest attribution data a store can collect, and for a referral or review request. Our guide to marketing attribution for ecommerce explains why a one question survey on this page often beats the pixels.

• Ask one question. Where did you hear about us, with a free text option; the answers correct what your ads platforms claim.
• Offer one thing. A post purchase upsell works when it is cheaper than the item just bought and ships with it; three offers convert worse than one.
• Set expectations. Dispatch day, carrier and how to change the order, which cuts the where is my order emails that follow.
• Collect the second channel. An SMS or WhatsApp opt in with a stated purpose, delivery updates, is accepted far more often than a marketing one.

Payments, Shop Pay and Buy Now Pay Later at Checkout

Payment methods are set in Settings, then Payments, and the checkout shows what is active. In the UK, Shopify Payments supports Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay as accelerated checkouts and switches them on automatically, according to the UK payment methods page, which also lists Klarna as a local payment method that customers see based on their location once it is activated. Shop Pay is included with Shopify Payments at your normal rates. Shop Pay Installments, powered by Affirm, is no longer a US only feature: Shopify's eligibility page covers the United Kingdom for stores with a UK entity and a GBP Shopify Payments account, on orders from £50 to £30,000. Clearpay does not appear on Shopify Payments' UK pages, so it needs a separate provider or app.

Shopify's claims for its checkout deserve a label. Its checkout page says the overall conversion rate outpaces competitors by up to 36% and 15% on average, based on a study completed in April 2023 with a Big Three consulting firm, and its Shop Pay page claims as much as 50% better conversion than guest checkout and a 28% lower abandoned cart rate with Shop Pay Installments. Those are Shopify's numbers about Shopify. Our own evidence is narrower but real: after we added Klarna for a client selling expensive wedding dresses, conversion rate rose by 23%. The lesson is not that every store needs every method but that the right one for your price point matters. Our guide to buy now pay later apps for Shopify compares the UK options.

Customer Accounts and Requiring Login

Shopify's customer accounts are passwordless: customers enter an email address and receive a six digit code, and with Shop Pay active they can sign in with Shop credentials and passkeys. Plus stores can connect their own identity provider. The form options page includes a setting to require customers to sign in before checkout, with a cost it states plainly: when sign in is required, customers can only check out with an email address and the accelerated checkout buttons do not appear in the cart. For a consumer store that is a conversion tax for no gain; requiring login makes sense for trade accounts, members' pricing and B2B catalogues, which is how we set it up for wholesale on Shopify B2B.

Abandoned Checkout Recovery on Every Plan

Shopify's pricing page ticks abandoned checkout recovery on all four plans. The help page explains the mechanics: a checkout counts as abandoned once it has been incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer entered an email address; Shopify can send a link to complete it automatically, with a delay and an audience you choose, or you can send it by hand; it works for online store and Buy Button checkouts only; and abandoned checkouts are deleted after three months. The newer version of the automation lives in the Shopify Messaging app, formerly Shopify Email, and those emails do not count towards your sending allowance.

Most stores we work with run recovery through Klaviyo instead, because it can trigger on added to cart as well as checkout started and can send SMS. Across our Klaviyo clients, the welcome series and the abandoned cart and checkout flows are normally the best performing flows by revenue and conversion rate. We are a Klaviyo partner. Whichever tool you use, the ten minute rule and the three month deletion apply to Shopify's own data.

When Checkout Customisation Needs Shopify Plus

Plus starts at £1,800 a month on a one or three year term, according to Shopify's UK pricing page, which marks checkout customisation as Limited on Basic, Grow and Advanced and Full on Plus, and lists high volume checkout of up to 40,000 checkouts a minute, bot protection, custom Functions and unlimited B2B catalogues as Plus only. Three reasons justify the move for checkout alone: you need to change what happens on the information, shipping or payment step, such as a trust block beside the card fields or a field that appears only for one country; you need custom logic that no App Store app provides; or you sell wholesale with customer specific pricing. A store that wants a nicer thank you page, a different layout or Klarna does not need Plus.

The revenue point where Plus pays for itself on card fees alone is worked out in our guide to Shopify Plus against Shopify Advanced; checkout needs push that point down, but rarely below seven figures a year.

Scripts, checkout.liquid and the Deadlines That Have Passed

If a developer or an old app still talks about checkout.liquid, additional scripts or Shopify Scripts, the conversation is out of date. The table gives the dates from Shopify's own changelog and help pages.

Sources: the checkout.liquid deprecation notice, the checkout extensibility upgrade guide and Shopify's apps in checkout documentation. The upgrade guide also records what happened to Plus stores that missed the 2024 deadline: code and payment gateways locked, risk indicators disabled on new orders and payouts delayed by up to five days, before Shopify moved them to a default checkout with 30 days' notice. Shopify's Script Editor help page gives the deprecation date for Scripts as 30 June 2026, and its developer changelog states that script tags stop being injected on 1 March 2027; both pages carry a word in their addresses that our publishing system rejects in links, so search for them by name.

Why Matters Perspective

Our view is that most stores over think checkout and under think the page after it. The editor already lets every plan match the brand, trim the form and pick the payment methods that fit the basket, and that is where conversion moves: after we added Klarna for a client selling expensive wedding dresses, conversion rate rose by 23%. New Shopify clients we onboard who invest in marketing normally make their first sale within three days; those doing their own marketing typically take two to four weeks, and a checkout set up properly on day one is part of why.

The thank you page is the free win. A one question survey, a sensible delivery promise and a delivery updates opt in cost nothing on any plan and feed every decision about ad spend afterwards. We are a Shopify Select partner with Verified Skills across development and marketing, and a Klaviyo, Recharge, Awin, Meta and TikTok partner. Retainer clients are billed one month in arrears and are not tied into long contracts, and development projects carry a 3 month guarantee. If you want your checkout and post purchase pages set up properly, see our conversion rate optimisation agency page or email us.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I customise the Shopify checkout without Shopify Plus?

Yes, within limits. Every plan can change the checkout's logo, colours, fonts and layout, set the form fields and contact method, choose payment methods, and add app blocks, pixels and Checkout Blocks content to the thank you page and order status page. App blocks on the information, shipping and payment steps, custom Shopify Functions and the Checkout Branding API need Shopify Plus.

Is Shopify's one page checkout better than the three page checkout?

One page checkout has been the default since October 2023 and every plan can switch between the two in Settings, then Checkout, with customisations and analytics carrying across. Shopify publishes no comparison of the two, so test on your own store; in our experience the number of fields matters more than the number of pages.

How do I customise the Shopify thank you page?

Open Settings, then Checkout, use the button to customise the checkout and select the Thank you page. On every plan except Starter you can add app blocks for surveys, upsells or custom content, add text, links or images with Shopify's free Checkout Blocks app, add web pixels, hide the Buy again button and set the policy links. Per market versions of the page are not supported.

What is Shopify checkout extensibility?

Shopify's framework for customising checkout through app blocks, Shopify Functions, web pixels and the editor rather than editing the checkout page's code. It replaced checkout.liquid, which stopped working on the checkout pages on 13 August 2024 and on the thank you and order status pages on 28 August 2025, and Shopify Scripts, which were deprecated on 30 June 2026.

Does Shopify Plus checkout convert better?

Plus uses the same checkout with more customisation, not a different one. Shopify claims its checkout converts 15% better than competitors on average and up to 36%, and that Shop Pay converts as much as 50% better than guest checkout, based on a study it commissioned in April 2023. Those are Shopify's own figures and apply to all plans, not to Plus specifically.

Can I require customers to log in before checkout on Shopify?

Yes. The checkout form options include a setting to require customers to sign in to their account before checkout. Shopify's help page warns that when sign in is required, customers can only check out with an email address and accelerated checkout buttons such as Apple Pay are not shown in the cart, so it suits trade and members' stores rather than consumer brands.

How does Shopify recover abandoned checkouts?

A checkout counts as abandoned after it has been incomplete for more than ten minutes following the entry of an email address. On every plan Shopify can email a link to complete it automatically after a delay you set, or you can send it by hand; the data is deleted after three months. Many stores run the flow through Klaviyo instead, which can also trigger on items added to the cart and send SMS.

Final Thoughts

Shopify checkout customisation is wider than most merchants think and narrower than most developers remember. Branding, layout, form fields, payment methods and the whole thank you page are open to every plan; the steps where the card details go, custom logic and API styling are Plus. The old code routes are gone, so anything a developer proposes has to work through the editor, apps and Functions.

If you want a second opinion on your checkout and the pages around it, see our conversion rate optimisation agency page or start with our guide to increasing Shopify conversions, or email us.

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• The Best Buy Now Pay Later Apps for Shopify in the UK
• Best Shopify Payment Gateways for UK Stores
• Shopify Payments UK: Fees, Payouts and How It Works
• Shopify Plus vs Shopify Advanced: The Revenue Where Plus Pays for Itself
• How to Increase Shopify Conversions: 10 Proven Strategies
• Why Your Shopify Conversion Rate Matters and How to Measure It
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