Shopify draft orders alternative: Checkout Links
Shopify draft orders are the legacy workflow for "send a customer a custom pre-built cart they can pay for." It works. The reason it's worth replacing for most use cases is everything around the cart: reusability, customer experience, analytics.
This page is the side-by-side. For the deeper take on the workflow itself, see Checkout Links for draft orders.
At a glance
| Shopify draft orders | Checkout Links | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free (built into Shopify) | $25/month, 7-day free trial |
| Reusable | No — one-off per order | Yes — same URL, edit behind it |
| Custom pricing | Yes (set in admin) | Yes (via bundled Shopify Functions) |
| Customer-facing UI | Draft-order invoice page | Standard Shopify checkout (branded) |
| Discount handling | Set in admin, customer sees total | Baked into URL via Functions — no code field shown |
| Customer pre-fill (name, email, shipping) | Yes (when set on the draft) | Yes (via merge tags or B2B customer targeting) |
| Per-link / per-draft analytics | None | Per-link clicks, checkouts, revenue |
| B2B-aware | Yes (manual targeting) | Yes (automatic, when link targets a B2B account) |
| Net terms | Yes (B2B drafts on Plus) | Yes (B2B accounts) |
| Expiry, usage limits, passcode | No native | Yes |
| Sales-rep workflow | Build draft per deal | Build link once, reuse |
| Best for | One-off bespoke invoicing | Repeat orders, campaigns, sales-rep flows, wholesale |
When draft orders are still the right call
Three honest cases:
- True bespoke invoicing. Negotiated line items per order, partial payments, manual processing flows. Draft orders are still the cleanest tool for this.
- Paper-trail compliance. Some B2B / government / institutional accounts require a formal invoice document. Draft orders generate that natively; Checkout Links doesn't.
- Pay outside Shopify. When the customer is paying via bank transfer, wire, or any non-Shopify payment method, draft orders are designed for it. Checkout Links assumes the customer pays through Shopify checkout.
For everything else, the analysis tips the other way.
Where Checkout Links pulls ahead
Reusability
The single biggest workflow improvement. A draft order is a one-off — every repeat order from the same customer is a new draft, built from scratch (or duplicated from the previous one). A Checkout Link is reusable forever — same URL, you edit the configuration behind it as needed.
For wholesale standing orders, repeat B2B refills, recurring sample sends, this collapses what used to be 5-10 minutes of admin work into "send the link."
Branded customer experience
Draft orders surface the customer in Shopify's draft-order checkout UI, which is functional but not designed for marketing. It looks like an invoice form. Checkout Links sends the customer to standard Shopify checkout — the same branded, themed, mobile-optimised experience they'd see buying directly from the store.
For B2B customers this matters because most of them buy in their B2C lives too — they expect the same checkout UX from your wholesale flow.
No code field
Draft orders apply the custom price in admin, so the customer sees the discounted total at checkout. Checkout Links does the same via Shopify Functions, and additionally hides the discount-code input field entirely. Means the customer can't paste another code and try to stack, and the discount can't be circulated as a code on coupon sites.
Per-link analytics
Draft orders flow into standard Shopify analytics with no per-draft breakdown. Checkout Links logs clicks, checkouts, and revenue per-link, per-source, per-UTM. Useful for any team measuring per-rep / per-channel / per-campaign performance.
Expiry and usage limits
Draft orders don't expire; you have to manually invalidate them. Checkout Links has expiry, usage limits, and passcode-gating as link-level settings. A wholesale promotional link that closes 30 days after distribution is one toggle, not a calendar reminder.
The B2B-on-Shopify-without-Plus angle
Until 2026, draft orders were the de facto wholesale workflow on Shopify because the alternative (running real B2B) required Plus at $2,300+/month. With B2B-for-all extending the core B2B features to Basic / Grow / Advanced, that calculus changed.
For Basic / Grow / Advanced merchants doing wholesale today, the playbook is:
- Enable B2B in your Shopify settings.
- Move your wholesale customers to B2B customer accounts (with company profiles, custom catalogues, payment terms).
- Replace draft-order-per-deal with Checkout-Link-per-account.
The link layer is the piece Shopify doesn't ship natively — and the piece that makes the rest of the workflow usable. See the B2B & wholesale playbook for the full operating manual.
Sales-rep workflow
For B2B teams with named sales reps:
| Draft-order workflow | Checkout Links workflow | |
|---|---|---|
| Rep builds the deal | Creates draft in admin | Creates Checkout Link in app |
| Sends to customer | Email with draft-order link | Email with Checkout Link |
| Customer pays | Draft-order checkout UI | Standard Shopify checkout |
| Attribution to rep | Manual reconciliation | Automatic via UTM / per-link |
| Customer reorders | Rep builds a new draft | Customer taps the same link |
| Performance reporting | Manual spreadsheet | Per-rep analytics in CL dashboard |
The reusability + automatic attribution is what tips most B2B-with-named-reps teams onto Checkout Links.
Try Checkout Links
If you only ever ship one-off bespoke invoices, stick with draft orders — they're free and they're built for that. If you've outgrown them on volume, repeat-order cadence, or per-deal attribution, this is what to switch to.
Related: Checkout Links for draft orders, B2B & wholesale playbook, Checkout Links for wholesale, How to replace Shopify draft orders with checkout links.