Shopify cart permalinks alternative: Checkout Links

Permalinks are free, brittle, and string-encoded. Checkout Links wraps the same primitive in discounts, expiry, usage limits, analytics, customer pre-fill, and QR codes — without the URL-encoding gymnastics.

Cart permalinks are one of Shopify’s most underrated features. A URL like yourstore.com/cart/12345:1,67890:2?discount=SUMMER pre-loads two variants into the cart and applies a code — no app needed, no setup, no monthly fee.

For a small enough store with a small enough campaign cadence, that’s a complete solution. Most merchants who eventually look at Checkout Links started with permalinks and grew out of them. This page is the honest version of what that growth looks like.

How it works

Drop in Checkout Links on top of your existing Shopify store. Your permalink URLs keep working — Checkout Links just adds a parallel URL space with the extra capabilities. Most merchants migrate gradually: new campaigns use Checkout Links, old permalinks continue to function until they age out naturally.

At a glance

FeatureShopify cart permalinksCheckout Links

PricingShopify cart permalinks: FreeCheckout Links: $25/month, 7-day free trial

URL formatShopify cart permalinks: /cart/[variant-id]:[qty]?discount=CODECheckout Links: yourstore.com/[short-code]

Multiple productsShopify cart permalinks: Yes — comma-separated variantsCheckout Links: Yes

DiscountShopify cart permalinks: Yes — query param (a code)Checkout Links: Yes — baked in, no code field shown

Reconfigurable without breaking the linkShopify cart permalinks: No — URL changes if products changeCheckout Links: Yes — edit behind the same short code

Customer pre-fill (name, email, shipping)Shopify cart permalinks: NoCheckout Links: Yes

Cart attributes / notesShopify cart permalinks: NoCheckout Links: Yes

Expiry, usage limits, passcodeShopify cart permalinks: NoCheckout Links: Yes

Click + checkout analyticsShopify cart permalinks: NoCheckout Links: Yes — per link

QR codeShopify cart permalinks: DIY (encode the URL yourself)Checkout Links: Built-in, branded

Shopify Flow triggerShopify cart permalinks: NoCheckout Links: Yes

Built for Shopify badgeShopify cart permalinks: First-partyCheckout Links: Built for Shopify certified

Where Checkout Links pulls ahead

The cases that make the switch worth it.

Edit the link without breaking the URL

The biggest pain in permalinks is that the URL *is* the configuration. If you change a product's variant ID, swap a discount, or pivot a campaign, the existing URL points at the wrong cart. Anyone who shared it (in an email, on a printed flyer, in a QR code) is now sending traffic to a 404 or a stale cart. Checkout Links separates the URL from the configuration. yourstore.com/abc123 stays the same; you change what's behind it.

The discount is invisible to the customer

A permalink with ?discount=SUMMER still sends the customer to checkout with a discount-code field, *and the code in the URL*. Some customers see the code and copy/paste it into another browser tab to share. Others wonder why the field is showing them a code they didn't type. Checkout Links applies cart-line and delivery discounts via Shopify Functions when the link opens. No code is ever shown to the customer.

Analytics by link, source, and UTM

Permalinks land in Shopify's standard analytics — you see orders, but you can't tell which permalink campaign produced them without manually appending UTMs and reconciling them later. Checkout Links logs every click, every checkout, every dollar attributed to the specific link, source, and UTM combination — in a Shopify-native dashboard.

Expiry, usage limits, passcodes

A permalink works forever once it exists. There's no built-in way to expire it after 24 hours, cap it at 100 uses, or gate it behind a passcode. Checkout Links has all three as link-level settings.

Customer pre-fill and cart attributes

The permalink URL format encodes products and a discount and nothing else. Checkout Links can also pre-fill the customer's name, email, and shipping address (when you know them — e.g. from a Klaviyo email recipient), drop arbitrary attributes onto the cart, and attach a note.

QR codes that are actually branded

Permalinks can be encoded into QR codes via any external generator, but the QR is generic. Checkout Links generates a branded QR for every link automatically.

When cart permalinks are still the right call

No tool wins everywhere. These are the cases where Shopify cart permalinks is the better answer.

One-off, short-lived links

A single static "buy this one product" link sent to a single newsletter. Spending five minutes on a permalink beats paying $25/mo.

You're comfortable with the URL format and you don't need analytics

If you're a technical merchant who can hand-build permalinks and you're fine using Shopify's native order reports for attribution, you don't strictly need anything else.

Strict no-app policy

Some Plus stores have governance rules limiting third-party apps. Permalinks are first-party, no install required, no review needed.

FAQ

Anything else?

More detail lives in the Help Center, or email us and a human answers.

A cart permalink is a URL of the form yourstore.com/cart/[variant-id]:[quantity] that tells Shopify's cart system to start a session with those items pre-loaded. You can stack variants and add a discount parameter. It's a built-in Shopify feature, free with every store.

No. Cart permalinks are a Shopify-native URL pattern and continue to work in 2026. The Buy Button JS Channel is a separate thing — that one is winding down. Permalinks themselves are stable.

Three reasons: (1) you have to hand-build the URL with variant IDs and discount codes — change a product and the link breaks; (2) there's no analytics layer, so you can't tell which permalink drove which order; (3) you can't add expiry, usage limits, customer pre-fill, attributes, notes, or branded QR codes — anything beyond the base URL parameters is unavailable.

Yes. Checkout Links doesn't override anything Shopify-native. Your existing /cart/[variant]:[qty] URLs keep working exactly as they did. Checkout Links adds a parallel URL space (yourstore.com/[code]) with the extra capabilities.

Yes — under the hood the link still resolves to a Shopify cart. The difference is that the public-facing URL is short, brand-controlled, trackable, and reconfigurable without touching the URL string.

Permalinks are free with Shopify. Checkout Links is $25/month with a 7-day free trial.

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