Short answer: the Shopify Buy Button is a small piece of embed code that shows one of your products, or a whole collection, on a website that is not your Shopify store. A visitor can buy without leaving that page. It is a free sales channel included in every Shopify plan, and you create the buttons in your Shopify admin.
It is the right tool for one job: selling from a page you control that runs on something else, such as a WordPress blog or a Squarespace site. It is the wrong tool for an email, a text message, a social post or a QR code, because none of those can run embed code. For those you want a link, covered at the end.
Everything below about how the Buy Button behaves comes from Shopify’s Buy Button documentation, read in October 2026.
What the Shopify Buy Button does
A Buy Button can show a product’s picture, description and price, and lets the visitor purchase on the spot. When you change the product in your Shopify admin, the button updates by itself. Orders arrive in Shopify like any other order, and you can track them there.
Shopify’s own example is a store that sells sun hats, writes a WordPress post about sunburn, and puts a Buy Button for its best-selling hat inside the post. The reader buys the hat without leaving the article.
You can make a button for:
- A single product, with all of its variants or just one.
- A collection. This creates a button for each product in the collection.
What it costs
The Buy Button sales channel is included in all Shopify subscription plans. There is no extra monthly charge for it.
Two conditions apply:
- You need a payment gateway that Shopify supports for the Buy Button in your country.
- If you do not use Shopify Payments, you pay third-party transaction fees on each Buy Button purchase, the same as elsewhere in Shopify.
How to add the Buy Button channel
If Buy Button is not already listed under Sales channels in your admin:
- In your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Sales channels.
- Click Shopify App Store and log in if asked.
- Search for Buy Button, open it and click Install.
On the Shopify mobile app, open Sales channels, tap Buy Button on the add-channel screen, then Add app.
How to create a Buy Button
The product has to be available to the Buy Button sales channel first. Then:
- Go to Sales channels > Buy Button and click Create a Buy Button.
- Choose Product Buy Button or Collection Buy Button.
- Pick the product or collection. For a product with variants, choose all of them or one.
- Choose a layout, the action on click, and the look of the button (next section).
- Click Next, then Copy code.
- Paste the code into the HTML of the page where the button should appear, and save.
The three layouts
| Layout | Shows | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | The button only | The page already shows the product |
| Classic | Image and price beside the button | You want a quick preview, for example in a blog post |
| Full view | Image, price and description | You want something close to a product page |
The three actions
| Action | What happens on click |
|---|---|
| Add product to cart | The product goes into an embedded cart and the visitor can keep shopping |
| Direct to checkout | The visitor goes straight to your checkout and cannot add anything else |
| Open product details | A “View product” button opens the description, variants and images |
If you put more than one Buy Button on a page, they all have to use the same action. By default the checkout opens in a new browser window; Advanced settings > Redirect in the same tab changes that.
You can also set the button’s colour, shape, font and text, the wording of the embedded cart, and an order note field.
Where to paste the code
The embed code works on any page where you can edit the HTML. Shopify documents three platforms:
- WordPress. Add a Custom HTML block and paste the code. It works on self-hosted WordPress.org sites and on certain WordPress.com plans. With the Classic Editor, switch from Visual to Text mode and paste it there.
- Squarespace. Edit the page, add a Code block from the content blocks, and paste the code. Shopify notes that theme-specific Squarespace customisations are not something it supports.
- Wix. Paste it into the HTML code widget in the Wix editor. Several separate Buy Buttons on a Wix site each get their own cart unless you edit the embed code, so for more than one product Shopify suggests embedding a collection.
Some page builders, Unbounce for example, want the <script> part of the code in the page header and the rest where the button should show.
For help with the other platform’s editor, Shopify points you to that platform’s support, not its own.
What the Buy Button cannot do
These are limits Shopify states itself.
- It is not for your own Shopify store. Shopify does not recommend Buy Buttons on a Shopify online store or Shopify blog, because they can cause problems with the cart and checkout. The button keeps its own separate cart, so an item added through it is not in the store’s cart on the next page. Shopify suggests a cart permalink there instead.
- It does not work with apps. Buy Buttons are not compatible with apps from the Shopify App Store. Shopify’s example is a product review app, which will not show on a Buy Button.
- Its look is fixed once embedded. To change the appearance you create a new button and replace the code on your page.
- Old buttons are unsupported. Shopify no longer supports buttons created before 10 October 2016.
- It needs a page that runs code. This one follows from how it works: the button is JavaScript and HTML. An email, an SMS, a direct message, an Instagram bio and a printed QR code cannot run it.
If your Buy Button is not showing
Shopify’s troubleshooting steps, in the order worth trying:
- Test it alone. Put only the embed code in a plain HTML file and open it. If it works there, your website’s CSS or JavaScript is interfering.
- Look for CSS conflicts. A rule that hides or resizes iframes can make the button invisible or give it zero height. Recreating the button with different layout settings often fixes height problems.
- Check the browser console for JavaScript errors when the page loads.
- Check the product still exists. A deleted and re-created product has a new ID, so the old code returns an error.
Buy Button or checkout link?
The Buy Button channel can also create cart permalinks: plain URLs that open your checkout with products already in the cart. That is the tool for everything a Buy Button cannot reach.
| You want to sell from | Use |
|---|---|
| A blog post or page on WordPress, Squarespace or Wix | Buy Button |
| An email or SMS campaign | A checkout link |
| A social post, bio or direct message | A checkout link |
| A QR code on packaging or a flyer | A checkout link |
| A page on your own Shopify store | A checkout link (Shopify advises against Buy Buttons there) |
You can build a cart permalink by hand from variant IDs, or use our free Shopify checkout link generator, which writes the link for you and gives you a QR code for it.
A plain permalink has limits of its own: the discount needs a code that anyone can read in the link, the link never expires, and it reports nothing about clicks. Checkout Links is our Shopify app for that case. It makes short links with discounts and free gifts that need no code, a start and end time, a limit on uses, a popup with upsells before checkout, and clicks, orders and revenue for every link. It costs $25 a month with a 7-day free trial. The Buy Button comparison and the alternatives page go through the differences.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Shopify Buy Button free?
Yes. The Buy Button sales channel is included in all Shopify subscription plans. Normal payment processing applies, and third-party transaction fees apply if you do not use Shopify Payments.
Is the Shopify Buy Button still available?
Yes. It is a current Shopify sales channel that you install from the Shopify App Store. Only buttons created before 10 October 2016 are unsupported.
Can I add a Buy Button to my Shopify store?
Shopify advises against it, because a Buy Button on a Shopify online store or blog can cause cart and checkout problems. Use a cart permalink instead.
Can I change a Buy Button after I embed it?
Not its appearance. Create a new button and replace the code. To show a different product, Shopify says you can edit the product ID in the embed code, or create a new button.
Does the Buy Button work with my Shopify apps?
No. Shopify states that Buy Buttons are not compatible with apps from the Shopify App Store.
Can I put a Buy Button in an email?
No. Email clients do not run embed code. Use a checkout link behind a normal button in the email.
