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Shopify Plus Customer Accounts: Setup, B2B and Customization

How customer accounts work on Shopify Plus: upgrading to New Customer Accounts, B2B, Multipass, branding and no-code customization, with admin steps.

12 min read

On Shopify Plus, customer accounts mean New Customer Accounts: a passwordless sign-in, a profile and order area built on Customer Account UI extensions, and the only account system B2B features run on. If your store still uses legacy customer accounts, the job is to migrate, rebuild whatever your theme did for the account area, and decide what customers should be able to see and edit once they are signed in. This guide walks through that in order, with the Shopify admin paths.

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TL;DR

  • New Customer Accounts are the current standard. Legacy customer accounts are deprecated, so Plus merchants should plan the move rather than avoid it.
  • You can revert to legacy customer accounts only within 30 days of upgrading. Test before you commit.
  • Liquid account templates and hard-coded sign-in links do not carry over. Rebuild them with Customer Account UI extensions or an app.
  • Shopify B2B requires New Customer Accounts, and Plus-only branding tools now cover checkout, sign-in and accounts together.
  • AccountCraft adds editable fields, wishlists and consent blocks to New Customer Accounts with no code. Install it free from the Shopify App Store.

Table of Contents

What customer accounts are on Shopify Plus

Customer accounts let shoppers sign in to view and manage their orders, edit profile information, and take actions such as self-serve returns or reordering. Plus stores get the same account system as every other plan. What Plus adds around it is B2B, deeper checkout and branding controls, and, for eligible stores, Multipass.

The practical difference between the two systems is how people sign in and how you extend the pages:

Legacy customer accounts New Customer Accounts
Sign-in Email and password Passwordless, 6-digit verification code sent by email
Customization Liquid theme templates Customer Account UI extensions and apps
B2B Not supported Required
Status Deprecated Current standard

The Shopify Help Center states that legacy customer accounts are deprecated and recommends upgrading. A detailed feature-by-feature list is on Shopify’s comparison page.

Check your settings before you change anything

Open your Shopify admin and go to Settings > Customer accounts. Here you choose whether accounts are optional, required or disabled, and which version you are on. Before upgrading, write down:

  1. Where customers sign in today. Header links, footer links, email templates, landing pages, and any link to a legacy login URL.
  2. What your theme adds to the account area. Extra fields, order-page tweaks, wishlist code, loyalty widgets.
  3. Whether you use Multipass or a third-party identity provider. Eligible Plus stores can keep using Multipass after upgrading, but confirm your own setup against Shopify’s current documentation.
  4. Whether B2B is live or planned. You must activate customer accounts to use Shopify B2B.
  5. Which apps write to customer data. Anything that reads or writes customer metafields needs a second look.

This inventory is the difference between a quiet migration and a week of support tickets.

Upgrading to New Customer Accounts, step by step

The upgrade itself takes minutes. The preparation is what takes time.

  1. Duplicate your live theme and work on the copy so you can compare account links and templates.
  2. Go to Settings > Customer accounts and follow the upgrade prompt. Shopify’s upgrade guide lists what changes.
  3. Replace hard-coded links. Legacy theme customizations (Liquid templates) and hard-coded sign-in and registration links break on migration. Use the standard account routes instead.
  4. Test as a customer. Sign in with a real email from a private browser window, check the order list, an order status page, a return request and the profile page.
  5. Test emails and flows that point customers to their account, such as order confirmations and abandoned-cart emails.
  6. Set a review date inside the 30-day window. Merchants can revert to legacy customer accounts only within 30 days. After that, support cannot reverse it. A community thread from September 2026 repeats the same advice: plan a test period before committing.

Our own walkthrough of that 30-day window, and how to recover the account features your customers relied on, is in Restore Legacy UX in 30 Days with Shopify New Customer Accounts.

What sign-in feels like for customers

The main customer-facing change is that passwords disappear. Shoppers enter an email and a verification code. For migration this is the biggest gain: no password resets and no account activation emails, so returning customers who forgot a password are no longer blocked. Tell your support team, because “I never set a password” will be a common question for the first weeks.

B2B on Shopify Plus customer accounts

If you sell wholesale and direct from one store, New Customer Accounts are not optional. Shopify B2B features are available only on New Customer Accounts. On Plus you can use unlimited catalogs and assign catalogs directly to company locations, so a wholesale buyer and a retail shopper see different products and prices in the same store.

For B2B, the setup logic is:

  • Create the company and its locations in Customers > Companies.
  • Add the buyer’s customer record to a company location and make sure the buyer can sign in.
  • Assign catalogs, payment terms and checkout settings at the location level.
  • B2B customers must sign in before they can see B2B-specific products and pricing.

Where native B2B stops

Shopify’s native tools handle catalogs and company structure well. Complex multi-tier approval workflows are another matter: they often need an additional app such as Shopify B2B Approvals or custom automation rather than account settings alone. Decide early who approves what, because it affects how you structure companies and locations.

Once the account side is stable, the next job is usually getting wholesale buyers to find you. Content and technical SEO for a B2B launch can be handled with automated SEO tooling for Shopify stores, which is worth a look if your team is small.

Branding checkout, sign-in and accounts together

Plus has one advantage here that other plans do not. As of April 2026, the Checkout and Accounts Configuration API is available only to Plus merchants. It applies unified branding across checkout, sign-in and customer account surfaces with a single palette of up to 20 colors. If your account pages look like a different brand from your checkout, this is the place to fix it.

Branding sets how the pages look. It does not add new content or fields. For that you need extensions.

How to customize New Customer Accounts without touching the theme

Legacy accounts were customized by editing Liquid. New Customer Accounts are extended through Customer Account UI extensions, which can add elements to order status pages, profile sections and order action buttons. Shopify’s developer documentation describes how merchants add things like wishlists, loyalty rewards or return-request menus through apps, none of which are supported on legacy accounts. Shopify also announced that Customer Account Extensions became available for merchants who upgraded in December 2024.

For a merchant, the question is whether to commission a custom extension or install an app that already provides the blocks. Custom work makes sense for a very specific workflow. For common needs, such as letting customers edit their own data, an app is faster to launch and easier to maintain.

How to customize New Customer Accounts without touching the theme — overview diagram

Customer data and metafield permissions

If you store extra customer information, it lives in customer metafields. Extensions can write to metafields directly from the Customer Account API, without a separate call to an external server. One catch: for non-app-reserved namespaces, the customer_read_customers and customer_write_customers access scopes may not be applied automatically, so check them if a field refuses to save. Developers have also hit a related limit when sharing one metafield between checkout and account extensions, so plan namespaces up front. More on field setup is in our guide to custom fields in Shopify accounts.

Account pages are where customers expect to manage their preferences. Shopify’s Customer Privacy API lets apps read and apply consent decisions for analytics, marketing and data sharing. Compliance remains the merchant’s responsibility, and no app makes a store compliant by itself. What an app can do is help you collect, record and honor consent through Shopify’s privacy APIs. This is not legal advice: for what your store must do under GDPR, CCPA or other laws, ask your own counsel or privacy officer.

Consent categories and merchant responsibility

If you want the practical admin side, see our guides on testing pixels and adding account consent without code and the four admin steps for CCPA with the Customer Privacy API.

Our perspective

We build AccountCraft for merchants and agencies who have just migrated and discovered that the account page is now a blank slate. Here is how we think about it.

First, the account area is the only page where customers tell you something about themselves on their own terms: a birthday, a size, the pets they own, the vehicles they drive, their marketing preferences. Most stores let that opportunity sit empty. Second, the data should stay in Shopify. We build on official Customer Account UI extensions and store values in customer metafields, so there is no separate customer database to secure, sync or explain in a privacy policy. Third, on Plus, where several teams touch the store, no-code matters more than it seems. A block someone can change in a visual editor is a block your marketer can fix, instead of a ticket waiting on a developer.

Our advice for a Plus store: migrate, then decide on three or four things your customers should manage themselves. Resist adding twenty. A short profile form, a consent block and a wishlist already cover most of what customers actually use.

— Ivan Signorile

AccountCraft is a Shopify app with a visual Block Builder for New Customer Accounts. You add blocks to the account pages without code and without theme changes. The app offers 14 block types: text, banner, button, card, update form, single field, record list, SMS consent, privacy consent, wishlist, image, video, spacer and divider.

A typical Plus setup looks like this:

  • Profile update form. Customer fields are bound to customer metafields, so what a customer enters is saved on their Shopify customer record.
  • Record lists. Repeatable entries, such as pets or vehicles, for stores where customers own more than one of something.
  • Wishlist. A built-in wishlist block, so you do not need a separate wishlist app.
  • Consent blocks. SMS consent and privacy consent blocks that work with Shopify’s customer privacy APIs.
  • Conditional visibility. Show a block by customer tag, metafield, market, B2B status or account age. That lets a wholesale buyer see a reorder banner while a retail customer sees a wishlist.
  • Translations. Label the blocks in each language you sell in.

The free plan lets you start. Paid plans (Pro and Plus) are billed through Shopify, and the Shopify App Store listing has current pricing. You can see the plans on the AccountCraft site, or read the 14-block overview first. If you are weighing us against another app, we compared the approach in our Helium Customer Fields alternative checklist and the Froonze alternative guide.

To get started: install AccountCraft free from the Shopify App Store, then open the app, add a page section, and drag in an update form. Preview it as a customer before publishing.

Keep guest checkout and still grow account sign-ups

A common worry on Plus stores with high traffic is that pushing accounts will hurt conversion. It does not have to. With passwordless sign-in, accounts cost the customer very little, and you can give them reasons to sign in after purchase: order tracking, a saved wishlist, preference management. We cover that approach in Shopify account sign-ups without removing guest checkout.

A launch checklist for Plus teams

  1. Inventory sign-in links, templates and apps that touch accounts.
  2. Confirm Multipass or identity-provider setup if you use it.
  3. Upgrade in Settings > Customer accounts on a day when traffic is calm.
  4. Rebuild lost account features with extensions or blocks.
  5. Check metafield access scopes for any custom fields.
  6. Review B2B companies, locations and catalogs.
  7. Apply unified branding through the Checkout and Accounts Configuration API.
  8. Review consent flows with your privacy lead.
  9. Decide on day 25 whether you stay. After day 30, the move is permanent.

The broader context for extension work is covered in no-code account UI extensions that support GDPR readiness.

FAQ

Does Shopify Plus have different customer accounts from other plans?

No. Plus uses the same New Customer Accounts as other plans. What differs is what surrounds them: B2B catalogs, the Checkout and Accounts Configuration API for branding, and Multipass for eligible stores.

Can I go back to legacy customer accounts after upgrading?

Only within 30 days. After that window, the change is permanent and Shopify support cannot reverse it. Use the first weeks to test sign-in, emails, apps and B2B flows.

Do I need B2B enabled to use New Customer Accounts?

No, but the reverse is true: B2B requires New Customer Accounts. Any store can use New Customer Accounts without selling wholesale.

Do I need a developer to customize the account pages?

Not for common needs. Custom Customer Account UI extensions require development, but an app with a block builder such as AccountCraft lets you add forms, wishlists and consent blocks without code or theme edits.

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