Shopify Summer '25 Edition (codenamed "Horizons") brings a flood of improvements—over 150 new features spanning every corner of the platform. The goal of these changes is to enable merchants to create better shopping experiences with fewer technical barriers, so they can spend less time struggling with code and more time growing their brand. In this article, we summarize the key features and tools introduced in Summer 2025 from both a business perspective (store owners, e-commerce managers) and a technical perspective (developers). We'll cover new store design capabilities, admin panel improvements, changes to checkout and subscriptions, AI integration, and features for B2B and global commerce, among other things. All of this points to the direction in which the Shopify ecosystem is evolving in 2025—towards higher sales, conversions, efficiency, and effective brand management.
Horizon integrates AI into store design – simply describe the element you need (e.g. “seasonal sale banner”), and the built-in Shopify Magic will generate a unique block tailored to your theme. The new Horizon theme system is the foundation that gives merchants complete design freedom while maintaining high performance. Shopify has released 10 ready-made templates (presets) based on Horizon – they are designed for conversions and a variety of industries. You can easily customize them to suit your aesthetic or even generate an entire theme from scratch using AI by providing only a brand description (e.g. “women’s sportswear”). Horizon themes have built-in artificial intelligence that makes editing easier - thanks to the AI Theme Blocks function, all you have to do is describe what content block you need, and the platform will create the appropriate store component. This means that without having to code, you can add, for example, a section with a promotional banner or a product card layout of your choice. Importantly, the new themes do not sacrifice speed for appearance - on the contrary, the blocks and sections provided are optimized for fast loading and conversion.
For those who want to start from scratch, Shopify has also introduced AI Store Builder - an intelligent creator of the entire store. All you have to do is describe your brand in a few sentences, and AI will suggest three unique store designs based on your vision. Then we can choose the style that best suits our needs and customize it with a single click, saving us time spent on a blank canvas. As Shopify points out, Horizon and AI design features allow us to translate our brand vision into a real store much faster, without the need to hire a programmer or designer – something that smaller businesses with limited budgets will especially appreciate. What's more, the theme editor has received a significant facelift that streamlines work: it adds block previews on hover, element category filtering, settings search, conditional settings for different variants, and a simple copy-paste function for entire sections and blocks. All this makes managing the appearance of the store intuitive and fast, eliminating typical "bottlenecks" between the vision and the implementation of the project.
Shopify in the Summer '25 edition put a lot of emphasis on the convenience of working in Shopify Admin, introducing numerous improvements to the interface and new functions that automate management. The improved navigation in the panel comes to the fore - moving between administration pages is easier thanks to dynamic "Back" buttons and navigation breadcrumbs contextually adjusted to the place where we are. In addition, the panel itself now works significantly faster – Shopify boasts that the Admin loading time has been shortened by 1-2 seconds, and smarter loading indicators only appear when it's actually needed. This makes everyday work with the store (managing products, orders, etc.) smoother and less frustrating for e-commerce teams.
There are also important new features in the area of marketing and analytics. Shopify has added a Campaigns module for tracking and analyzing multi-channel marketing campaigns – we can now monitor the effectiveness of advertising and promotional activities across different sales channels directly from the panel, which makes it easier to optimize marketing budgets. Promotion and discount management has also been improved – the long-awaited feature allows you to create one discount code that includes discounts on products, order values and shipping costs. Such a "one code for everything" will make life easier for buyers (they only enter one coupon) and sellers, who can now build more comprehensive promotions that increase the average basket value. In addition, Shopify has provided ready-made customer segments and smarter marketing automation templates – such as pre-defined audiences or scenarios in Shopify Flow – which allows small teams to use tools previously reserved for large players. Searching in the automation template library has been improved (you can filter and sort ready-made “playbooks”), and Shopify Flow – the automation platform for activities – has gained new technical capabilities (more on that in the developer section).
It is also worth mentioning improvements to product offer management, which will affect the so-called merchandising. Shopify is finally addressing the limitations that sellers have been bypassing using apps or custom code. Among other things, the product variant limit has been increased from 100 to 2000 – which means that stores with very extensive product configurations (e.g. many color/size combinations) no longer have to artificially divide the offer into separate products. This is a huge change for sellers from industries such as fashion or customized products, where 100 variants used to be a barrier to development. The product navigation system has also been improved: Shopify will now allow you to create navigation menus with more than 3 levels of depth (previously there was a limit of three levels), making it easier to build clear megamenus for large product catalogs. Many merchants have used unofficial workarounds or external applications to achieve more menu levels - now the platform natively supports such extensive structures, which will improve the customer's product search experience.
There is also a feature on the horizon that many marketers have been waiting for - native A/B testing in the store. Shopify announces built-in tools for split testing changes to store pages, which will allow merchants to easily check which version of the page (e.g. a different homepage layout or different call-to-actions) converts better, without having to use expensive external applications. Although the details have not yet been officially described (the feature may be in early access), the announcement itself is encouraging – it means that Shopify is increasingly supporting a data-driven approach to conversion optimization.
In the Horizons edition, Shopify also remembers brick-and-mortar retailers and the growing mobile channel. Shopify POS (point of sale application) has undergone a major interface overhaul to make customer service in a physical store as efficient as online. The new redesigned POS is more intuitive and responsive – the focus is on speed and consistency with the branding. Store employees now have a clearer home screen layout and easier navigation, which translates into more efficient customer service. Smarter product/transaction search and the Ship and carry out" function have been added, which allows you to combine the sale of goods available immediately with the shipment of missing items later in a single transaction. This allows the customer to take what is in stock with them and receive the rest by post - this eliminates the awkwardness at the checkout when part of the order requires delivery. In the new POS, the seller can also easily personalize screens (e.g. the basket or finalization screen) - Display Editor allows you to add your own logo, colors and graphics, thanks to which each POS screen can reflect the "energy" of the brand and be an extension of the experience known from the online store. Another novelty is the Tap to Pay option on the phone - now a regular smartphone can become a payment terminal (supporting contactless cards or digital wallets), which reduces the need to invest in additional hardware. It is worth adding that Shopify POS now also supports more complex retail structures – e.g. multiple legal entities in one system for large global brands (functionality available for Shopify Plus). This allows chain stores operating in different countries or regions to manage stationary sales from different companies in one coherent ecosystem.
At the same time, the Shop mobile application (directed to consumers) has become an even more powerful sales and loyalty channel. Shop App is changing into a personalized shopping feed that dynamically adapts to user behavior. Instead of a static list of products, shoppers will now see dynamic recommendations in real time – the application "learns" while browsing and immediately suggests more relevant offers, as if it reads the customer's mind. This is a big step towards discovery commerce, where the app acts as a personal shopping advisor. What's more, Shop App has introduced a social and collection function: shoppers can build, save and share their own product collections (something like shopping mood boards). This makes it easier to discover products through recommendations from friends or influencers and can drive viral product trends. For retailers, this means a new form of exposure - if customers create collections with their products, the brand gains additional, organic reach. Product presentation has also been improved: product variants in the Shop app are displayed as visual samples (swatches) consistent with the presentation in the store, instead of typical drop-down lists. Thanks to this, customers see, for example, colors or patterns exactly as they do on the store's website, which eliminates misunderstandings and improves the mobile experience. In summary, Shop App is increasingly becoming a mobile sales and loyalty channel that brands should not ignore - the application is already generating significant traffic, and with new personalization features, it can become a key tool for increasing sales and customer retention.
Shopify also continues to expand features that facilitate international sales and support for the B2B model. The Summer '25 edition introduced solutions that make even complex global operations easier to manage. First of all, for merchants on the Shopify Plus plan, the ability to sell from multiple entities (companies) within a single store was introduced. In other words, we can sell to different countries or regions (with different local companies) while maintaining one common store and admin panel. Shopify consolidates the operations of multiple legal entities in one place - from common inventory management to unified financial reporting for the entire group. This allows international DTC brands to operate as one entity while meeting local legal and tax requirements. Along with this, Shopify has expanded the list of supported countries for its payment gateway - Shopify Payments is appearing in Mexico and 15 new European countries, which means that merchants from these markets can use native, integrated payment processing. Additionally, currency settlements have been improved: merchants can now receive payouts in multiple currencies, which minimizes currency conversion costs and exchange rate risk when selling multinationally. In practice, this means, for example, that a European store that settles sales in different currencies can pay out funds in EUR, GBP or PLN to separate accounts, avoiding double conversion. There are also improvements in customs and taxes for cross-border sales - Shopify allows import duties to be included in the product price (DDP options - Delivered Duties Paid) and automates the calculation of dues, making cross-border purchases more transparent for the customer. Integrations with deferred payment providers have been expanded - for example, Klarna has been made available in more EU countries - which helps increase conversions in markets where "buy now, pay later" is popular. All of these changes signal that Shopify wants to be the platform of choice for global DTC brands, eliminating barriers related to payments, logistics, and compliance in different countries.
The B2B (wholesale) segment received equally impressive news. Shopify has consistently developed a set of features for companies selling to other companies, so that they can be served under the same roof as retail sales (without the need to set up separate stores or use specialized B2B platforms). Now, as part of the Shopify Markets module, you can create separate markets for wholesale customers - e.g. dedicated B2B sub-markets - which allows you to prepare separate product catalogs and prices exclusively for wholesalers. In other words, we can define that a specific B2B customer, when logging into the store, sees their own offer (e.g. other products, collective packaging or wholesale price lists) unavailable to ordinary consumers. Managing such custom catalogs has become native and simpler. There are also small but important functions that improve wholesale management: validation of EU VAT numbers (the seller can automatically check the correctness of the contractor's VAT number, which is crucial for intra-EU transactions) and the ability to set minimum and maximum order values for B2B customers. Gift cards have also been made available to wholesale customers, which until now only operated in the B2C channel - now wholesalers can also pay or receive refunds using funds on a gift card. Shopify has improved integration with external ERP systems – there is a native connection with NetSuite (a popular system for large companies) for seamless B2B data synchronization. What's more, the Shopify Collective program (a network that allows retailers to easily add products from wholesale suppliers in the Shopify ecosystem) has removed the previously required minimum sales threshold – now more stores can join Collective regardless of their scale. Finally, it is worth mentioning financial improvements: Shopify has added the option of issuing pro forma invoices with a payment term for draft orders – ideal for B2B. The seller can send a wholesale customer an invoice with a deferred payment term (e.g. 14 days), which the customer will pay only on the due date – and in the meantime, they can review and confirm their cart at negotiated prices. This makes it easier to handle orders for transfers or with payment terms, common in B2B relationships. Together, these improvements mean that brands selling both retail and wholesale can manage everything in one store – without duplicating work or resorting to makeshift solutions.
The battlefield for conversions is primarily the checkout process – Shopify knows this very well, so in the Summer '25 edition it has introduced a number of improvements aimed at minimizing cart abandonment and streamlining checkouts. First, Shopify checkout is now even faster – thanks to under-the-hood optimizations, checkout pages load up to 2 seconds faster than before. For customers, this means less waiting for forms and payment gateways to load, and for merchants – a real increase in conversions (every second in checkout is worth its weight in gold). Secondly, Shopify Checkout has become more flexible and multi-channel. In the era of the metaverse and new sales platforms, it's surprising that Shopify Checkout has appeared in... Roblox - customers can now buy physical products in virtual worlds (games) thanks to integration with Shopify's API. This opens up an exotic but growing sales channel for younger consumers. In addition, Apple Pay - one of the most convenient forms of mobile payments - has been fully supported also for subscription transactions and custom checkouts (previously Apple Pay had limitations in such scenarios). Now customers can pay for subscriptions with a single face click/fingerprint via Apple Pay, which will lower the barrier to entry to the subscription model. Shopify has also added eco-friendly and security-friendly options: you can offer carbon-neutral shipping options in checkout (possibly through integrations with CO₂ offset services), and behind the scenes, improved AI-powered fraud protection is working. AI analyzes transactions to spot suspicious patterns and prevent fraud before it happens—a valuable feature that protects stores’ revenues.
When it comes to recurring orders and pre-orders, Shopify has also met merchants’ expectations. It’s finally possible to edit subscription and pre-order items before the order is fulfilled. Previously, if a customer had paid for a subscription or pre-order and the merchant wanted to make a change (e.g. swap product variants, modify quantities, or ship dates), the process was unintuitive or required canceling and re-creating the order. Now, the seller can make adjustments to unfulfilled subscription/pre-order items directly in the panel, which increases service flexibility and translates into better customer satisfaction. Let's add that convenience has also increased for customers - they can now receive refunds in the form of store credit instead of the traditional refund to the account. When returning an item, the seller can add a balance to the customer with one click to use on future purchases, which often encourages re-orders and keeps money in the store ecosystem. Importantly, such store credit is now visible and usable also in the Shop app and when paying with Shop Pay, so customers can easily use it regardless of the channel they are making their purchase.
The previously mentioned capabilities of Shopify Functions and checkout extensions provided the foundation for many of these new features. Developers can now write their own functions that modify the cart logic and checkout even more efficiently – there is a WebAssembly query API for Functions, allowing you to create lighter and faster functions that operate based on current data (just-in-time data). What's more, Functions' performance has increased fivefold – now you can execute up to 25 functions simultaneously (previously 5) in a single batch call. Thanks to this, more complex cart rules (e.g. conditional promotions, personalized prices) can work without a noticeable delay for the customer. There is also the possibility of creating POS-specific rules – e.g. discounts applicable only to purchases in brick-and-mortar stores – which makes it easier to build consistent omnichannel promotions. All these technical changes translate into one key business benefit: Shopify checkout becomes more flexible and tailored to the needs of merchants, while remaining the fastest and most reliable way to complete a purchase. And this directly means higher conversions and customer satisfaction.
It is no surprise that artificial intelligence (AI) plays a major role in this year's Shopify novelties - the platform consistently weaves AI into various aspects of running an online business. The Horizons edition presents new tools and improves existing ones so that AI becomes a daily support for both the seller and the buyer.
On the seller's side, Shopify Sidekick - a virtual assistant based on AI - has gained a lot of "superpowers". Previously, Sidekick could answer simple questions about store operations, but now it can solve much more complex problems by combining data from different areas and performing deeper analysis. For example, when you ask "why did we have an unusual drop in sales last weekend?", Sidekick will dig into the store data and generate insights - it will point out potential causes (e.g. end of campaign, out of stock of a hit product) and propose corrective steps. This is possible thanks to improved inference engine - Sidekick connects the "dots" between metrics and store events to draw accurate conclusions. What's more, Sidekick has become more multimedia and multilingual. We can now communicate with it by voice, and it will not only respond with voice, but can also provide support in screen sharing mode, guiding us step by step through solving the problem. It can also generate graphics on demand (e.g. for use in a store or campaign), using built-in generative models – and without any additional charges for generated images. Sidekick now speaks 20 languages (Polish is also supported), so teams from different countries can naturally get help from it. In short, Sidekick goes from being a curiosity to a full-fledged "team member", which can relieve managers of data analysis and decision-making. As Klavs Steenhof from INTERSPORT notes, companies that quickly adopt AI in operations will gain an advantage – and thanks to Shopify, integrating such AI is hassle-free.
The second pillar of AI in Shopify is Shopify Magic, a set of tools that use generative AI to create content. Magic has already helped write product descriptions and marketing texts, and now it has been expanded with new applications. The previously mentioned generate theme blocks on demand function is the work of Shopify Magic - integration with the theme editor allows you to generate, for example, an entire FAQ block, banner or product carousel based on a short description from the seller. Magic will take care of generating the appropriate HTML/Liquid code, styles and images to make the vision a reality. In addition, Magic is gradually being integrated with documentation and developer tools - the Shopify Functions documentation has become interactive thanks to LLM (Large Language Model), which means that the developer can ask documentation questions and immediately receive a fragment of sample code. It's as if the documentation had its own Sidekick that suggested solutions to the developer.
Shopify is also seeing a new trend, which is shopping via conversational AI agents (e.g. chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, or voice assistants that are increasingly better at e-commerce). In response to this phenomenon, two important new features have been introduced. The first is the Shopify Catalog – Shopify's global product catalog, which is made available to partners building AI solutions for shoppers. In practice, this means that selected platforms (Shopify already works with the Perplexity conversational search engine, for example) can use the API to browse the offer of millions of products from Shopify stores and recommend them to users asking shopping questions. If our store meets the qualification criteria, its products automatically go to the Global Catalog and can be recommended to new customers during a conversation with AI (e.g., when asked "What sports watch is popular right now?" the AI assistant can recommend our product). This is potentially a new sales channel that works in the background - the AI becomes the "merchant", and Shopify makes sure it has access to our offer. The second new feature is the Shopify Knowledge Base App - an application that allows the seller to take control of what the AI says about their brand. This application automatically generates a set of knowledge base for AI based on store policies, FAQs, and product information, which answers customer questions. For example, if a customer asks the chatbot "What are your returns?" or “Does this product have a warranty?”, Knowledge Base can help merchants ensure that AI provides an accurate, authorized answer that is consistent with our policies. What’s more, merchants can customize or add their own FAQ and see what customers are asking most often in AI channels—giving them valuable insight into shoppers’ needs and concerns. In other words, Shopify gives merchants the power to ensure that their brand story is told correctly, even when AI is “telling” it.
Finally, AI is also coming to the customer side of stores. With Anthropic’s new Storefront MCP (Model Context Protocol), developers can create their own AI agents on store pages. Such an agent – built into the store – can help the customer in an interactive conversation: answer questions about products, advise based on preferences, and even complete the basket and initiate checkout, all in natural language. This is a futuristic vision of a store where navigation takes place through conversation – for example, the customer writes “I’m looking for black running shoes in the rain”, and the AI agent browses our catalog and shows personalized recommendations, explaining their choice. Shopify has provided tools (Shopify Catalog API + MCP protocol) to make such scenarios possible, and perhaps in the future it will offer a ready-made plug-and-play solution of this type. The AI Cookbook documentation already appears in Hydrogen (Shopify’s front-end framework) with recipes on how to implement typical AI-based functions (e.g. subscriptions, bundling, recommendations). It's clear that Shopify sees AI as a opportunity multiplier for both the seller and the buyer, and wants to be at the forefront of this revolution, delivering the best AI tools for e-commerce.
In addition to business features, Summer '25 Edition also brings a lot of exciting changes for developers and teams building stores and apps on Shopify. The platform becomes more open, flexible, and convenient to work with thanks to the overhaul of the developer environment and API.
The most important change is the launch (currently in early access) of a new developer platform providing a modern "inner loop" for the developer. Shopify has completely redesigned the app and extension development workflow, with a focus on speed, control, and simplicity. Now you can work on your app locally without tunneling – a developer can launch an app or extension on localhost and test it in Shopify in real time without using ngrok or continuous deployment. With hot reload, changes to your code are immediately visible, dramatically speeding up iteration. Additionally, Shopify has provided dedicated developer stores for each plan – this means you can set up a store that exactly simulates Shopify Basic, Advanced, Plus, etc. to test compatibility across plans (e.g., Plus-only features). Also new are isolated test environments for applications – we can build and configure the entire environment (e.g. with several applications, test data) without deploying anything live, which reduces the risk of errors and saves time.
Another improvement is the so-called “vibe-ready” developer loop integrated with AI. Shopify provides a special MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for developers that can assist during coding. Thanks to this, you can, for example, receive Shopify-specific context suggestions and completions in the IDE – the AI knows the GraphQL API, Shopify Liquid syntax, Polaris components, etc., and suggests best practices on the fly. This workflow combines the code environment with platform knowledge, eliminating constant switching between documentation and the editor. And speaking of Polaris – Shopify has unified its UI component library. Polaris is now consistent across all contexts (Admin, Checkout, customer accounts), giving developers one design system to create consistent interfaces. This makes it easier for agencies building apps: they can design once, and the components will look and work consistently across the admin panel, checkout extensions, and the customer interface.
Shopify has also opened up new possibilities in API and headless development. Hydrogen, a framework for building custom store front-ends, has been updated to React Router 7, which allows for the introduction of middleware, improved routing, and route typing – this translates into more advanced capabilities for building high-performance and dynamic store apps. There's also a Skeleton theme for Hydrogen, and support for <script> and <style> tags in Shopify Liquid, making it easy to create and extend your own themes from scratch. For developers who prefer headless solutions, Shopify has prepared Storefront Web Components – simple web components that can be embedded into any page or application to insert Shopify store elements in a few lines of HTML (e.g. a product with a cart, a "Buy Now" button, etc.). This makes it easy to integrate Shopify's e-commerce features with external sites without having to build a full headless. In addition, as mentioned above, the Storefront API has been enriched with MCP (Model Context Protocol), which allows you to create interactive shopping assistants directly in the store - a completely new field for developers who want to experiment with AI in e-commerce.
There have also been significant changes in the administration and data API. The GraphQL Admin API has received support for uncapped, filterable counts - which is a salvation for application developers operating on large data sets. Until now, the API returned a maximum of 250 objects per query and it was difficult, for example, to know the exact number of records meeting the criteria; now you can effectively retrieve counters and search large collections without artificial limits. There will also be a tool for bulk data management via CLI - the upcoming feature (beta) will allow you to export and import store data using a single SQLite file, which will simplify migrations or data synchronization between environments (e.g. staging -> production). Application developers have gained direct access to the POS API (Point of Sale) without the need to set up their own backend. This means that you can create extensions for POS that communicate with Shopify data directly from the front-end (e.g. a loyalty application running in POS can read customer data and calculate points without intermediaries). app-owned metafields have also been introduced - applications can now define their own metafields and have full control over them (including displaying them in checkout or on customer pages). Access to metafields and metaobjects has become easier to configure, making it easier to create more advanced data integrations between apps and stores.
All of these improvements for developers have one goal: to allow you to build faster, more efficiently, and without the constraints of the platform. As Shopify summarizes, now technical teams can focus on delivering business value, not on cumbersome workarounds - because the platform gives them tools that they previously had to create or bypass on their own. For merchants, this means better apps and integrations that will hit the store faster and be more reliable.
The Shopify Summer 2025 – Horizons edition clearly shows the direction of the platform's development: greater flexibility, more powerful tools, and deep AI integration, while maintaining user-friendliness for non-technical users. Each of the described novelties – from AI supporting store design and customer service, through expanded checkout and global payments, to improvements for developers – has been designed to make the life of an entrepreneur easier and the customer's shopping experience better. Shopify blurs the lines between simplicity and enterprise capabilities – we get features that allow small teams to operate like large companies (automations, analytics, global sales), and give large brands the agility and creativity of smaller players. Stores using these new features can count on higher conversion (faster and richer checkout, AI personalization), more sales channels (Shop App, AI integrations, new markets), better brand management (consistent branding from POS to AI chats), and savings of time and resources thanks to automation.
It is worth emphasizing that Shopify releases major updates twice a year (Editions), which means that these innovations appear at a constant, rapid pace. Summer '25 Edition isn't just a collection of features, it's a clear signal that Shopify is committed to shaping the future of commerce, giving merchants a competitive advantage through technology. Whether you're a small DTC store or a global brand, Shopify's new tools can help you grow your business in 2025 faster, more efficiently, and with a touch of "magic" (that AI). As always, the key is to consciously use these capabilities to build a better customer experience and streamline your own operations. Looking at "Horizons," it's safe to say that the future of e-commerce is looking exciting — and Shopify is leading us straight toward it, with "good vibes, new features," as the edition's motto goes.
