Shopify announced on its changelog on October 28, 2026 that merchants can now build WhatsApp marketing automations inside Shopify Messaging. The update ships with ready-made templates for abandoned browse, abandoned cart and abandoned checkout, and it lets stores add a WhatsApp step to automations they already run.

Shopify Messaging is the built-in tool Shopify uses for email, SMS and, since July, WhatsApp marketing. Until this week, WhatsApp in Messaging was for one-off campaigns that you wrote and scheduled by hand. Now it can send on its own when a shopper leaves something behind, the same way abandoned cart emails already work.

What’s new

  • Three pre-built templates: abandoned browse, abandoned cart and abandoned checkout.
  • WhatsApp can be added as a step in your own custom automations.
  • Setup lives in the Shopify admin under Messaging > Automations.
  • It builds on WhatsApp marketing campaigns, which Shopify added to Messaging on July 29, 2026. Shopify said at the time that stores pay only for the messages they send.

Who it affects

Any Shopify store that collects WhatsApp marketing consent, and especially stores selling into countries where shoppers use WhatsApp every day. Stores already paying for a third-party WhatsApp app to recover carts now have a native option to compare against.

Meta’s WhatsApp Business rules only allow marketing messages to customers who have opted in. The size of your opted-in list sets the ceiling on what these automations can do, so check your checkout and sign-up forms collect that consent before you build anything.

Our take

We’d start with the abandoned checkout template alone, because that shopper has already entered their details and is closest to buying. Run it beside your current email flow for two weeks, set a delay so WhatsApp and email don’t arrive in the same minute, and compare orders recovered by each channel before turning on the browse and cart templates. If you already pay for a WhatsApp app, keep it running until the native flow has matched it on recovered orders.

Want it set up and tested properly? Our Shopify development team builds store automations for ecommerce brands, and our brief on Shopify Campaign Autopilot covers the other marketing tool Shopify opened up this week.