Should You Use Facebook and Instagram Shops for Your Shopify Store?

· 4 min read · Updated

When Meta was pushing Facebook and Instagram Shops hardest, in 2024, it was offering merchants and customers incentives of 20 percent or more to use checkout inside the app. The question store owners asked me was whether to switch it on. The answer I gave then was that owning the checkout is always better. Meta has since agreed.

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Update, 2025: Meta phased out checkout inside Facebook and Instagram Shops between June and August 2025. Shops remain for discovery. The purchase now happens on your website. The reasoning below is why I never recommended the in-app checkout, and it is the reasoning Meta eventually acted on.

What a Shop was

Meta launched Facebook and Instagram Shops so a business could sell without a website. The customer tapped a product, paid with a saved payment method, and Meta processed the transaction, ran the order management and handled returns and refunds. Shopify stores could connect their catalogue and choose whether the checkout happened on Meta or on their own site.

Why Meta built it

Three reasons, and none of them was the merchant’s convenience. TikTok was building in-app shopping and Meta did not want to be behind. Apple’s tracking changes and the end of third party cookies meant Meta could see less of what happened once someone left the app. And the longstanding principle inside the company, usually put as Facebook loves Facebook: do not let the user leave.

A purchase inside the app is a purchase Meta can see end to end. A purchase on your website is one it has to infer from the pixel. For Meta’s ad system, the first is worth more.

What it cost the store

The reasons I told clients not to switch it on in 2024 were specific.

Less data in Shopify. Shop orders arrived with less about the customer than a native order. The email marketing flows, the post purchase upsell and the customer record were all thinner.

No custom options. Products that needed input from the buyer, a name on a gift, a size chart choice, a custom box, could not be sold because Meta did not support custom attributes. A personalised gifts store could list its catalogue and sell none of what made it different.

A checkout you could not change. No upsells, no bundles, no post purchase offer, no A/B test. The Shopify checkout is where a store’s average order value is built, and the Meta checkout had none of those levers.

Almost no design control. The Shop looked like every other Shop.

I tried it on client stores and it did produce sales. It still was not worth it, because the sales it produced were sales the store could have had on its own checkout with the data and the upsell attached.

Facebook and Instagram Shops before and after 2025: checkout inside the app with Meta processing orders and thinner data in Shopify, against a discovery surface whose buy button goes to your website while the catalogue still powers product tags and ads

What a Shop is now

Since the 2025 change, a Shop is a discovery surface. The storefront, collections and product tags on posts and Reels still exist. The buy button goes to your website. Meta stopped processing payments, managing new orders and handling disputes, and closed the Commerce Manager inbox. Ads that used the combined website and shop destination were moved to website, with an option to use the shop to personalise the journey.

For a Shopify store, the practical setup is Shopify’s Facebook and Instagram channel: connect the Business Manager, the pixel and the catalogue, set checkout to your website, and the catalogue syncs from Shopify. That catalogue is the part that matters. It is what product tagging runs on, what catalogue ads run on, and what Advantage+ Shopping uses to pick products. The Shop is a side effect of having the catalogue connected.

The lesson, which is not about Meta

Every platform that offers to hold your checkout is offering to hold your customer. Meta did it with Shops. TikTok does it with TikTok Shop. Amazon has always done it. The offer is usually sweetened with incentives and always costs you the data, the upsell and the relationship.

Use the platforms for what they are good at, which is putting the product in front of people. Bring the purchase home. The 700K beauty brand account and the D2C rebuild both ran on exactly that split: Meta and Google to find the buyer, Shopify to close and keep them.

If your Shop was set up in the checkout era and you have not looked at it since, book a call and I will check the catalogue sync and the conversion location before anything else. Those two settings are where the 2025 change left most stores quietly misconfigured.

Frequently asked questions

Can customers still check out inside Facebook and Instagram Shops?
No. Meta phased out onsite checkout between June and August 2025. Shops still exist for discovery, with storefronts, collections and product tags, but the purchase now happens on the merchant's website. Shopify stores connected through the Facebook and Instagram channel send buyers to the Shopify checkout.
Is a Facebook or Instagram Shop still worth setting up for a Shopify store?
Yes, because it is the catalogue connection that makes product tagging, catalogue ads and Advantage+ Shopping campaigns work. The Shop itself sells little. The catalogue behind it is what the ads run on, and you want it synced from Shopify.
What did Meta's onsite checkout cost Shopify stores?
The order data. Purchases made inside Meta did not carry the customer's email, the discount behaviour or the upsell opportunity back to Shopify in a usable form, and products with custom options could not be sold at all because Meta did not support them.
What happened to orders and attribution when checkout was removed?
Meta stopped processing payments, managing new orders and handling disputes. Orders placed before a shop was switched had to be fulfilled through Commerce Manager first. Shopify stores saw a temporary gap in order attribution for shop orders during the transition, which Meta said would resolve once the switch completed.
How do I connect a Shopify store to Facebook and Instagram now?
Install Shopify's Facebook and Instagram channel, connect the Business Manager, pixel and catalogue, and set the checkout to your website. The catalogue syncs from Shopify, product tagging works on posts and Reels, and the ads use the same catalogue.
Should I run ads to the Shop or to my website?
To the website. Meta removed the Website and shop conversion location along with checkout. Ads go to the website, with the option to use the shop to personalise the journey, and the purchase event fires on your own domain where your pixel and Conversions API can see it.
Nikhil Sharma

Nikhil Sharma

I run data and operations for a DTC brand on Shopify, consult on Meta and Google Ads, and build AI automations for ecommerce teams. I write about what I build and run.

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