Shopify Automation

Decide on how each one counts usage, because a store runs the same workflow once per order. Zapier counts every successful action step as a task: a four-action order workflow on 500 orders a month uses 2,000 tasks, well past Professional's 750-task entry tier. Make counts each module run as a credit, so the same workflow fits comfortably inside Core's 10,000 credits. n8n counts one execution per workflow run on n8n Cloud, and nothing at all when self-hosted. Zapier is still the fastest to set up and has the widest app catalog; Make suits branching workflows at a lower per-step cost; n8n wins on high volume or when you want the automation layer on your own server. The Pricing section covers the plan figures.

Start by checking Flow. It is a free Shopify app on the Basic plan and up, and it handles rules that stay inside Shopify well: tagging high-value orders or repeat customers, hiding sold-out products, sending an internal email on a low-stock alert, and triggering actions in apps that publish Flow connectors. Add Zapier, Make, or n8n when a workflow has to reach tools without a Flow connector (an accounting system, a CRM, a Google Sheet), needs multi-step logic across several outside apps, or needs custom HTTP calls on the Basic plan, where Flow's HTTP request action isn't available. Many stores use both: Flow for in-store rules, an automation platform for everything outside the store.

A paid order, not a created one. Shopify creates an order as soon as checkout completes, including orders with pending payment, such as bank transfer or cash on delivery, and those can still be cancelled. A workflow that tells the warehouse to pack or sends a receipt should start from the paid-order event instead: Zapier's Shopify integration has a New Paid Order trigger, n8n's Shopify Trigger can subscribe to the orders/paid topic, and in Make you filter the order watcher on financial status. Keep the created-order trigger for things that are fine on unpaid orders, like a sales-channel notification.

Shopify delivers webhooks at least once, so an occasional duplicate is normal, and every workflow that creates something (a CRM contact, an invoice, a shipping label) should check whether it already exists first. Zapier's find-or-create steps and a lookup on the Shopify order ID in Make or n8n handle this. Missed runs mostly come from the receiving end being down: Shopify retries failed deliveries for a while, then drops the webhook subscription if they keep failing. That matters most for self-hosted n8n during maintenance, since its Shopify Trigger registers its webhook when the workflow is activated; re-activating it restores the subscription, and a daily reconciliation workflow that pulls the day's orders catches anything missed.

The store platform is the difference. Shopify is fully hosted: checkout, payments, uptime, and webhook delivery are Shopify's job, you pay a monthly plan, and your choice of automation engine is open. The n8n + WooCommerce stack runs the store on WordPress on your own server, which costs less per month and gives you full control, but also makes you responsible for the server, for WooCommerce's webhook delivery (which depends on WordPress's cron setup), and for running n8n. Pick this stack if you want the store to run itself; pick the WooCommerce stack if you already run WordPress or want to own the whole setup.