If you’ve been putting off migrating all your legacy Shopify customer accounts, you’re running out of time. Shopify deprecated legacy customer accounts on February 26, 2026, making them unavailable to new stores and existing stores that weren’t already using them. Shopify has also said it will stop providing feature updates and technical support for the older account system.

Shopify says it will announce a final sunset date later in 2026. With legacy accounts already deprecated, stores that still use them should start planning their migration now rather than waiting for the final deadline.

The migration is more involved than flipping a switch: stores with customized account templates, loyalty programs, subscriptions, B2B workflows, returns portals, customer-specific apps, or authentication logic need to understand what depends on the old account architecture before switching.

In this blog, we’ll cover what to audit, what can break and, most importantly, how to test the new experience so that your customer experience doesn’t suffer.

What Are Shopify Legacy Customer Accounts?

Shopify currently has two account architectures: customer accounts and legacy customer accounts.

Shopify previously called its current account architecture ‘new customer accounts’ and the older version ‘classic customer accounts.’ In December 2024, Shopify renamed them ‘customer accounts’ and ‘legacy customer accounts,’ respectively.

Legacy customer accounts use the familiar email-and-password model and are tied closely to a Shopify theme. Pages such as login, registration, addresses, orders, and password resets can be controlled through Liquid templates, including customers/login, customers/account, customers/order, and customers/addresses.

Current Shopify customer accounts work differently. Shopify manages authentication, account pages, and extensions separately from the theme. Customers can sign in using their email address and a one-time six-digit code instead of creating a password. 

Shopify also supports additional authentication methods, including Sign in with Shop and social sign-in.

Shopify Customer Accounts vs. Legacy Customer Accounts

Several features are also available only with current customer accounts, making this new account architecture more than just a change in how users log in to your store to shop. 

With Shopify’s standard customer-account authentication, customers can remain signed in for up to 365 days, reducing how often returning shoppers need to authenticate. Stores using an external identity provider have different session-duration requirements.

Also, while the new account experience provides more native functionality and an extensibility framework designed to survive theme upgrades, you get less unrestricted control over the underlying account-page HTML and Liquid that you did with legacy accounts. 

Customer account UI extensions operate within Shopify's extension framework, and they can't access the customer-account DOM, inject arbitrary HTML or override Shopify's UI components with unrestricted CSS.

That makes the new model more controlled and upgrade-safe, but it also means older customizations sometimes need to be redesigned rather than copied over.

When Will Shopify Legacy Customer Accounts Stop Working?

Shopify's deprecation notice says it’ll announce a final sunset date later in 2026, but Shopify hasn’t yet announced a confirmed shutdown deadline.

That said, Shopify is already removing legacy account architecture from other parts of its ecosystem. Theme developers no longer need to include legacy customer account templates. A store using legacy customer accounts will automatically be upgraded to current customer accounts if it upgrades to a theme that doesn’t include the legacy account files.

On July 30, 2026, Shopify also made its <shopify-account> component a requirement for new themes and theme updates submitted to the Shopify Theme Store. The component is designed around the current customer account experience, including passwordless authentication and account navigation.

While there’s no confirmed date for when legacy accounts will stop working entirely, migrating sooner rather than later reduces the risk of incompatibilities as Shopify’s theme, app, and customer-account ecosystem increasingly moves to the current architecture. It also gives merchants access to features that aren’t available with legacy accounts.

What Breaks When Switching Shopify Customer Accounts?

Even though Shopify handles the account switch, it doesn’t mean that everything connected to old accounts is safe from the occasional hiccup. Review and recreate customizations made to legacy customer accounts before upgrading. This includes changes made through the theme editor and custom .liquid code.

Here’s everything you need to watch out for as you deal with Shopify customer account deprecation. 

Legacy Liquid account templates

Start at the theme level. Audit seven legacy customer account templates: account, account activation, addresses, login, order, registration, and password reset. These pages can contain considerably more than styling. Over time, developers often add links, conditional messages, app snippets, tracking scripts, customer metafields, and custom business logic that won’t automatically transfer to customer accounts.

The equivalent functionality might instead be available natively, through an existing app’s customer account extension, or through a custom customer account UI extension. 

Custom login and registration experiences

You won’t need to worry about legacy URLs after upgrading, as Shopify will automatically redirect URLs such as /account/login to the current customer account experience, including hard-coded links in the theme.

Custom authentication experiences, however, will need attention. A custom login modal, registration landing page, gated-content flow or JavaScript-based authentication process can sit outside the legacy account templates. These custom sign-in and registration experiences might require theme changes before upgrading.

Because of this, audit the header, footer, mobile navigation, checkout links, campaign landing pages, and any other location where customers can be sent to sign in.

Loyalty, subscription and account apps

Review any app that displays information directly inside a legacy Liquid account page. Shopify's current customer accounts use app blocks and customer account UI extensions instead. 

Extensions can add features to existing account surfaces, including Orders, Order status and Profile, or create full account pages for experiences such as loyalty programs, subscription management, wishlists and returns.

Check the checkout and accounts editor to determine whether your installed apps expose blocks for customer accounts. If an existing app doesn't support the new architecture, you might need a replacement or custom app.

Workflows, automations and customer segments

Workflows and automations based on legacy customer accounts aren't supported after upgrading and can't simply be migrated. For example, the Shopify Flow Customer account-enabled trigger applies only to legacy customer accounts.

Customer segments using the customer_account_status filter also need auditing because that filter applies specifically to legacy accounts. Shopify currently doesn't provide an equivalent account-status filter for current customer accounts. Check what happens downstream before switching, particularly if account creation currently triggers welcome campaigns, loyalty enrolment, tagging, access permissions or CRM updates.

Multipass and custom identity

Shopify’s current customer account setup doesn’t support Multipass. Shopify Plus merchants that need their own authentication experience can instead connect an OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect-compatible identity provider like Auth0 or Okta. 

Resolve your authentication architecture (for example, if Multipass currently connects Shopify accounts to another website, membership portal, or enterprise identity system) before migrating to the new accounts experience. 

Shopify Customer Account Migration Checklist

Here’s a checklist of tasks to refer to as you upgrade to the latest version of customer accounts.

1. Inventory legacy templates and custom code: Review every template under the legacy customer account section and the theme's templates/customers directory. Record custom Liquid, scripts, links, metafields, app snippets and business rules.

2. Audit every account-related app: Confirm current customer account support for loyalty, subscriptions, returns, warranties, wishlists, reviews, downloads and any other account functionality.

3. Map the authentication journey: Test header and mobile account icons, /account links, login modals, registration pages, checkout sign-in and links in external campaigns.

4. Review workflows and segmentation: Identify Shopify Flow triggers, external automations, CRM logic, customer tags and segments that depend on legacy account status or account creation.

5. Review customer communications: Remove instructions telling customers to create passwords, activate accounts or reset passwords where those messages no longer make sense. Confirm that your Shopify sender email is correctly configured because Shopify sends account verification codes by email.

6. Configure the new account experience: Set branding, navigation, app blocks and account pages using Shopify's checkout and accounts editor.

7. Consider a branded account subdomain: Without one, customer account pages can use a Shopify-hosted URL. Merchants can instead configure a subdomain such as account.your-store.com for account and order-status pages.

8. Review store credit and returns settings: These features become available with customer accounts but still need configuration. Store credit isn't supported with legacy accounts.

9. Build a customer-scenario QA matrix: Don't test with only one clean customer profile. Existing customers, new users, B2B buyers and customers with unusual account data can behave differently.

10. Test before activating the upgrade: Shopify lets merchants publish and preview their customer account configuration while their storefront and checkout continue pointing to legacy accounts. Use the customer account URL from Settings > Customer accounts to test the new experience first.

Shopify currently also states that merchants can revert to legacy customer accounts within 30 days after upgrading.

How Should Shopify Customer Accounts Be Tested After Migration?

The best way to ensure your new customer accounts work properly is to test various scenarios and verify the corresponding functionality. Here are some examples:

Testing should also include negative scenarios: expired or incorrect verification codes, mistyped email addresses, inaccessible inboxes, logged-out users following account links and customers attempting actions they don't have permission to complete, for example. 

Conclusion

When migrating to the new Shopify customer account setup, the more customized your existing store is, the more time you need to spend auditing and prepping for the migration. That said, Shopify’s passwordless login and new customer account functionality are worth the extra work, especially since legacy accounts are now deprecated, and Shopify says it will announce their final sunset date later in 2026.

At Blue Badger, we help Shopify merchants audit legacy functionality, replace unsupported customizations, build customer account UI extensions and custom apps, configure B2B account experiences, test migrations before they reach production, and more. Get in touch with us today to learn more.