If you’re a Shopify store owner looking to personalize your store’s shopping experience, enabling Shopify store accounts is a must for your website. With so many different account types such as Classic Shopify legacy customer accounts, Shopify classic customer accounts, and Shopify new customer accounts, which do you choose? What’s the best account type for your business needs?
In this article, we’ll list out the Shopify account types as well as break down their major differences, so that you can make the best decision for your store. See our table to get a quick summary of each account type, and read on to learn more and see our recommended choice for you based on your specific requirements.
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Legacy Customers Accounts (formerly Classic Customer Accounts) |
Customer Accounts (formerly New Customer Accounts) |
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Registration vs. Login |
Separate registration and login pages |
One page that doesn’t distinguish |
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Registration page custom fields |
Possible - able to add custom input fields by modify liquid |
Not possible. Need to do this post sign in w/ app like CAP |
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My Account pages |
Liquid and customizable as any liquid template page |
Customizable only via Customer Account UI extensions |
What kind of Shopify store accounts are there?
There are many different names for the Shopify account types. Despite a range of accepted terminology, there are only two different account types available:
- Customer accounts: also known as Shopify new customer accounts
- Legacy customer accounts: also known as Shopify classic customer accounts
Registration vs. Login
A major difference between the two account types is the account registration and login experience. With Shopify legacy customer accounts, stores had an account registration page and separate login page directly on the store theme. The account registration page could be customized to collect additional information, such as birthday or phone number before activating an account. Users also need to set a password for logging in.
With Shopify new customer accounts, store visitors never have to register for an account, or set a password. All they need to do is provide their email address, and enter a 6-digit PIN that’s emailed to them to log in to their account. This login page is not customizable by store owners.
Registration page custom fields
As mentioned above, it’s possible to add custom input fields to the legacy customer account registration page by modifying the theme liquid code. Most stores on legacy customer accounts benefit from finding an app developer to help them do this, so that they can learn important information about their shoppers for effective marketing, targeting, and to create personalized shopping experiences.
Since (new) customer accounts do not have a registration process or a modifiable login page, adding custom fields for registration is not possible. However, merchants should be reassured that they can still collect information about shoppers after they sign in with an app that collects custom fields.
We recommend an app like Customer Accounts Pro for this purpose. This app lets you add a block onto the My Account Profile page, so that shoppers can personalize their account with additional information. You can easily define the input fields you want to offer by following the app’s setup flow.
Download Customer Accounts Pro here, and learn how to set it up with our step-by-step guide.
Editing the My Account pages
Lastly, you may be curious about what you can customize for the two account types. Legacy customer accounts are highly customizable through editing the theme liquid code, or through using app blocks. We’ve seen many stores create highly custom logged in experiences for their shoppers with legacy customer accounts. Unfortunately, adjusting app blocks and features to sit nicely in the My Account page will usually require the help of a Shopify developer or agency. This means that legacy customer accounts can be difficult to customize.
In comparison, new customer accounts are not as customizable as legacy customer accounts. Theme liquid customizations are not supported. However, it’s very easy for store owners to make their own changes to the My Account experience with Customer Account UI extensions. These are drag-and-drop blocks and full page widgets that you can add to the My Account hub. Extensions are offered by Shopify apps, so adding a new function to your store’s account experience is as easy as sourcing the right app.
Which one should I use?
Generally, we recommend using (new) customer accounts if you have a new store, or if you don’t have an existing, already customized legacy account experience. This is because new customer accounts are where Shopify is innovating with lots of brand new features and functionalities. We also assume that we’ll see more and more extensions available for Customer Accounts soon, which will make new customer accounts all the more powerful.
If you already use legacy customer accounts and have lots of customizations made for the classic customer account experience however, you might want to keep using Legacy accounts for now. Take your time to wait for the right apps to appear in the app store until you’re sure that there’s a sufficient collection of apps to meet all of your customer account needs.