Your Shopify shop keeps doing what it already does: showing products, taking payments, sending the receipt. The connection adds one thing on top. When an order is paid, your MemberArea unlocks whatever that product is supposed to unlock. This article covers connecting the shop from your MemberArea, the permissions you need and what to do when the connection drops.
Before you start
You need the address of your shop, the one ending in .myshopify.com. You find
it in your Shopify admin under Settings, then Domains, listed as the
Shopify-managed domain. It looks like your-shop.myshopify.com. The address of
your Shopify admin (admin.shopify.com/store/your-shop) or just the part
before .myshopify.com work as well. Your customer-facing domain does not: the
dialog then says "Enter the address of your shop, the one ending in
.myshopify.com."
Permissions you need
Your role in MemberArea needs these permissions:
| Permission | What it opens |
|---|---|
| Update Platform Settings | Settings, and with it the Integrations tab. |
| Manage Integrations | The Shopify page at /admin/settings/integrations/shopify and everything on it: connecting, mappings, sync, import and the webhook log. |
| View Payments and Manage Catalog (Products, Prices, Coupons) | The access step of the mapping wizard, which runs on your product catalog. The Edit access button on a mapping only appears with both of them. |
| Manage Automations | Creating the suggested automations that send member events back to Shopify. |
With only Manage Integrations you can connect the shop, but you cannot choose what a purchase unlocks. Without Manage Integrations the Shopify page shows "You are not allowed to manage integrations." and "Ask the owner of this workspace for the permission to manage integrations."
One shop, one workspace
A shop belongs to exactly one workspace. If your shop is already connected to another workspace, the connection is refused instead of quietly moving your orders somewhere else. The message depends on where you are:
| Where | Message |
|---|---|
| In the dialog, when you press Connect | "This shop is already connected to another workspace. Disconnect it there first." |
| On the integrations list, after you approved in Shopify | "This shop is already connected to another workspace." |
| In the app inside your Shopify admin, with a connection code | "This shop is already connected to a workspace." |
Connect the shop
- Open Settings, then Integrations.
- Press Add Integration and choose Shopify. This opens the Shopify
page at
/admin/settings/integrations/shopify. The card at the top says No shop connected yet. - Press Connect Shopify in the middle of the page. The dialog Connect Shopify opens and says "Shopify will ask you to approve the connection."
- Enter your address in Shop address. Connect stays greyed out while the field is empty.
- Press Connect.
- Approve the connection in Shopify.
Once you approve, you land back on the Shopify page. The card names your shop and says Connected. Nothing is mapped yet, so a purchase still unlocks nothing: the page shows "No product mapped yet" and the button Create the first mapping, which starts the mapping wizard. For every further product, open Settings, then Integrations, open the row menu next to your shop and choose Map a product. The wizard is explained in Linking a Shopify product to a course.
If something goes wrong after you approved in Shopify, you land on the integrations list instead, with "Connecting the account failed." and the reason. A connection attempt is valid for 15 minutes. After that you see "That connection attempt has expired. Please start again." Start again from the Shopify page.
When you connect a Shopify development store, MemberArea notices it, and every order from that shop counts as a test order. What that means for your orders is in Checking what a buyer gets.
If you installed the app from the Shopify App Store
As long as no shop is connected, the Shopify page also shows the card "Installed the app from the Shopify App Store?" with Create a connection code. The code goes into the app inside your Shopify admin, is valid for 15 minutes and works once. The whole way, including setting up a new MemberArea from inside Shopify, is in Starting from the Shopify App Store.
The Shopify page
The card at the top shows your shop and its status, Connected or Disconnected. All integrations takes you back to the integrations list. Below the card are six tabs. Rules appears once your shop is connected:
| Tab | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Mappings | Decide what a buyer of each Shopify product gets. See Linking a Shopify product to a course. |
| Rules | Decide what a refund or a cancellation takes back and whether new buyers get a welcome email. Changes are saved right away. See Refunds and cancellations in Shopify. |
| Sync | Create your MemberArea products in Shopify. See Pushing MemberArea products into Shopify. |
| Automations | Send member events back to Shopify as tags and a customer field. See Sending member events back to Shopify. |
| Import | Bring your existing shop customers over as contacts. See Importing your Shopify customers. |
| Webhook log | Read every delivery from your shop and what happened to it. See Reading the Shopify webhook log. |
What MemberArea asks Shopify for
The connection asks Shopify for three things and nothing more:
- Read your orders, to see paid, refunded and cancelled orders and unlock or revoke access accordingly.
- Read and write your customers, to link buyers to members, to import your shop customers as contacts and to keep new shop customers as contacts. The automations on the Automations tab write to your customers as well: they create customers, add or remove tags and set a customer field.
- Read and write your products, for the product search in the mapping wizard and to create your MemberArea products in Shopify on the Sync tab.
It does not ask for anything about payouts or staff accounts.
When the connection drops
If the card says Disconnected, a notice below it names one of two cases: "Shopify revoked the access to this shop." or "This shop is no longer connected." Both add "Purchases stop unlocking access until you reconnect. Existing members keep what they already have." The most common cause is that the app was uninstalled in Shopify. While the shop is disconnected, the Sync and Import tabs show "Reconnect the shop to use this." with the button Reconnect shop.
To reconnect:
- Press Reconnect shop. The dialog Reconnect shop opens with your shop address already filled in.
- Press Connect.
- Approve the connection in Shopify.
If you reinstalled the app from the Shopify App Store, opening it in your Shopify admin reconnects the shop by itself, without the dialog.
Uninstalling the app in Shopify sets every mapping to No longer linked, and MemberArea remembers which ones they were. Reconnecting brings exactly those mappings back. This only works for 48 hours. After that, Shopify asks for the shop data to be deleted: mappings, customer links and stored deliveries of this shop are removed, and so is the connection. Orders and members stay. From then on you connect the shop as if for the first time and set up the mappings again.
While a shop is disconnected, new orders no longer unlock anything. Members who already have access keep it. 48 hours after an uninstall the mappings are gone for good, so reconnect as soon as you notice.
If you pay for your MemberArea plan through Shopify, uninstalling the app also ends that billing. What happens to your plan is in Paying for MemberArea through Shopify.
To disconnect the shop on purpose, see Disconnecting Shopify and deleting shop data.