You’ve got a new product lined up. Maybe it’s part of a campaign, a time-sensitive drop, or a weekend flash sale. You want it to go live at a specific time — and ideally, handle everything else automatically.
That leads to the question: Can I schedule a product on Shopify?
The short answer is yes — but only for a specific set of basic use-cases.
If you want to go beyond visibility and schedule other changes like pricing, tags, or inventory, you’ll need something more flexible. This post walks through what Shopify supports natively, what it doesn’t, and how to schedule products (and everything around them) using automation.
What Shopify lets you schedule natively
Shopify does offer some built-in product scheduling, but only in a limited way.
Product publishing in Shopify admin
Inside the product editor, you can choose when a product gets published to your Online Store. Just scroll to the “Sales channels and apps” section, click Manage, and choose a future date and time to publish.
This works well for:
- Coordinating product drops
- Quietly building products ahead of launch
- Keeping items hidden until you’re ready to go live
Once the publish time hits, the product appears in your store.
Limitations of native scheduling
This feature is helpful, but also narrow. Here’s what it doesn’t cover:
- Only works for the Online Store. Products won’t auto-publish to other channels like POS or Buy Button.
- You can’t schedule unpublishing. There’s no “remove from store on Sunday at 10PM” setting.
- It doesn’t support other product changes like pricing, inventory, or tags.
- There’s no way to bulk-schedule multiple products at once.
If you just want to control visibility for a single product, it works. But for anything beyond that — including more complex scheduling or multi-step releases — you’ll need automation.
How to go beyond with automation
Shopify’s native tools cover a single task: show this product at this time. That’s where automation tools come in.
There are apps that give you full control over product changes, and when they happen.
Schedule more than just visibility
With an automation app, you’re not limited to when a product appears. You can also:
- Adjust pricing based on time or day
- Add or remove tags (like “Coming Soon” or “Limited Drop”
- Move products between collections
- Add or remove metafields (great for showing dynamic messaging or badges)
- Push changes to multiple sales channels
- Sync internal changes across your store
This gives you the ability to run promotions, sales, or launches that adjust everything in sync — without touching your store in real time.
Schedule multiple actions at once
Instead of logging in manually and updating five different fields, you can schedule one workflow that does everything you need.
Example use case: You’re launching a product Friday at 9:00 AM. Your automation could:
- Publish the product to your Online Store
- Drop the price from “Coming Soon” to live sale pricing
- Add it to a “New Arrivals” or “Flash Sale” collection
- Remove any “Coming Soon” metafield
- Send a Slack or email alert to your team
Each of those steps happens automatically, at the same time, without you needing to push any buttons.
Example: scheduling a weekend sale
Let’s say you want to run a 48-hour sale on one of your collections. With Shopify alone, you’d have to update pricing Friday, remember to change it back Sunday, and manually adjust collections.
With automation, you could:
- Drop all prices in the collection Friday at 8:00 AM
- Add a sale badge via a metafield
- Send a notification to your team
- Roll back prices and badges on Sunday at 8:00 PM
- Remove the products from the “Deals” collection
- Archive low performers based on inventory thresholds
All of that gets scheduled in one system, using workflows that can be tested, previewed, and reused.
How to get started with scheduled product workflows
You don’t need to be technical or build a complex system from day one. Start with one change you want to make on a schedule — and work from there.
Start with one product or collection
Pick a simple use case:
- Launch a product at a certain time
- Hide a product automatically after a sale
- Change a price for a holiday weekend
The clearer your goal, the easier it is to build the workflow.
Use an automation app that supports scheduling
Look for Shopify automation tools that support scheduled workflows — not just event-based triggers. Better yet, make sure you have the ability to set workflows to run at a specific time and date, or even recurring schedules like daily, weekly, or monthly.
You can also run workflows manually, in bulk, or based on events like inventory changes or customer tags.
The flexibility gives you full control over how and when products are updated.
Test before launch
Automation should give you peace of mind, not anxiety. Once your workflow is built, test it on a draft product. Review the task logs. Confirm that it fires exactly when and how you expect.
This helps you avoid surprises — especially for time-sensitive campaigns or public launches.
Conclusion: you can schedule products on Shopify — and even more with automation
If you just need to schedule when a product goes live on your Online Store, Shopify gives you a basic tool to do it. But if your launch involves pricing, tags, collections, or any other moving parts, you’ll need something more flexible.
Shopify automation apps like Arigato let you schedule full workflows that cover every detail — not just visibility. You’ll save time, reduce manual updates, and run more polished releases that scale with your store.