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How It Works

Understanding what happens between "Activate" and your customer's checkout.


Shopify Functions

CheckoutMate is built on Shopify Functions — Shopify's native platform for customizing checkout logic. When you activate a rule in CheckoutMate, the rule conditions and actions are compiled into a Shopify Function that runs directly inside Shopify's checkout infrastructure.

This is different from apps that intercept checkout requests externally:

ApproachLatencyReliability
External server (old way)100–500ms per requestFails if server is down
Shopify Functions (CheckoutMate)<5msSame uptime as Shopify

Rule lifecycle

1You configure a rule
2CheckoutMate syncs to Shopify
3Customer reaches checkout
4Shopify evaluates conditions
5Conditions match — action runs
6Execution logged
7You see it in Analytics

Conditions and actions

Each rule has:

  • Conditions — a set of criteria that must be true for the rule to fire. Multiple conditions are combined with AND logic (all must match).
  • Actions — what happens when conditions are met (apply discount, hide method, show message, block checkout).

Rules with no conditions apply to every checkout in your store. Use this carefully.


Sync status

After you create or edit a rule, CheckoutMate syncs it to Shopify. You'll see one of three states:

StatusMeaning
🟡 SyncingRule is being pushed to Shopify
🟢 SyncedRule is live at checkout
🔴 Sync failedSomething went wrong — click Retry

If a sync fails, your previous rule version remains active. CheckoutMate will display the error and let you retry.


Execution tracking

Every time a rule fires at checkout, CheckoutMate logs an execution. For discount rules, it also records the discount amount applied. This data powers your Analytics dashboard.

Executions are counted toward your plan's monthly limit. See Plans & Billing.