Shopify Customer Accounts Don't Support Login With Email and Password. Here's What Actually Works Instead.
New Shopify customer accounts are passwordless by default, and there is no admin setting that turns a classic password field back on. The top-ranking answer to this question — switch to classic accounts — stopped working for most stores after Shopify deprecated legacy accounts on February 26, 2026. Here are the three options that actually exist now, what each one costs to set up, and which stores should skip which.
Shopify's new customer accounts don't have a password field, and there's no admin setting that adds one back — the system is passwordless by default, using a one-time email code instead. If you're trying to give customers a traditional email-and-password sign-in, you have exactly three real options, and the most common answer people find first no longer works for most stores.
Why "just switch to classic accounts" is now bad advice
Search this question and one of the top results is a Shopify Community thread where a staff reply says the fix is simple: switch to classic customer accounts, which still support email and password. That answer was correct when it was posted. It stopped being correct for most merchants on February 26, 2026, when Shopify deprecated legacy customer accounts. As of that date, classic accounts are no longer available to new stores or to any existing store that isn't already using them — you cannot switch back to classic once you've moved to the new system, and you cannot switch a store into classic for the first time. A final sunset date that removes classic accounts entirely hasn't been announced yet, but the door to adopting them closed already.
That single detail — grandfathered versus not — is the thing missing from almost everything ranking for this query. Generic help docs describe the new sign-in options without saying what changed for classic accounts. Community answers and third-party recaps repeat "switch to classic" without checking whether that's even possible for the person asking. It usually isn't.
What passwordless actually looks like for your customers
A customer enters their email at checkout or on your account page, Shopify emails them a one-time code, and they type it in to sign in. No password, no "forgot password" link, because there's nothing to forget. We cover the mechanics of that flow — including why the code is sometimes 6 digits and sometimes 10 — in our guide to diagnosing customer login failures. This post is about the different question: what to do if "type in a code" isn't the sign-in experience you want to offer at all.
Option 1: turn on native Google and Facebook sign-in
This is the only option on this list that's free, available on every plan, and takes under an hour. Since social sign-in shipped for customer accounts, you can let customers sign in with their existing Google or Facebook account instead of typing in a code. It runs alongside the default passwordless flow rather than replacing it — customers who'd rather use email-and-code still can.
To set it up, go to Settings > Customer accounts in your admin and open the sign-in options section. For each provider you want to add, you'll need to register an OAuth app on that provider's side first: a project with OAuth credentials in Google Cloud Console for Google, or an app in the Meta for Developers dashboard for Facebook. Both require you to register your store's customer-accounts domain as an authorized redirect URI before Shopify's fields will accept the client ID and secret you paste in. Preview the sign-in screen before you publish the change — a mistyped redirect URI is the most common reason a "Sign in with Google" button fails silently for customers after setup looks complete in the admin.
Two things worth knowing before you enable this. First, per Shopify's own documentation, the only customer data that syncs when someone uses social sign-in is their email address — you don't get a Google or Facebook profile payload, just the same email field a passwordless sign-in would have given you. Second, Apple isn't currently a native option here, despite showing up in some third-party recaps of this feature; as of this writing only Google and Facebook are documented as supported providers. Don't build a UI that advertises "Sign in with Apple" based on a blog post that assumed it because Apple sign-in exists elsewhere in Shopify's ecosystem.
Skip this if: your customer base skews toward B2B buyers signing in with a work email that isn't tied to a personal Google or Facebook account, or your brand has a reason to avoid routing customer identity through Google or Meta at all (some regulated or privacy-focused categories do). Social sign-in solves "I don't want to wait for an email code," not "I need enterprise-grade identity control" — that's option 3.
Option 2: keep classic accounts, if you're actually grandfathered
Check Settings > Customer accounts in your admin. If your store still shows classic accounts as active, you can keep using email-and-password sign-in as-is — Shopify hasn't forced a migration, and won't until the still-unannounced sunset date. But this is a shrinking window, not a stable choice. We've covered what breaks and what needs rebuilding when that migration eventually happens in our legacy customer accounts rebuild guide — custom login popups, registration fields, and account-page branding all need redoing under the new system, and classic accounts stop receiving feature updates and security patches in the meantime.
Skip this if: you're not already on classic accounts — you can't opt into it now, full stop — or you're planning a storefront rebuild anyway, in which case migrating to the new system on your own schedule beats being forced onto it later with less lead time.
Option 3: build real password-style authentication yourself
If neither social sign-in nor a shrinking grandfather clause is good enough — usually because you're a B2B or enterprise store that needs centralized identity control — the new customer accounts system supports connecting your own OpenID Connect identity provider: Okta, Auth0, Microsoft Entra ID, or a homegrown one, replacing Shopify's sign-in screen with your own entirely. We go through the setup and the session-length trap most stores hit in our guide to custom identity providers on customer accounts. The honest caveat up front: this is a Shopify Plus feature. It's not available on Basic, Grow, or Advanced plans.
If you're not on Plus, your remaining path is a customer-accounts app from the Shopify App Store that layers its own password or membership experience on top of the new system using Customer Account UI extensions, rather than replacing Shopify's core sign-in. That's a real option, but be clear-eyed about what it is: you're adding a vendor into your authentication chain, not restoring native password login. Evaluate any app on that basis — what happens to customer sign-in if you uninstall it — before you commit a storefront redesign to it.
Which option actually fits your store
- Small to mid-size DTC store, not on Plus, customers complaining about codes: turn on Google and Facebook sign-in. It's free, fast, and solves the actual complaint — "I don't want to wait for an email" — without adding a vendor dependency.
- Store that migrated recently and is fielding "where's my password" tickets: check grandfather status first (you likely can't go back), then default to social sign-in as the fastest thing you can ship this week. Point customers who signed up via Shop, Google, or Facebook originally back to that same method rather than email — that's the single most common false "it's broken" report.
- B2B or enterprise store on Shopify Plus with an existing identity provider: connect it via OIDC. You already have the infrastructure; use it instead of asking customers to manage yet another credential.
- Store still on classic accounts with no near-term rebuild planned: stay on it, but put the migration on your roadmap now rather than after the sunset date is announced. The rebuild is real work, and "we have time" stops being true the day Shopify picks a date.
What to tell a customer who asks where their password went
The honest answer is usually "we don't use passwords for accounts anymore, but you can sign in in one tap with Google or Facebook if you'd rather not use the emailed code" — assuming you've shipped option 1. If you haven't yet, that's the fastest fix available: it directly answers the complaint that's landing in your support inbox, and it's the one option here that doesn't require a developer to implement. If the actual problem turns out to be delivery of the code itself rather than a preference for passwords, work through the full list of causes and fixes here instead — adding social sign-in won't fix a code that's landing in spam.
Most stores asking this question just want to stop losing sign-ins to customer confusion, and social sign-in gets there without a rebuild. If what you actually need is centralized identity for a B2B storefront, or a custom account experience your app of choice can't deliver, that's the kind of Shopify customer-accounts work we do directly — get in touch through our contact page and we'll tell you plainly which of the three options above fits, and what it actually takes to build.