Shopify Customer Accounts are going through a much deeper transformation than a simple interface redesign. Spring '26 brings a refreshed experience with improved navigation, branded sign in, longer sessions, and a more consistent mobile experience, but the most important change for agencies is happening underneath the interface.
Shopify is effectively moving the ecosystem away from Legacy Customer Accounts and toward a new extensible account architecture. Legacy Customer Accounts were officially deprecated in February 2026. They are no longer available to new stores or to existing stores that were not already using them, Shopify has stopped providing feature updates and technical support for the legacy model, and a final sunset date is expected to be announced. For agencies maintaining existing Shopify stores, this turns migration from an optional modernization project into something that needs to be part of the technical roadmap.
At the same time, the new Customer Accounts are becoming an increasingly important surface for apps, subscriptions, loyalty programs, post purchase functionality, and B2B. Combined with Customer Account UI Extensions and Rollouts, the account area is evolving from a relatively static section of the store into an application surface that agencies can build, extend, and optimize.
Legacy Customer Accounts are on their way out
The first priority for agencies is straightforward: identify which clients are still using Legacy Customer Accounts and understand what depends on them.
This is not simply a matter of switching a setting. Legacy implementations may contain Liquid templates, theme customizations, app integrations, authentication logic, loyalty functionality, subscription management, returns workflows, wishlists, or other experiences that cannot simply be transferred unchanged to the new architecture.
Shopify's own migration process recommends auditing existing account customizations first, duplicating the current checkout and accounts configuration, and then identifying apps or new implementations that can replace legacy functionality. The new ecosystem already supports use cases including loyalty, upsells, cross sells, order editing, wishlists, reviews, returns, subscriptions, forms, surveys, and digital downloads.
For agencies, this creates a very concrete service opportunity: Customer Account migration audits.
Instead of treating the transition as a simple platform upgrade, agencies can map every dependency in the existing account experience, determine what survives the migration, identify which apps already support the new architecture, and redesign custom functionality using Shopify's current extension framework.
There is also an important theme development implication. Shopify explicitly advises theme developers to stop including Legacy Customer Account Liquid files. Shopify has also introduced the shopify-account web component, which provides storefront access to the current Customer Accounts experience and supports features such as passwordless sign in and account navigation. As of July 2026, this component is required for new themes and theme updates submitted to the Shopify Theme Store.
Customer Account UI Extensions change what agencies can build
The biggest technical opportunity is Customer Account UI Extensions.
Unlike Legacy Customer Accounts, the current architecture provides a formal extension framework for adding functionality to account pages. Shopify exposes defined extension targets, APIs, and Polaris components that allow apps to integrate into surfaces including customer profiles, order pages, order status experiences, and order actions.
This means agencies can build functionality such as:
• Loyalty information, including points balances, rewards, membership status, and customer specific benefits.
• Subscription management interfaces that allow customers to view or manage recurring purchases.
• Shipment tracking, returns, exchanges, and post purchase support actions.
• Order specific actions and contextual functionality attached directly to individual orders.
• Personalized offers and product recommendations based on authenticated customer information.
• Full page account experiences for functionality that requires more space or interaction than a simple embedded block.
The architecture is intentionally more controlled than traditional theme development. Extensions do not receive unrestricted access to the Customer Account DOM and cannot inject arbitrary HTML or override Shopify's interface through custom CSS. They use Shopify provided UI components and inherit the merchant's branding.
For agencies, that constraint changes the development model. The objective is no longer to completely redesign the account surface through theme code. It is to build functionality that integrates predictably into Shopify's managed interface.
Spring '26 also makes those extensions more visible. Shopify's refreshed Customer Accounts use a single column layout across desktop and mobile, while order action extensions receive greater prominence and order summary extensions are no longer hidden behind an additional tap on mobile. Existing extension targets remain supported, but Shopify recommends testing extensions against the new layout.
There is another technical migration agencies should have on their radar. Current Customer Account UI Extensions are moving to Polaris web components. API versions 2025 10 and later use them by default, and apps containing extensions on API version 2025 07 or earlier will be blocked from updates after October 1, 2026 unless those extensions are upgraded.
Loyalty and subscription apps need to be reviewed, not assumed compatible
This transition becomes particularly important for merchants whose customer accounts are heavily dependent on loyalty or subscription applications.
Under the legacy model, many apps relied on theme based integrations or account templates. In the new model, customer facing functionality increasingly needs to work through Customer Account UI Extensions and the Customer Account API.
Shopify explicitly identifies loyalty programs and subscription management as core Customer Account extension use cases. It has also tightened its app requirements: apps in categories including subscriptions must use the Customer Account API for customer authentication to retain Built for Shopify status.
Spring '26 adds another useful capability for subscription experiences. Customer Account UI Extensions can now natively update payment methods used for subscriptions, allowing more of the subscription lifecycle to remain within the account experience instead of redirecting customers through disconnected workflows.
For agencies, the migration question therefore cannot simply be, "Does the app still work?"
The better questions are whether the app supports the new Customer Accounts architecture, whether it exposes the same functionality through UI Extensions, whether the customer journey changes after migration, and whether any custom logic or data dependencies need to be rebuilt.
That makes loyalty and subscription audits an important part of every legacy migration plan.
B2B makes Customer Accounts even more strategically important
Spring '26 also significantly expands the importance of Customer Accounts through Shopify B2B.
Shopify is extending core B2B capabilities to more plans, including company profiles, volume pricing, and up to three B2B catalogs.
Customer Accounts are central to that experience. Shopify requires Customer Accounts to be activated when testing B2B purchasing flows, because authenticated customers need to be associated with their company and location in order to receive the correct catalog, pricing, payment terms, and checkout configuration.
This changes the strategic importance of the account surface.
For a DTC merchant, Customer Accounts may primarily support order history, returns, loyalty, and repeat purchases. For a B2B merchant, the authenticated account becomes part of the commercial infrastructure. It determines who the buyer is, which company they represent, what products they can purchase, what prices they see, and which commercial conditions apply.
As Shopify B2B becomes accessible to a wider merchant base, agencies should therefore begin treating Customer Accounts as part of their B2B architecture rather than as a secondary customer service page.
Rollouts brings experimentation to Customer Accounts
One of the most interesting Spring '26 additions is the connection between Customer Accounts and Rollouts.
Shopify Rollouts can now coordinate changes across the online store theme, checkout and accounts configuration, product catalogs, and discounts. Agencies can schedule changes, release them gradually, or create experiments that compare a variation against a control. Experiments are available on Grow plans and above.
This means account changes no longer need to be deployed to every customer at once.
An agency could create a new checkout and accounts configuration containing different account customizations or extensions, expose it to a portion of eligible traffic, and evaluate its performance before deciding whether to deploy it more broadly. Rollouts also provides analytics for active and completed experiments.
This introduces a new way to think about Customer Account optimization.
Instead of asking whether a new loyalty block, account configuration, post purchase experience, or account based merchandising strategy looks better, agencies can increasingly ask whether it actually performs better.
Customer Accounts therefore become another surface for experimentation alongside the storefront and checkout.
Customer Accounts are becoming an application platform
The larger story behind Spring '26 is not that Shopify made account pages prettier. It is that Shopify is consolidating authentication, customer identity, post purchase functionality, B2B, app extensions, and experimentation around a modern Customer Accounts architecture.
For technical agencies, that creates several concrete areas of work:
• Auditing and migrating merchants away from Legacy Customer Accounts.
• Reviewing loyalty, subscription, returns, and post purchase apps for compatibility with the new architecture.
• Rebuilding custom functionality with Customer Account UI Extensions.
• Migrating existing extensions to current APIs and Polaris web components.
• Designing authenticated experiences for B2B buyers.
• Testing account configurations and extensions through Rollouts instead of deploying changes blindly.
The opportunity is therefore much larger than redesigning an account page. Customer Accounts are becoming an authenticated application layer inside Shopify, and agencies that understand that architecture can help merchants connect customer identity, self service, retention, subscriptions, loyalty, B2B, and experimentation within the same ecosystem.
For agencies managing stores that still depend on Legacy Customer Accounts, the first step should be identifying exactly what will be affected by the migration and what needs to be rebuilt. For those already using the new architecture, the next question is whether they are taking full advantage of UI Extensions, B2B capabilities, and experimentation rather than treating Customer Accounts as little more than an order history page.
If your agency is evaluating a migration from Legacy Customer Accounts, reviewing app compatibility, or exploring what can now be built with Customer Account UI Extensions, this is the right moment to start that conversation.
Want to explore how Shopify Customer Accounts can create new opportunities for your agency and your clients?
