How to Set Up Product Recommendations on Shopify (Free vs Paid Options)

Every Shopify store can show product recommendations — some without installing anything. But there is a big difference between free recommendations that quietly sit there and paid ones that track exactly what they generate. Here is how to decide which path is right for your store right now.

The first thing to know: Shopify already ships with basic product recommendations built in. You did not need to install anything to get them. The second thing to know: they are limited in ways that matter a lot once your store starts scaling.

Let us walk through both options clearly so you can make the right call for where you are today.

What Shopify Gives You for Free

Shopify's native product recommendations appear in a section typically labeled something like "You may also like" on product pages. They are powered by Shopify's own algorithm, which looks at purchase history, product tags, and catalog relationships to decide what to suggest.

To see if this feature is active on your store, go to your theme editor in the Shopify admin, navigate to a product page template, and look for a section called "Product recommendations" or similar. Most modern Shopify themes include this section by default.

Here is what you get with the free version:

Automatic product recommendations on product pages, no setup required
Algorithm-driven suggestions that improve as your store gets more purchase data
No additional monthly cost
Works with any theme that supports the native section

Here is what you do not get:

Cart drawer recommendations — the free version only shows on product pages
Manual control over which products appear together — the algorithm decides
Any attribution tracking — you cannot see how much revenue the recommendations generated
Design customization without custom Liquid code
Multiple placement options (homepage, search results, etc.)

When Free Is Genuinely Enough

If your store is doing under roughly $2,000 per month in revenue, the free built-in recommendations are probably fine. Here is the honest reasoning:

At that revenue level, you likely have limited traffic. Even a well-optimized cross-sell widget will generate a relatively small number of additional sales per month. The ROI conversation becomes very easy once you are above a certain volume threshold — but below it, the incremental lift from a paid app may not exceed its monthly cost.

Also, if you have fewer than 20 products, the algorithm does not have much to work with. You might find that the free recommendations surface irrelevant products or repeatedly suggest the same thing. Manual control matters more at small catalog sizes, but the stakes are also lower.

For new stores that are still validating their product-market fit, the free option removes one more cost and one more tool to manage. Focus on traffic and conversion first.

When Paid Pays for Itself

The calculus shifts when you have consistent traffic and established products that pair well together.

If you are doing 100+ orders per month and you know that Product A and Product B are frequently purchased together, you want to be showing that pairing in the cart drawer — not just on the product page — and you want to know exactly how much revenue that recommendation drove. The free tool gives you neither of those things.

The cart drawer placement alone is a major upgrade. Customers who open their cart are in a higher buying intent than those browsing product pages. Cross-sell recommendations that appear at cart review time consistently convert at higher rates — typically 2-3x higher than product page placements — because the buying decision has already been made and the customer is evaluating their complete order.

Attribution tracking is the other thing that changes the conversation. With a paid app like Dropr, you can see that your cross-sell recommendations generated $430 in attributed revenue this month. You are paying $19. The math is not complicated.

Without attribution, you are essentially flying blind. Orders with multiple products exist, but you cannot tell whether those extra products came from your recommendation widget, from the customer already planning to buy them, or from a Google search they did in another tab.

How to Set Up Free Recommendations

To enable or customize the free built-in recommendations on your Shopify store:

Go to Online Store in your Shopify admin, click Themes, then click Customize on your active theme. Navigate to a product page template. If you do not see a product recommendations section, click "Add section" and look for it. Save your changes and test on a live product page.

If your theme does not include the native recommendations section, you can add it with a small amount of Liquid code. Shopify's developer documentation covers this, or a developer can do it in an hour. This is still free in the sense that it uses Shopify's API, but it requires technical work.

How to Set Up Paid Recommendations with Dropr

Installing Dropr takes about three minutes. From the Shopify App Store, install the app, grant permissions, and you will land in a simple dashboard. From there, create recommendation rules: choose a source product (or collection), choose what to recommend alongside it, and pick your placement (product page, cart drawer, or both). Dropr handles the design automatically by matching your existing theme.

Within a few days of traffic, you will start seeing data in the attribution dashboard — which recommendations drove clicks and which generated actual revenue.

The 14-day free trial means you can run both options side by side: the native Shopify recommendations on your product pages and Dropr in the cart drawer. After two weeks, you will have real data to compare. Most stores find that the cart drawer placement alone generates enough attributed revenue to make the case for keeping the paid app obvious.