Discounts not showing on product in Store, or online until you get to checkout

Store Design

Topic summary

Merchants are frustrated that automatic discounts created in Shopify don’t display on product pages, collection pages, or the homepage—only appearing at checkout or in the cart. This creates a poor shopping experience since customers can’t see which items are on sale while browsing.

Key Issues:

  • Automatic discounts require Shopify POS Pro ($389/month vs. $99 Basic plan) to work at physical point-of-sale terminals
  • Many basic features require paid third-party apps (personalization, reviews, shipping calculations)
  • Merchants view this as a “money grab” rather than legitimate platform limitation

Shopify’s Position:
One user explained discounts are calculated at cart/checkout due to technical complexity (bundles, currencies, apps), making earlier display computationally expensive and potentially inaccurate.

Workarounds Shared:

  1. Manual compare-at pricing: Export products to Excel, move prices to “compare-at price” column, calculate discounted prices using formulas, then re-import (free but manual)
  2. Individual product editing: Manually set discounted price and compare-at price for each variant to show strikethrough pricing
  3. Slide cart apps: Allow discount code entry before checkout

Current Status:
No native solution exists. Discussion remains unresolved with merchants expressing strong dissatisfaction and some considering switching platforms (Square, WordPress). Multiple users confirm the issue affects both free themes (Dawn, Ride) and premium themes (Aurora).

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
12

The irony is that I HAD a Square site but HAD to move over to Shopify to make use of a specialized 3rd app that only works with Shopify (cannot conduct my business without it), but now there’s this bloody inability to show sale prices (unless one manually changes the prices for hundreds, if not thousands of items) anywhere but inside the cart. Truly damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. I’m at the point of pulling the plug entirely, as this particular limitation with Shopify is absurd. I simply do not buy any of the excuses/explanations provided by Shopify in regards to this. As so many have said, this should be a basic feature. Instead it’s a fundamental flaw. :tired_face:

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