How do I circumvent Shopify’s 1,000 tag limitation while looping?

Technical Q&A
1

Hello:

I want to mention that I am not a developer. If you have suggestions, please kindly speak in laymen’s terms so that I understand your suggestions/solutions.

Shopify has limits on the number of tags that are returned on any page - it will only return the first 1000 unique tags. If I exceed this number, then the tags get truncated down to the first 1000. The filter menu uses these tags to generate the filters and if I have many tags that are not being used to filter then these unused tags will take up the available spots and the actual items, I want to be filtered on will not be seen.

I will have tens of thousands of unique SKUs/Products in my shop. Even if I had one tag per product, I would hit the 1000 tag limit when I have 1000 unique SKUs. Shopify allows up to 250 unique individual tags. That is not the problem. The problem is that filters use these tags to generate the filters and liquid will only return the first 1000 tags. Right now, my filters do not work. I currently only have 5-10 tags on each product and approx. 1100 products.

I have been told that there are ways to circumvent the problem and I’ve been told that it is not possible to circumvent the problem. I’m not sure what to believe.

One filtering app company told me the following:

We do not have the limitations of 1,000 tags while looping, since we have our own API to do filtering and searching.

A Shopify Partner mentioned this on the forums:

The way in which we got around this in the end was having a ‘Menu Override’ for particulary large collections. We do this per filter type e.g. Colour and genertate the menu handle based upon a prefix, collection handle and the filter type e.g. “filter-all-colour”

Does anyone know what that means or how to do this?

Shopify customer service has not been helpful either. After chatting with them for hours, I kept getting the run around. They eventually told me to reach out to developers.

Again, Shopify allows up to 250 tags per product and that is not the issue. I will only have 5-10 tags per product primarily to be used for filters. The issue is that Shopify only returns the first 1000 unique tags and then stops so the filtering does not work. This would be fine for a small shop with small inventory but it is not fine for my shop as I will have thousands of products eventually.

Please let me know if anyone has encountered this problem. I would assume they have as this restriction would cause a great many shops to experience this problem. Please let me know how you circumvented the problem or what solution you might have to the problem. Again, I am not a developer so please speak in laymen’s terms so that I understand the solution.

Many thanks in advance.

1 Like
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You’ll have to rely on a third party service/app to cover for this scenario. Search/filtering apps are using Shopify APIs and can index/search your product catalog in a much more flexible way. There is no way to achieve that through liquid and templating.

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Hi Sergiu,

Thank you so much for answering my question. I did have another question for you.

My shop will have a massive inventory eventually. Some of these 3rd party apps have restrictions on the total product count. For example, one allows a maximum of 50K products and they have said it is the maximum that Shopify allows. Because of this product limit and to not have a bigger headache down the road, are there any other options.

A developer online said that he would be able to build a Shopify app where unlimited number of tags will be allowed. He said that the filter will work on the backend app code and will filter results in real time.

He said that I would have access to the backend of the app through Shopify backend and the filter data will be coming through the app as well. The app will be seamlessly integrated. You will see the products in the app and can add as many tags as you want against them. The front-end filter data will also come through this app and it will let the user filter the products in the left panel and user will be able to view the filtered products in the listings page. So, as you can see that there will be no need of the original Shopify tagging system, it will be replaced by the one he will build and hence will not have any tagging limitation.

Is this a viable option in your expert opinion?

Are there any drawbacks from going in this direction?

Wouldn’t the developer have to maintain and update the app constantly?

Again, because I am not a developer, I am trying to gather as much information as I can and make an informed decision vs. trial and error which will end up not only being a complete waste of time but also waste of money. Any additional advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

4

The solution proposed by the developer is definitely something that can be implemented, and it will actually be an app in the Shopify nomenclature, just a private, non-public app. Most probably the developer will have to maintain the app and its backend as Shopify doesn’t offer hosting for such solutions, so yeah, that would be a custom implementation. It will come with all classic drawbacks as time/effort to get it right, QA, maintenance, which boils down to the “buy it” or “build it” dilemma.

With regards to the limit of 50k products, not sure where it comes from, as there are no limits, you can see that on the pricing page - https://www.shopify.com/pricing so most probably it is a limit that is convenient to app developers.

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Thank you very much for your reply Sergui. I really appreciate it. It is frustrating that the app developer has a limit of 50K products. What they told me is that Shopify is imposing that limit on them. But based on the link you shared, you are right in that there are no limits.

1 Like
6

Hi,

You’re providing search functionality on your site that filters based on tags and you can only pull in 1000 tags and therefore your search is limited, correct? Sorry, I just want to make sure I understand exactly what the issue is.

What Liquid objects are you using to pull these tags in?

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With regards to the limit of 50k products, not sure where it comes from…

I think they may be referring to API limits: https://shopify.dev/concepts/about-apis/rate-limits#resource-based-rate-limits

1 Like
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@Sophie_R

How do I circumvent Shopify’s 1,000 tag limitation while looping?- A) If you have an expansive inventory line and this has a matching impact on business value you need to pull back and do a full discovery with an expert for the business information architecture , which can be costly upfront.

  • B) lower the amount of products needing to be looped over by lowering the product count using things like vendor,product-type,etc
  • C) Combine your tags, unique or non unique values, with a convention then parse it in liquid, keep in mind the effect this will have on url structure when using tag links to filter
  • example: sku123_colorred-sizelarge-attributevalue
  • D) move where you store data, i.e. use metafields if you don’t need to build tag filterurls ,or the menu-handle trick you saw mentioned[1]
  • E) do the looping on the frontend with javascript instead on shopify server with liquid
  • F) repurpose search templates to fake “filtering”

I have been told that there are ways to circumvent the problem

To be clear getting around a limitation is not that same as solving the problem, WHY do you need to do this and it’s solving that goal can often mean not having to “circumvent”

[1.]

filter type e.g. Colour and genertate the menu handle based upon a prefix, collection handle and the filter type e.g. “filter-all-colour”

Is this a viable option in your expert opinion?> > Are there any drawbacks from going in this direction?> > Wouldn’t the developer have to maintain and update the app constantly?

Getting a custom solution is always a viable option if the business value is there, the drawback is once you do this you are now in the software development business whether you think you are or not and this means meetings,clarifications, maintenance, retainers, bugs, bug reports, etc etc often all having to fit in some narrow budget unless you use another payment model with the custom app’s developers.

As ScreenStaring pointed out the 50k limit being mentioned by app devs is probably the api call limit which is per day , however that can still cause issues for them when you have excessive inventory needs; in which case you should considering getting a shopify Plus plan.

1 Like
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Hi ScreenStaring,

Thank you for responding to this. I really appreciate it. Yes, my filters work based on tags. On my left side of my site, where my filters are, I have filters titled Filter by color, Filter by Price, etc (I have several). Right now for example, because I have a lot of unique tags (over the 1000 tag limit when looping), the filter stops working and the filter will not pull up all of the colors even though I have tagged products with these colors. I’ve been told that because Shopify has that limit, the filter will stop at 1000 tags which sort of makes my filter useless.

I hope that clarifies things a bit. Many thanks again.

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Hi there PaulNewton,

Thank you very much for your well thought out response to my question. Your time and efforts are greatly appreciated.

Based on your suggestions, it seems like I am way in over my head. It seems like it is very important to find the right developer for this project which has been very challenging to say the least. I have gotten so much conflicting advice which is very frustrating to a business owner because that is not where my expertise lies. So as a result, I really don’t know what direction to take.

You’ve offered some great suggestions and some I’m not sure I understand because I am not a developer.

The developers who have suggested a custom solution (custom app) have kind of downplayed the upkeep of a custom option. Some of the things you mention are the very things I am worried about:

“…the drawback is once you do this you are now in the software development business whether you think you are or not and this means meetings, clarifications, maintenance, retainers, bugs, bug reports, etc etc often all having to fit in some narrow budget unless you use another payment model with the custom app’s developers.”

Here is a response from one developer when I was concerned about the maintenance of the custom app or whether it would fix the problem:

The custom app will 100% work if coded properly. it will not give any issues in the future until you do some customization on the Shopify template which will conflict with the app, which can be an issue in 3rd party app during customizations on template. We are not going to create custom app for filter functionality we will create custom app to resolve the issue for 1000 tags limit which you facing currently in your filter functionality. We don’t change the functionality in your filter we are going to break the 1000 tags limit with custom app. If we develop custom app then we will charge you one time but if you use 3rd party app then you need to pay every month. If issue will get resolved with the custom app then why would you need a 3rd party app?

As you can see, they are really downplaying the upkeep of such an app. They have said it will not have to be maintained which makes me raise an eyebrow.

Other developers have told me it is not possible to build a custom solution. So, as a result, I am left wondering which direction to go.

Many thanks again.

11

So as a result, I really don’t know what direction to take.

Well part of that problem is these are technical answers to “circumvent” a specific-technical-problem(tag limit) but your getting dissonance because you want a business solution to some nebulous larger business problem (filtering?navigation? customer understanding???) which your implementing through 1 small feature of a much larger platform.

Technicalwise not knowing the direction is okay when your sensemaking a lot of technical detail and only time experimenting/learning/training/hiring someone can fix that. Technical solution is to figure out why you have to get more than 1000 tags and lower the amount being fetched with some other feature, etc etc

Businesswise this often indicates there’s not an actual business “problem” with a true supporting business case($$$) but more likely either a personal mission or assumption causing burden and attachment.

If there was a business case then it should be easy to get a real concrete number for the value$$$ to risk, and not sentiments like “mission critical” or “well x company has it”.

If you don’t have the budget|time to risk any direction available to you in solving a business problem then minimize what’s causing the problem.

Otherwise all it’s doing is complicating your business model, thought process,time investments,etc and increase misplaced frustration.

Dial back the use of tags, minimize the inventory management, define things in concrete monetary terms, etc or get stuck in loops:

Why custom developer → because app, Why app? because tags, Why tags? because filters, why filters? because lots of products, why lots of products? because we assume customers want them and need to filter them , how to filter them? with tags

Information architecture is difficult even for pros, especially with large product lines and using platforms like shopify; which have sanity limits on things for your own protection[1] because shopify wasn’t built just for you and your specific case it’s a kitchen sink for the masses to use off the shelf.

Get basics in place then when you have a grasp on things then scale up investment(money,education,time).

If you still can’t find your way then find an expert to talk to here’s a google search

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22information+architecture%22+site%3Aexperts.shopify.com

( i could have sworn there used to be an IA category on the experts directory /shrug, it’s probably mushed into set-up-products-and-collections now)

[1] excessive tags apparently lower theme rendering performance

12

Thank you very much for all of your advice. I really appreciate it. You make great some great points.

I have since discovered that a filtering app does circumvent the limit but one of the customer service associates had given me incorrect information. I think for my budget and where my business currently is, this might be the best option for the time being. I think you advice of “Get basics in place then when you have a grasp on things then scale up investment(money,education,time).” is a great one and might take that path for now.

Thank you again for all of your advice and for sharing some of your expertise. It is much appreciated.

Please take care and stay safe!

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@Sophie_R May I know which app solved your issue? We have the same exact issue and it’s so annoying :confused:

14

Shopify’s pricing page says unlimited products.

Back in the spring of 2020, they imposed a new rule: Once you have 50k product variants (which could mean just 10k products with 5k variants each, for instance), then Shopify limits you to adding 1k products a day.

You might be able to convince them to waive the limit for you if you have a good reason. It might take weeks, if they do it at all.

That limit does not apply to Shopify Plus stores ($2k a month in fees!)

I find it–err, surprising–that they do not disclose that limit on their pricing page, they did not notify merchants, and they did not even notify most gurus (I had to tell several about it).

We are wrestling with the tag limit, too. Shopify does not have a public article about the max number of tags in a store (only max tags per product). Some people say 250, some say 1,000. Some say 1,000 but that you can only access 250.

Good luck to both of us.

1 Like
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Unlimited products != unlimited server and bandwidth usage.

Tag limit only matters if your trying to make an endless amount of smart collections that need them.

Beyond that is a pretty good indication you need to be investing in custom app and UI development to manage specific businesses needs.

Use metafields for excess product information as you can only use 3 tags at a time for filtering anyway.

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We are big fans of metafields, and we love the Metafields Manager app.

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Hi my shop has recently encountered this issue so far we are looking for alternatives but no luck.

Please share if you ever solved this issue and what you had to do?

Thank you

18

we have the same problem. we filter our anime merch by : anime,character, kind of merch (figure,button …) and manufacturer. We have tags for everything. The chars alone are like 1800+ different ones :slightly_smiling_face: We need urgent help because we see the first tags not showing in the sidebar filters

@Gabe

1 Like
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I apologize for the late response. I ended up purchasing a filter app and that seemed to resolve the issue. It is quite annoying because it costs even more money per month but Shopify is giving us no other choice.

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I ended up purchasing a filter app and that seemed to resolve the issue. It is quite annoying because it costs even more money per month but Shopify is giving us no other choice.