Order confirmation email not being sent with "Creates a checkout" API

Shopify Apps

Topic summary

Orders completed via the Admin REST “Creates a checkout” API (customers redirected to the returned web_url to pay) are not triggering order confirmation emails to buyers. Several developers report the same behavior affecting their merchants.

Perspectives:

  • Some believe this may be expected behavior (Shopify doesn’t send notifications for checkouts created via this endpoint).
  • Others suspect a recent regression, noting it seems to have started last week and ties to recent Checkout changes.

Secondary issue: The LineItems SKU field (SKU = stock-keeping unit identifier) appears nonfunctional with this API, and it’s unclear if this is by design.

Key terms:

  • web_url: the checkout URL returned by the API where the customer completes purchase.
  • LineItems SKU: per-item identifier that merchants expect to pass through.

Outcome/Actions: No official guidance, workaround, or confirmation from Shopify was provided. No decisions were made.

Status: Unresolved and ongoing. Open questions include whether order emails should be sent for API-created checkouts and how to ensure SKU is respected.

Summarized with AI on January 28. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello,

I am using the “Creates a checkout” API (https://shopify.dev/docs/admin/api/rest/reference/orders/checkout/create) to allow customers to purchase products on my Shopify store. I am able to create a checkout and direct the customer to the web_url provided in the API response to complete their purchase.

However, I have noticed that the order confirmation email is not being sent to the buyer after they complete the purchase. Could you please advise on how to ensure that the order confirmation email is sent to the buyer?

Additionally, the SKU property of LineItems also doesn’t seem to be working. Is this expected behavior or is there a way to make it work with this API?

Thank you for your help.

Best regards,

2

Hi @pop21

We are also getting same issue in our Codify Product bundle app.

I believe it is expected behavior from Shopify itself that the order notification was not sent to the user during their purchase.

Hope shopify help with this soon.

Best regard

1 Like
3

Same issue, I have merchants reported to me that the order created from the Checkout (https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-rest/2023-04/resources/checkout#post-checkouts)) , after the customer completes the checkout using the link generated from that API, the customer did not receive order notification email, and it only happened seems last week, so I am suspecting it is a regression on Shopify API side, they have been breaking many things related to Checkout recently, sigh.

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