How to Create a Landing Page on Shopify: Editor or App

What a Landing Page Is in Shopify

In Shopify, a landing page is not a separate kind of page. It is an ordinary page, the kind you create under Online Store > Pages, that uses a page template of its own. The template decides which sections appear and in what order; the page carries the title and the web address.

There is no landing page switch to look for. None of the Shopify Help Center pages we read on October 11, 2026, on templates, pages, sections and blocks, and theme architecture versions, describes a campaign landing page as its own template type or feature; the only place those pages use the words "landing page" is for the Password page that visitors see while a store is in private mode. What Shopify's help on templates describes instead is the move a landing page needs: when some pages of a type should look different, you create a new template based on one your theme already has.

That is also why a campaign gets a template of its own rather than an edit to the default page template that your other pages may share:

So a landing page is two objects: a template you build once in the theme editor, and a page you create in the admin and point at that template. Shopify splits the work the same way: you create and edit templates in the theme editor, and you change the template a page uses in your Shopify admin.

Can your theme and plan create templates?

Two gates decide whether the native route is open at all, and both are quick to check. Shopify's page on theme architecture versions sorts themes into three generations and marks which of them can create templates; the plan sets the second gate.

The Starter line is not a soft limit. Shopify's Starter plan page says the plan doesn't support creating any new templates, and that other themes and customization options aren't available on it either.

Not sure which generation your live theme belongs to? Our Online Store 2.0 guide shows how to tell whether you're already on Online Store 2.0.

How to Build a Landing Page in the Theme Editor

The native route runs across two places, the theme editor for the layout and the Shopify admin for the page, and the order matters: a page can only point at a template that already exists in your live theme.

If you would rather watch the mechanics first, this August 2025 walkthrough from Shopioso, a Shopify agency channel, builds an app-free landing page in Horizon.

It is one practitioner's route, not ours. It builds on a duplicated product with a custom product template rather than on a page, removes the header and footer with custom code, and promotes the channel's own landing page kit. The channel's claims about speed and savings are its own view, not measurements.

Create a page template

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store and click Edit theme on the theme you want to build in.

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2. Click the template drop-down at the top of the editor, which reads Home page when the editor opens, select the Pages template type, then click Create template.

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3. In the dialog, enter a Name (the campaign name works) and, in the Based on drop-down, select the existing template to start from, such as your default page template.

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4. Click the dialog's Create template button. The new template automatically starts with the same sections as the template it is based on.

Note which theme you built the landing template in: the page form in the admin lists templates from your live theme only. If the landing page sells a single product, the same steps work with the Products template type, because Shopify lets you keep several templates for products, collections, pages, blogs and blog posts.

Assemble the sections

Because the new template starts with the sections of its base, begin by removing the sections the campaign doesn't need, or hiding them, and then add the ones it does. Changes here reach every page that uses this template, and at this point that is none.

In the editor's left panel, the template's own sections are listed under Template, between the Header and Footer groups, and Add section at the foot of that list opens the section picker (as seen in Dawn in our development store on October 11, 2026).

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If the layout needs a snippet of code, such as an embed from another service, and your theme offers a Custom Liquid section, Shopify says you might be able to add app code there in the theme editor instead of editing theme code directly.

What belongs on the page is a separate question from how to build it; for a single-product campaign, our one-product store guide lays out the anatomy of a high-converting store page.

Preview the template on a real page before you assign it anywhere. When you preview a page template in the theme editor, Shopify lets you pick pages whose visibility is set to either Visible or Hidden, so the campaign page can stay out of your store while you build.

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Create the page and assign the template

The page itself lives in the admin, not in the theme editor. Shopify's guide to adding pages covers the title, visibility and content fields, and its help on templates covers the template field; for a landing page, four steps matter:

1. Go to Online Store > Pages and click Add page.
2. Enter a title. Shopify shows the page title in the browser tab and in search engine results, so write it for the campaign, not as an internal label.
3. Open the Theme template drop-down and select your landing template. Shopify's help on templates places it in the Online store section of the page form; in our development store's form it sat in the right column, labelled Template.
4. Set the visibility (the next section explains which setting does what) and click Save. Shopify's guide to adding pages says a new page is visible by default once you save it, but our development store's form opened with Hidden selected on October 11, 2026, so check the setting before you save.

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Keep it out of menus and search

A new page doesn't appear in your navigation by itself: to show a page in your store's navigation, you add a link to it in a menu. A campaign page stays out of your menus unless you put it there.

Search is the part that trips merchants up, because three different settings hide a page from three different places:

Shopify's guide to hiding a page from search engines describes the case of a page that stays active and published but should not appear in search:

The same guide lists the steps: go to Settings > Metafields and metaobjects, select Pages under Metafield definitions and click Add definition. Give the metafield a Name, such as SEO Hidden, and select the name from the list; set Namespace and key to seo.hidden; select the Integer type with One value; set Maximum value to 1 under Validations; then click Save. After that, open the page, set the metafield's value to 1 in its Metafields section and click Save.

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One caution about the metafield: Shopify notes that seo.hidden is a system metafield that third-party apps can use when they hide a resource from search engines and sitemaps. If an SEO app or a page builder already manages it on your store, check what the app has set before you change it by hand.

When the campaign ends

The page's web address comes from its handle. You can change the handle later, and Shopify then offers a pre-selected Create a URL redirect option so the old address forwards to the new one, but it is simpler to fix the address before it goes into ads, emails and posts.

After the campaign you can delete the page; if it sat in a menu, Shopify deletes that menu item with it. To send the old address somewhere useful, add a URL redirect once the page is gone, because Shopify can redirect only from broken URLs.

Check it before you send traffic

Tick these off once the page is built. The list keeps your progress in this browser, so you can come back to it before the next campaign.

Where the Theme Editor Runs Out

Where the native route stops is a judgement call, so here is ours, built from what Shopify and the builders publish. Five situations decide it:

Our rule of thumb: stay in the theme editor while your theme's sections can make the layout, even across several campaigns, because pages that share a layout can share one template. Consider a builder when you need layouts the theme can't make and expect to keep making them.

For one or two missing sections, the alternative to weigh against a builder's monthly plan is having those sections built into your theme through custom Shopify development, which leaves no app to pay for or remove later.

How far one template stretches

Templates have published size limits, and a single landing page sits far below them:

Source: Shopify Help Center, templates and sections and blocks (read October 11, 2026). Limits for individual block types are set by the theme's developer.

Which blocks you can add depends on the theme. A section accepts either theme blocks or section blocks, never a mix of both, and you only get theme blocks if your theme has sections that support them. Horizon does: Shopify lists the Horizon family among the themes that support theme blocks.

What that changes for whoever edits the store is covered in our Horizon guide.

Shopify Academy's demo shows a custom section being built in Horizon from grouped blocks, which is the closest official walkthrough of a layout made without an app:

Is Canvas the no-app alternative?

Not for every store yet. As of October 2026, Shopify says Canvas is in early access and "available only to certain stores". Where it is available, it works only with themes developed by Shopify and with custom themes, and you can't add or configure app blocks or app embeds in it. Whether your store qualifies is covered in who can use Canvas right now.

Page Builder Apps Compared

These six listings were read on the Shopify App Store on October 11, 2026. They are a snapshot of six builders, not every builder in the App Store, and the prices are what each listing showed that day.

Six builders on one screen

The cards lead with the free plan because it answers the first question, whether you can publish anything without paying, and the answers differ more than the prices do.

Source: each app's Shopify App Store listing, and each vendor's help center for the uninstall line, read October 11, 2026. Prices in USD per month; ratings and review counts as of that date.

What a builder costs in a year

Start with the most common case: one campaign page. PageFly, GemPages and EComposer each publish one page on their free plans (on PageFly and EComposer that one slot can be a section instead), so a single landing page costs $0 in app fees on any of them, the same as the theme editor. Shogun's free plan creates drafts but doesn't publish, Replo's only previews, and Instant's is for development stores.

Past one page, you pay for a plan. Here are twelve monthly charges for each builder's entry plan, next to the annual price where the listing shows one:

The table can't rank the builders, because the entry plans buy different limits: five pages or sections and up on PageFly, unlimited pages on GemPages, 25 pages on Shogun, 15 items on Replo, 15 pages or sections on EComposer, and unlimited landing pages with 10 Shopify theme sections on Instant. It also shows list prices only, and Replo's Starter adds $100/month for every 20 extra published items.

How a builder plugs into your theme

Shopify's help on apps in themes names three ways an app can add itself to your theme:

• App blocks add app functionality exactly where you want it, and you place, move or remove them in the theme editor. They work only with compatible themes.
• App embeds are elements that float or display as an overlay in your theme, or add code to your store without being visible to customers.
• Custom code: some apps inject code directly into your theme's code.

App embed blocks are deactivated by default after an app is installed, according to Shopify's developer documentation, so a builder's embed does nothing until you switch it on in the theme editor's app embed settings.

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Two more things matter for a landing page. Apps built on theme app extensions don't edit theme code, which Shopify says lowers the risk of breaking changes to your theme. And if you later publish a different theme, apps installed for the old one won't be active by default: you re-activate them in the new theme.

Replo's help is specific about its own footprint: when you publish Replo content, it creates page templates, section files and other support files that the content needs to work.

What Happens When You Remove a Builder

Exit is the part of a builder decision that is easiest to skip at install time. Shopify's side of it is general; each builder's side is specific, and the six differ more on exit than on price.

What Shopify says stays behind

Shopify's guide to uninstalling apps is plain that some apps add code to your online store theme that isn't automatically removed when you uninstall the app.

Shopify does describe an automatic clean-up for one kind of app. For apps built on theme app extensions, Shopify's developer guidelines say their blocks are "automatically and entirely removed" from online store themes when merchants uninstall. Code an app wrote into your theme files is a different matter, and Shopify's developer documentation names it bluntly:

Shopify requires developers whose app leaves code behind to give merchants instructions for removing it completely, which makes the vendor's help center the place to find the clean-up steps. What leftover app code looks like in a theme, and how to find it, is covered in our store code audit guide.

Billing runs on its own track. Uninstalling a paid app cancels future recurring charges, but you might still be billed for the current billing cycle, and uninstalling from your Shopify admin doesn't cancel charges an app bills outside Shopify.

What each builder does to your pages

Here is what each vendor's own help center said on October 11, 2026:

Leave a builder in this order

1. Read the builder's uninstall instructions. Shopify itself advises reviewing the app's listing or contacting the developer before uninstalling, to find out whether extra steps are needed.
2. Decide whether you need to uninstall at all. PageFly and GemPages both point to their free plans as the alternative: one publishable page or section on PageFly, live pages kept intact on GemPages.
3. Rebuild or redirect the pages you keep. Move a page worth keeping onto a native template before the builder goes, and follow the vendor's own order where it asks you to restore templates or delete pages first, as EComposer does.
4. Cancel billing the uninstall doesn't stop. Shopify says uninstalling an app from your admin doesn't cancel external charges, and Replo says its subscription stays active unless you downgrade to the free plan first.
5. Uninstall the app from the Apps page in your Shopify admin. Shopify's guide puts Uninstall in the menu on the app's row under Settings > Apps, which is where it sat in our development store on October 11, 2026.
6. Remove the leftover code the vendor names. GemPages and EComposer ask you to clean it before the app is removed, so do that before step five; Replo lists files to delete by hand.

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Will a Page Builder Slow Your Store Down?

If you want a figure for how much a builder slows a store, we could not find one from Shopify. None of the Shopify pages we read on October 11, 2026, which were the storefront performance and theme app extension documentation on shopify.dev, the App Store best practices page, and the Help Center pages on web performance reports and uninstalling apps, gives a JavaScript weight or a percentage slowdown for page builder apps as a category.

What Shopify does publish is how it tests. For apps that affect storefronts directly, Shopify measures the store's Lighthouse score before and after the app is installed (storefront performance guidance), and its best practices for App Store apps say an app shouldn't reduce Lighthouse performance scores by more than 10 points. That applies to apps in the Shopify App Store; it is not a promise about your store.

Your own numbers live in the Web performance reports, which Shopify says display how changes such as app installs, theme updates and new code affect your storefront experience. Check them before you install a builder and again after its first page goes live.

If the numbers do drop, how to check your own speed numbers walks through what to look at next.

The Bottom Line

Most campaign pages don't need an app. They need a template of their own, a deliberate choice about menus and search, and an address that won't change mid-campaign.

Frequently Asked Questions