Multiple domains, one store
Running multiple domains on one Shopify store
Yes, you can. Several domains can point at a single Shopify store and each can serve the storefront under its own name, without redirecting anywhere. One setting decides it. This page covers that setting, what you keep by doing it this way, and the two things it does not give you.
Redirect or alias: the one setting
Add a domain under Settings › Domains in your Shopify admin and it lands with the redirect behaviour on. In that state the domain is not a storefront — it is a shortcut. A visitor typing it is bounced to your primary domain, and the address bar changes to prove it.
Turn the redirect off and the same domain serves the storefront under its own hostname, address bar intact. Shopify calls this an alias domain. That single toggle is the whole difference between owning a name and running a brand on it.
We confirmed this on a live store on the Basic plan, with two extra domains: set to redirect, both bounced to primary; set to non-redirect, both served the storefront directly, HTTP 200, zero redirects. You do not need Shopify Plus, and you do not need a separate store per brand.
Shopify’s per-plan limit on domains and subdomains is far above what a multi-brand catalogue needs, but it does vary by plan — check the current figure in Shopify’s own domain documentation rather than trusting a number in a blog post.
One store versus separate stores
The alternative is a Shopify store per brand. It is a real option and sometimes the right one. What it costs:
| Domains on one store | A store per brand | |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify subscriptions | One | One per brand |
| Inventory | One stock figure, shared | Separate, and needs syncing if stock is shared |
| Products | One catalogue, assigned to brands | Duplicated per store, kept in step by an app |
| Orders and fulfilment | One queue | One queue per store |
| Admin and staff accounts | One | One set per store |
| Apps | Paid for once | Paid for per store, usually |
| Genuinely separate operations | No — everything is shared | Yes |
| Separate search identity out of the box | No — see below | Yes |
Scroll the table sideways to compare both columns.
The trade is straightforward. Separate stores give each brand a clean separation of everything, including search, and charge you a subscription and a sync problem for it. One store keeps your operations simple and leaves exactly one gap: search identity. That gap is fillable. The subscription and the sync problem are not.
What you keep
- One stock figure. A unit sells once, from whichever brand sold it. Nothing to reconcile and no overselling from a stale sync.
- One product record. Edit a price or a description once. It is correct on every brand that sells it.
- One order queue. Fulfilment, returns and customer service happen in one place, whatever domain the order came from.
- One theme codebase, if you want it. Brands can share a theme and differ by domain, or you can run a separate theme per domain through Shopify Markets. Sharing one is less to maintain.
- One app bill. Most apps price per store, so brands on one store share the cost instead of multiplying it.
Where clicks still go to the primary
Worth knowing before you launch, because it surprises people. On the store we audited, the alias domain’s homepage had 237 relative links against 5 absolute links pointing at the primary domain. Almost everything stays on the brand’s own domain; the handful that leave are the ones a human typed in as full URLs, usually navigation items and the logo link.
The fix is to re-enter those few navigation items as relative paths (/collections/new rather than https://primary-domain.com/collections/new). Ten minutes in the navigation editor.
Two things always hop to the primary domain and cannot be changed: checkout and customer account login. Shopify controls both. Shoppers are used to a checkout on a different hostname, and it does not affect which domain search engines credit for a product page, but you should know it happens rather than discover it during a test order.
The catch nobody mentions
Your domains now serve the storefront. What they also do, by default, is describe themselves identically to search engines. On the store we measured — three domains, 313 products — every domain served a sitemap containing the whole catalogue, and every page on the secondary domains carried a canonical tag crediting the primary domain.
So each brand advertises its siblings’ products as its own, and simultaneously tells search engines that a different storefront owns the pages. Neither is a setting you can switch off in the admin; Shopify’s sitemap is generated and cannot be filtered, and the canonical tag comes from your theme layout.
The full measurement, and the three files that change it, is the next page.
Where to go next
Umbrella closes that one gap: a sitemap per storefront listing only what belongs to that brand, canonical tags that name the owning brand, and a robots.txt that stops crawlers being pointed at Shopify’s whole-catalogue sitemap. Your store stays one store.
Install on Shopify See pricing
- Shopify multi-storefront SEO: what happens by default — the measurements, and how to check your own store in one command.
- Documentation — domain setup, the four steps, and the one manual theme edit.
- Pricing — priced by connected storefronts, whole engine on every plan.
- Why every Shopify domain serves the same sitemap — the correction to the guides that say each domain gets its own.
- Shopify canonical tags with multiple domains — what your theme emits on a second domain.
- Markets, currencies and languages — if your store also sells in several countries.
- Four ways to run several brands on Shopify — what each arrangement costs, and what each gives up.