Web push on Shopify: what works, honestly

Why it’s tricky

A service worker only controls pages inside its own path on its own origin. To receive notifications for every page of yourstore.com, the worker must load from yourstore.com/sw.js. Shopify doesn’t let merchants publish a file at that path. App proxies exist, but they live under /apps/…, which limits the worker to those pages only.

Options that work

Option	Effort	Coverage
Cloudflare Worker route on yourstore.com/sw.js serving Pusharoo’s file, plus the snippet in theme.liquid	Medium (domain must be proxied by Cloudflare)	Whole store
Shopify App Proxy	High (custom app)	Only /apps/… pages
Collect on a site you own (blog, landing page) and link to the store	Low	That site’s visitors

Step-by-step notes are in the docs. Before proxying a Shopify domain through Cloudflare, check Shopify’s current guidance on third-party proxies for custom domains.

Adding the snippet in Shopify

Online Store → Themes → Edit code → theme.liquid, paste the Pusharoo script tag right before </head>. Without a working /sw.js, the snippet stays quiet rather than showing a prompt that can’t work.

Plays once it’s running

Back-in-stock and flash-sale pushes are the classic winners. See ecommerce push notifications.

How the Cloudflare Worker route works

1. Your store’s custom domain must be proxied by Cloudflare (orange cloud).
2. Create a Worker that fetches https://pusharoo.com/sw.js and returns it with Content-Type: application/javascript and Cache-Control: no-store.
3. Add a route for yourstore.com/sw.js pointing at that Worker.
4. Open https://yourstore.com/sw.js in a browser to confirm it serves JavaScript.
5. Paste the snippet in theme.liquid, then subscribe and send yourself a test.

The browser now sees the worker as part of your store’s origin, so the whole store is covered.

What the Worker actually does

The downloadable Worker answers only /sw.js — with your site key built in and no-store caching — and passes every other request straight through to Shopify. It doesn’t touch checkout, cookies or pages. If you remove the route, push stops working for new subscribers; existing subscriptions keep their worker until browsers check for updates. Test after any DNS change, because Shopify’s domain verification and certificates expect specific records (check Shopify’s current guidance before proxying a store domain).

Shopify events for automations

Once the snippet runs in theme.liquid, you can send events from your theme: Pusharoo.track('added_to_cart') after the cart AJAX call succeeds, and Pusharoo.track('purchase') through Shopify’s order status page additional scripts (where your plan and checkout version allow custom scripts). With those, a cart-reminder automation with “stop if purchase” works without an app (how).

App vs. Worker approach

	Shopify push app	Pusharoo + Worker
Setup	Install from the App Store	Cloudflare Worker + snippet
Needs Cloudflare proxy	No	Yes
Pricing	Often by notifications or subscribers	Free, unlimited
Store data (products, orders)	Read by the app	Only what you send as events/tags

See Brevo PushOwl alternative for a dated price comparison.

Before you go live

• Only one service worker on the store (remove any other push app first).
• Rocket Loader and script optimizers off for /sw.js.
• Test on Android Chrome and, if you use a manifest, on iPhone from the Home Screen.

Questions

Keep reading

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