Get started with SmartSort AI

SmartSort AI automatically organizes the products in your Shopify collections: best sellers up, sold-out products down, new arrivals and featured products in the spotlight. This guide takes you from install to your first sorted collection.

Before you start

• SmartSort AI works on every Shopify plan and with every theme. It doesn’t edit your theme or add code to your storefront pages.
• It sorts a collection by switching it to Shopify’s manual sort order and moving products into position — exactly what you’d do by dragging products in your Shopify admin, only automatic.
• Both manual and automated (smart) collections can be sorted. Shopify still decides which products belong to an automated collection; SmartSort AI decides their order.

1. Install the app

Install SmartSort AI from the Shopify App Store and approve the permissions Shopify shows. SmartSort AI opens inside your Shopify admin, on the Dashboard.

New stores start on the free plan, so you can try everything below without choosing a plan first. See Plans and billing for the limits of each plan.

2. Let the first sync finish

Right after install, SmartSort AI imports your store in the background, in three steps: products (with variants, prices, costs and inventory), collections (with their current product order) and orders from the last 60 days (line items only — see Privacy and data).

The Dashboard shows the progress. A few hundred products take a minute or two; a catalog of 100,000 products can take longer. You can set up your rules while it runs.

Tip: After the first sync, SmartSort AI keeps everything current with Shopify’s webhooks and runs a full check every night, so you never need to sync by hand. If something looks out of date, Settings has a button to sync again.

3. Set your sorting rules

Open Sorting rules. These are the store-wide rules every collection follows unless you give it its own settings. A good starting point:

1. Sort by: Number of sales – high to low, with Newest first as the secondary sort for products that sold the same amount.
2. Lookback: 30 days of orders.
3. Out of stock: push out-of-stock products to the bottom.
4. New products: promote products created in the last 14 days.

Save. Nothing changes in your store until a collection is turned on. Sorting rules explains every option.

4. Turn on your first collection

On the Dashboard, find a collection in the list and choose Turn on. SmartSort AI sorts it right away — usually in a few seconds — and then keeps it sorted on your schedule.

Note: Your plan sets how many collections SmartSort AI can sort. Collections you don’t turn on are never touched.

Before turning on an important collection, you can open it and use Preview to see the current and the new order side by side. See Preview, undo and restore.

5. Check the result

Open the collection on your online store. The first products should now be your best sellers and new arrivals, with sold-out products at the end.

If a shopper picks another option from your theme’s Sort by menu, they see that order instead — SmartSort AI sets the collection’s default order.

6. Choose when to re-sort

By default collections re-sort once a day. In Sorting rules you can pick the time (in your store’s time zone), re-sort more often on plans that allow it, or turn on real-time re-sorting after stock-outs and new products. See Schedules and real-time sorting.

Next steps

• Pin hero products to the top with Featured products.
• Give a collection its own strategy with Collection settings.
• Learn exactly how the order is decided in How sorting works.