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Automatic upsells are a powerful tool for increasing sales by showing relevant products at checkout, post-purchase, or on the thank-you page. However, there are times when these AI upsell offers do not appear or are skipped as intended. These troubleshooting steps will help you identify and resolve common issues preventing automatic upsells from working or being skipped.

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Which recommendation source is Aftersell using?

The recommendation source is set in Aftersell > Settings > Automatic upsells under the Product Recommendations app dropdown. The option you pick determines where recommendations come from, and where to look when they are missing.
  • Shopify (default). Uses Shopify’s own Recommendation API. Recommendations are generated from your store’s order history, so purchase correlation, order frequency, and product affinity all feed into what gets suggested. Missing or thin recommendations are managed in the Shopify Search & Discovery app, covered in the next section.
  • Nosto. Uses your connected Nosto account’s algorithm. Requires a Nosto API key. See Nosto integration for setup.
  • Constructor. Uses your connected Constructor account. Requires a Constructor API key (Index key), an API token, and a Pod ID for each surface (Post-Purchase, Checkout, and Thank You page). See Constructor integration for setup.
This setting applies to Post-Purchase, Checkout, and Thank You page upsells. Product Page Upsells always use Shopify Recommendations, regardless of the option you pick. Smart Funnel pulls from the same setting. If you switch sources, Smart Funnel picks up the change automatically.

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1. No “Related products” in Search & Discovery

Use the Shopify Search & Discovery app to view “Related products” in the Recommendations page. For stores with very few orders or for recently added products, Shopify may not auto-generate “Related products”. You can manually add “Related products” by clicking on the product title and using the section titled “Edit related products”. For more details on how “Related products” are selected, see this Shopify help document.

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2. Excluded products in Aftersell

Go to Aftersell > Settings > Automatic upsells > Excluded products to check if you have exclude products from automatic upsells. Look for selected collections that have a large number of products, such as “All Products”. If you have excluded too many products then there won’t be any “Related products” to show. We recommend keeping the exclusion list small and only excluding products that you absolutely do not want to upsell. Additionally, if you select “All products collection” as an exclusion, it will exclude every product in your store, effectively disabling upsells entirely. Be cautious with your exclusion settings, especially during specific periods when exclusions are active, as they might unintentionally prevent upsells from displaying. NOTE: Even if you don’t exclude every product from your store, you might still be excluding all items in the “Related products” section.

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3. Password protected online store

By default, automatic upsells using Shopify recommendations do not work on password-protected stores. Shopify’s public recommendations endpoint returns a password page instead of product data, so upsells are skipped. To use Shopify recommendations on a password-protected store:
  1. Go to Aftersell > Settings > Automatic upsells.
  2. Make sure Product recommendations app is set to Shopify. The Shopify AI recommendations setting only appears when Shopify is selected.
  3. If you see a Grant Shopify product access button under the Use the Storefront API for Shopify AI recommendations checkbox, click it to grant access. The checkbox stays disabled until access is granted.
  4. Select Use the Storefront API for Shopify AI recommendations, then click Save changes.
Aftersell verifies access before saving. If verification fails, a Storefront API setup failed banner asks you to check access and try again. If you prefer not to enable this, test with specific products instead of automatic upsells.