Best Shopify Courses (2026): Free and Paid, Ranked

This morning I typed shopifyacademy.com into my browser to check something for this post, and it bounced me straight to Shopify's blog.

Shopify had announced that Academy would sunset on October 29, 2026, and it went right on schedule. The thing that sat at the top of Google for "shopify course" for years is just gone. So if you searched for a Shopify course this week and landed on a dead link or a pile of four-year-old Reddit threads, that's why.

CodingPhase wrote this post, and our Ecommerce Specialist path is one of the picks below.

My pick: if you want to get paid for Shopify work, take the Ecommerce Specialist path. It takes you from zero to job-ready in a set order, has you build portfolio projects along the way, and then helps with the job hunt itself. Shopify's free docs and the other courses here make great companions to it.

What happened to Shopify Academy?

Shopify Academy closed on October 29, 2026, and its URLs now redirect to the Shopify blog (I checked on November 2). Shopify said it would refund every paid Academy purchase by October 31, and that credentials people already earned stay valid until January 1, 2028. Shopify also dropped Academy certifications as a Partner Program tier requirement.

What's still there is the reference material. The developer docs at shopify.dev, the Help Center, and the developer community forum all still work. What ended is the structured path, the "do this lesson, then this one, then take the exam" part, which was the part most beginners needed.

So the question changed. It used to be "should I pay for a Shopify course when Shopify gives one away?" Now it's "who gives me the path, and who gets me from there to a paycheck?"

How I picked these

I judged every pick on four things.

It matches a real goal. "Learn Shopify" can mean running your own store, building themes for other people's stores, or getting hired on an ecommerce team. I ranked for the goal most of our readers have, which is getting hired, and noted where each other pick fits.
You build something you can show. A live dev store, a customized theme, a mock store with a real email flow. Watching someone else click around the admin doesn't count.
It's current enough. Shopify changes a lot. A theme course from 2021 still teaches Liquid fine, but it won't know about whatever Shopify shipped this spring.
The price is honest. Every price below is one I looked up on November 2, 2026. Where I couldn't find a reliable number, I left it out instead of guessing.

A small business owner at a bright desk setting up an online store for handmade mugs on a laptop, learning Shopify store basics

1. CodingPhase Ecommerce Specialist path: best overall for getting hired

The Ecommerce Specialist path is 11 courses in a set order. It starts at HTML and CSS, moves through JavaScript, Git and the terminal, then goes into Liquid and two Shopify theme development courses. The main one, Shopify Theme Development 2.0, is 64 lessons. By the end you're the person other stores pay to make theirs faster and better at turning visitors into orders.

The path is built for someone starting from zero who wants to end up building themes for money. It tells you exactly what to learn next, so you don't burn three months jumping between YouTube videos.

You finish with portfolio projects, and the membership wraps the job hunt around them:

Portfolio templates, so a recruiter sees your work at its best.
An ATS-ready résumé builder and a job board for the applications.
An 80,000+ member community of people doing the same thing you are.
Two live calls every week: Accountability on Wednesdays at 7 PM ET and Money Talk on Sundays at 8 PM ET.

The path is free to start, so you can open it with a CodingPhase account and see if the work suits you. When you're ready for all of it, it's part of Diamond Membership: list price $60/month or $365/year, always at least 30% off, so about $42/month or about $255/year. That covers the Shopify path and every other course we have (90+ of them), and there's a 7-day money-back guarantee. I've been teaching since 2016, and this is the side of Shopify I teach.

If you're weighing whether the career is worth it at all, start with how to become a Shopify developer, then read the Shopify developer salary guide for what the jobs pay. Our students land roles at $75k+ (individual results vary), and the guide gives you the wider market picture.

A Shopify theme developer at a dual-monitor desk editing Liquid theme code next to a live store preview

Good companions to the path

Everything below is worth your time. Most of it is free, and each one is great at a specific job, usually teaching you a platform's own buttons straight from the source.

2. shopify.dev, the Skeleton theme and the CLI (free)

The theme docs at shopify.dev walk you through creating a new theme from Shopify's Skeleton theme, and the Shopify CLI lets you preview and test your changes locally. When you get stuck, community.shopify.dev is where Shopify's own developers answer questions.

Keep these open next to the path. The docs are written by the people shipping the features, so they're the place to check anything Shopify released in the last few months. They're a reference, though, and they assume you already know HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which is what the path's early courses give you. If you want a feel for the tooling, I wrote up the Shopify developer tools worth installing.

3. Shopify's Help Center plus a free YouTube walkthrough (free)

If what you want right now is your own store online by Friday, this is the quick route. The Help Center at help.shopify.com is the most accurate source on how the admin works, because Shopify updates it when the product changes. Pair it with one long free walkthrough on YouTube. Right now the top video results for "shopify course" include a seven-hour free beginner course and a two-hour master class, both dated 2026.

Open a store alongside it and follow along with your own products. Plenty of these creators earn affiliate commissions on Shopify apps, so be a little skeptical when a video insists you need four paid apps on day one.

4. Klaviyo Academy (free)

Email is where a lot of Shopify stores make their repeat revenue, and Klaviyo is the email platform many of those stores run on. Klaviyo Academy is free, with short courses, live trainings and certificates (a Klaviyo practitioner certificate, a developer certificate, a deliverability certificate and more), each earned through a final exam.

If you can build a store and set up a welcome flow and an abandoned-cart flow that actually make money, you're a lot more useful to a small brand. My Klaviyo vs Shopify Email breakdown covers which tool fits which store.

5. Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Certificate on Coursera

Its strength is name recognition, since a Google certificate is easy for a recruiter to read at a glance. Coursera's page lists it as an 8-course series that takes about 6 months at 10 hours a week, priced at $49 per month after a 7-day free trial in the U.S. and Canada (it's also included with Coursera Plus). One course has you set up a mock store on Shopify.

It's a broad marketing certificate with an ecommerce module rather than a Shopify course, so it fits people heading toward coordinator roles. For a look at that side of the work, read what an ecommerce manager actually does and browse the ecommerce jobs guide.

6. A single Udemy course

Udemy has plenty of Shopify store courses, and they go on sale constantly. Quality varies a lot, so read the "last updated" date and the most recent reviews before you buy. If it hasn't been updated this year, the admin screenshots won't match what you see.

7. LinkedIn Learning, if you already pay for it

When I checked, LinkedIn Learning listed three Shopify courses, including Shopify Essential Training and Ecommerce Fundamentals. If your job or your LinkedIn Premium already includes Learning, they're a tidy way to spend a weekend.

An ecommerce manager's desk with a store sales dashboard, an email campaign on a tablet and a promotions calendar, the non-coding side of a Shopify career

Which Shopify course should you take?

You want to get hired building Shopify stores and themes. Start the Ecommerce Specialist path, and keep shopify.dev open beside it.

You want to be the all-round ecommerce person a small brand hires. The path for the build skills, plus Klaviyo Academy for the email flows.

You just want your own store live this week. The Help Center and one YouTube walkthrough will get you there. If you catch the bug and want to do it for clients, the path is the next step.

If I had to boil the whole post down: let Shopify's free docs teach you the buttons, and let a real path take you from knowing the platform to getting paid for it.

FAQ

Is Shopify Academy still available? No. Shopify closed Academy on October 29, 2026, and shopifyacademy.com now redirects to the Shopify blog. Credentials you already earned stay valid until January 1, 2028. The free docs at shopify.dev and the Help Center are still up. I go deeper on what still counts in Shopify developer certifications.

Which Shopify course is best? For getting hired, the CodingPhase Ecommerce Specialist path. It's a guided path from zero to job-ready with portfolio projects, an ATS-ready résumé builder, a job board and two live calls a week, and it's free to start. Use shopify.dev and Klaviyo Academy alongside it.

Is there a free course for learning Shopify? Yes, just not one official course anymore. For running a store, use the Shopify Help Center plus one long free YouTube walkthrough. For theme development, use the theme docs at shopify.dev with the Skeleton theme and the Shopify CLI. For ecommerce email, Klaviyo Academy is free. Our Ecommerce Specialist path is free to start too.

What's the best way to learn Shopify? Build while you learn. Open a store or a development store on day one and follow every lesson with your own products or your own theme. In my experience the people who only watch videos stall early, and the ones who ship something ugly in the first week tend to keep going.

Is learning Shopify still worth it in 2026? I think so. Plenty of brands still run on Shopify and need people who can build their stores and keep them selling. AI makes the work faster, but someone still has to know what a good product page looks like and why the checkout is leaking sales. I wrote a longer take in is Shopify development a good career.

Academy is gone, but most of what made it useful is still sitting on shopify.dev and the Help Center for free. What you need now is someone to put the pieces in order and stay with you until you're getting paid for it.

That's what the Ecommerce Specialist path is for. Look through the course list and see whether it matches where you want to end up. The plans are on our pricing page, with a 7-day money-back guarantee if it turns out not to be for you. Open a store tonight and build something. I'd love to hear how it goes.