Short answer: out of the box, Shopify sends one abandoned checkout email. You can add more steps with Shopify Flow if your store is on the current automation, but each extra email is a marketing send with a consent requirement that most abandoned checkouts don't meet. Apps exist mostly to solve that second problem. The details, with Shopify's documentation linked, are below.
What the built-in email does
Shopify's abandoned checkout automation sends a single reminder with a link back to the checkout, after a fixed delay — the current automation defaults to a 10-hour wait. There is no second or third reminder, and no second channel. (The full list of what it does and doesn't do is in does Shopify have built-in abandoned cart emails?)
Adding more emails with Shopify Flow
If your store uses the current automation (not the legacy email under Settings → Checkout), its workflow lives in Shopify Flow and can be edited: Shopify's marketing automations documentation describes editing the workflow, including the wait time. In Flow you can add further "wait" and "send marketing email" steps, which is how a second and third reminder are built without an app.
Two things to know before you do that:
- Extra emails go to subscribed customers only. Marketing emails sent from Flow require the customer to be subscribed to email marketing; when they aren't, the run fails with the error merchants ask about on the Shopify Community — "Customer does not accept marketing". And because Shopify only records the checkout marketing checkbox once the shopper presses Pay now, most abandoned checkouts from first-time shoppers carry no recorded consent (details in why your abandoned checkout shows no marketing consent). The first, built-in email is the one place Shopify lets you widen the "To:" field to all customers; the steps you add don't get that exception.
- Timing is a fixed delay. Each wait step is a number of hours or days after the previous one. Nothing adapts to when your customers actually tend to buy (we've written about choosing a send time separately).
So a Flow-built sequence is a real option for stores whose abandoners are mostly returning subscribers, and a weak one for stores where most abandoned checkouts come from first-time shoppers.
Using a recovery app
Apps in this category typically run a multi-step sequence — two or three reminders, spaced out — with their own setting for who may be contacted and their own send timing. That's what Cartback does: up to three escalating touches, email plus an optional web push for shoppers who skip the inbox, timed from your store's buying rhythm rather than a fixed delay, with an explicit consent setting. If you go this route, turn the built-in email off so the same cart doesn't get two first reminders — here's how to turn off Shopify's abandoned checkout email.
How many is right?
More isn't automatically better. A common shape is a gentle first nudge, a second with the practical reasons to finish (shipping, returns, stock), and a last one with an incentive if you use one; after that, further emails mostly cost you unsubscribes. Whatever the count, the shopper's email address only exists for checkouts where they entered it — carts without contact details can't be emailed at all, which is the difference explained in abandoned cart vs. abandoned checkout.