A free store an agency or freelancer creates from a Shopify Partner account to build a client's store; it cannot take real orders, and when the store is ready its ownership is transferred to the client, who picks a plan.
Agencies and freelancers who build Shopify stores for clients join Shopify’s Partner program, which is free. From the Partner Dashboard they can create development stores:
- free, for as long as the store is being built;
- with every Shopify feature to try, and test payments;
- unable to take real orders.
When the store is ready, the partner transfers ownership to the client. The client accepts by email and chooses a Shopify plan. The transfer cannot be undone, and a store whose transfer is never accepted is lost.
The Partner account also gives one login for every client store, and a share of the client’s Shopify subscription when it comes through a partner.
In Webflow terms
It is the Shopify side of building a site in your own Webflow workspace and transferring it to the client when it is done. For a Smootify store, both are transferred: the store and the site.
In Smootify
After both transfers, the client creates a Smootify account, the project is shared or transferred to them, they pick a plan, and the Webflow site is connected again.
More in Hand a project to a client.