Oxygen is now available on development stores

Oxygen Hosting Now Supports Development Stores

Shopify has enabled Oxygen hosting for development stores, allowing developers to deploy Hydrogen storefronts without requiring a paid Shopify plan. Previously, Oxygen deployments were restricted to stores on paid subscriptions.

Access Restrictions on Development Store Deployments

Development store deployments come with a key limitation: they do not include public environments. All deployment URLs require store login credentials to access, preventing public-facing previews or testing without authentication. This differs from production Oxygen deployments on paid plans, which support publicly accessible storefronts.

Impact for Hydrogen Developers

This change removes a significant barrier for developers building custom storefronts with Hydrogen. Developers can now test the complete deployment pipeline on development stores before migrating clients to paid plans. This includes testing build processes, environment variables, and Oxygen-specific features like edge caching and serverless functions.

The authentication requirement means development store deployments work primarily for internal testing and client previews where sharing login credentials is acceptable. Developers cannot use these deployments for public demos or user acceptance testing with external stakeholders who lack store access.

What Developers Should Know

Development stores remain free to create and use for Partner account holders. The Oxygen integration follows the same deployment workflow as paid stores through the Shopify CLI and GitHub integration. Developers should plan for the authentication step when sharing preview links with clients or team members who need to review Hydrogen storefronts before production launch.

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