With the release of Shopify’s new Horizon themes, a lot of merchants are excited, and understandably so. It’s sleek, modern, and marketed as optimized for conversion. But here’s the catch: there’s zero official documentation, and much of what makes Horizon “tick” is deeply tied to Shopify’s Plus and Enterprise Commerce-exclusive features particularly combined listings (aka product families).

So before you dive in, here’s what you need to know (from the trenches - not the docs):

Horizon Is Built for Combined Listings

At first glance, Horizon looks like a flexible product-focused theme with large media and a minimalist design. But once you get into the product page behaviour, it becomes clear: this theme expects your products to be set up as “siblings” (separate products linked together to simulate a variant picker).

Sibling behaviours:

• Changing colours or styles doesn’t update a variant; it navigates to another product.

• That’s because Horizon is designed for Shopify’s Combined Listings, a feature that lets brands group multiple products (like "Black Hoodie," "Blue Hoodie") into a unified frontend experience.

Sounds great, right? The catch: Combined Listings are currently available only to Shopify Plus or Enterprise Commerce merchants.

What This Means for Non-Plus Merchants

If you’re on a standard Shopify plan, you can still install Horizon, but you’ll likely run into friction:

• If you're using traditional variant-based products, Horizon’s swatches might not behave as expected.

• Variant selections can feel disconnected or even redirect customers to unexpected product pages.

• Managing SEO and product linking without official tools takes manual workarounds (or apps, or dev time).

• You might think the theme editor is haunted because what you see in the editor is not what you see on your storefront.

In short: Horizon “works” without Plus, but it doesn’t shine.

Why There’s Confusion

The biggest issue? There’s no documentation. Shopify hasn't released a support guide, no onboarding video, and theme developers haven’t explained how to configure Horizon properly for different product types. So naturally, we did.

Everything our team has learned has come from:

• Exporting CSVs and analyzing Shopify’s new Option Linked To fields

• Testing Horizon on our own site, and in real-world client builds

• Digging through the theme code and Liquid logic

• Trial and error, and a whole lot of guesswork

Should You Use Horizon?

If you’re on Shopify Plus and using or planning to use combined listings, Horizon is worth exploring - it’s clearly designed with this product model in mind.

If you’re not on Plus, here’s our advice:

• Wait or choose a different theme unless you’re comfortable modifying the product page templates (we love siblings and have several examples in our client case studies).

• Consider custom development to better align Horizon’s UI with traditional variant structures

• Or stay tuned; Shopify may eventually make combined listings available beyond Plus and Enterprise.

Final Thoughts

Horizon isn’t broken, but it’s ahead of the documentation curve and tied to a product model most merchants can’t fully access yet.

If you're a Shopify merchant considering Horizon and want help figuring out if it's the right fit, feel free to reach out. Our team’s already done the digging, so you don’t have to.