What is an Instagram Shop?

Meta’s Commerce Platform page says its tools let ecommerce solutions and retailers sell their products “across Meta technologies, including Shops, Marketplace, and Instagram Shopping”. It describes the work as managing a product catalog and order flows, using the Graph API.

The Shops ads page adds the building blocks. A shop needs a Facebook Page or an Instagram account connected to it, and a catalog connected to it. Products in the catalog can be grouped into product sets, which ads then use.

That page also says that, in this setup, buyers discover products and build their carts on Facebook and Instagram, and the final checkout happens on the seller’s own website. Meta calls that offsite checkout. Your own payment tools stay in charge of taking the money.

• Whether Shops is available in your country. The Shops ads guide refers to a field listing the countries where offsite checkout is enabled for a shop, which suggests it varies by country.
• Whether your account type and products meet Meta’s commerce eligibility rules. The guide links to a commerce eligibility page for Shops ads.
• Whether you want buyers to pay in Instagram or on your own site, since the options available to you may differ.
• Who manages the catalog: you by hand, a feed, or a store platform connected to Meta.

We did not read an official page confirming current availability in any specific country, so we do not list countries here. Open the Shop settings in your own app and Meta’s commerce eligibility page.

A shop is passive: people have to open it. Many sellers combine it with a link in bio page for items outside the catalog and with replies in DMs for people who ask about a price. They are different routes to the same checkout, so keep prices the same in each place.

Tip: Keep product titles in the catalog short and specific, such as “Linen shirt, sand, size M”. Those titles show on cards and in ads, so a vague one costs you clicks.