How to Hide the Shipping Protection Product on Shopify

To hide the shipping protection product on Shopify, set its status to Unlisted. Shopify then leaves it out of its own collection pages, storefront search, predictive search and product recommendations. The product still works in the cart, at checkout and on orders. If it keeps showing up after that, the cause is almost always a theme section, a smart collection or a third-party app, and each has a quick fix below.

For how the fee itself works, start with the shipping protection guide.

Why does a shipping protection product show up in my store?

Shopify can only add a fee to the cart as a product. So when you turn on a protection app, it creates a product for the fee, and the cart widget adds that product when a customer opts in.

With Sam Shipping Protection, the app creates two protection products: one for fixed pricing and one for percentage pricing. Both use the product type sam_protect_shipping, and the default title is “Shipping Insurance”. The app creates them as Unlisted.

Problems start when the status changes or a store setup ignores it. Common examples:

• Someone bulk-edits products and sets everything to Active.
• An older theme builds its homepage grid or related products in a way that lists every product.
• A smart collection has a broad condition, such as “price is greater than 0”, that the fee product also matches.
• A third-party search, filter or upsell app pulls the full catalog.

A fee product in a “You may also like” row looks odd to customers. It can also end up in a bundle or upsell suggestion, which nobody wants.

How do you hide it with the Unlisted status?

Unlisted is Shopify’s built-in way to keep a product sellable but out of sight. Shopify’s own example use cases include warranty add-ons and products sold only as part of a bundle, which is the same situation as a protection fee.

1. In Shopify admin, go to Products.
2. Filter by Product type and pick sam_protect_shipping. You should see both protection products.
3. Open each one and, in the Status section, choose Unlisted.
4. Click Save.

Sam’s user guide shows the same steps with screenshots in Rename the protection product, which is also where you change the title and image customers see at checkout.

What does Unlisted hide, and what does it not?

The source for this table is Shopify’s product status guide and its developer note on how unlisted products are hidden.

Which statuses should you never use?

Do not set the protection product to Draft or Archived to hide it. Shopify only lets customers buy a product when it is Active or Unlisted, so either status stops protection from being added to the cart.

Sam’s guide adds a few more rules for this product:

• Don’t delete it. Protection can’t be added to orders without it.
• Don’t change the product type (sam_protect_shipping). The app uses it to find the product.
• Don’t change the price or variants. The app sets the price from your protection pricing settings.

Renaming the product and changing its image are fine.

What if the product still appears after you set it to Unlisted?

Work through these checks in order. Most stores only need the first one or two.

1. Check the status again

Reopen both products and confirm the status reads Unlisted. A bulk edit, a product import or another app can change it. If you hide only one of the two, the other can still show up.

2. Exclude it from smart collections

If a collection still lists the fee product, add a condition to that smart collection:

• Product type · is not equal to · sam_protect_shipping

This works when the collection is set to match all conditions. Shopify’s smart collections guide explains the difference between “all conditions” and “any condition”. With “any condition”, the exclusion doesn’t filter anything out, so make sure none of your conditions matches the protection product.

For a homepage “All products” grid, Sam’s guide suggests creating a smart collection named “All” with only that one condition.

Shopify is rolling out a new collections model to replace legacy manual and smart collections, so the labels in your admin may look different. The idea is the same: filter out the product type.

3. Skip it in related products

Some themes build related products in Liquid instead of Shopify’s recommendation block. You can skip the protection product inside the loop by checking product.type. Sam’s guide on hiding the protection product shows a Dawn example for related-products.liquid:

{% for recommendation in recommendations.products %}
  {% if recommendation.type != 'sam_protect_shipping' %}
    {% render 'card-product', card_product: recommendation %}
  {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

Keep whatever other parameters your theme passes to card-product. Only the if line and its endif are new. Duplicate your theme before editing code, so you can roll back.

4. Hide it from search with seo.hidden

If storefront search still returns the product, Sam’s guide describes a metafield fix:

1. Go to Settings > Metafields and metaobjects > Products and click Add definition.
2. Name it, for example “Hide from search”. Set Namespace and key to seo.hidden and Type to Integer.
3. Open each protection product, find the new metafield and set it to 1.

5. Check third-party apps

Shopify notes that third-party search or recommendation apps that aren’t integrated with the Unlisted status may still show unlisted products. Its developer docs also note that Admin API versions before 2025-10 report unlisted products as active.

So if the product appears inside an app-powered search bar, filter, quiz or upsell widget, look in that app’s settings for an exclusion by product type or tag. If there is none, ask the app’s developer to exclude sam_protect_shipping. Sam’s in-app FAQ suggests the same product type condition for compatibility with other apps.

How do you hide it from bundles, upsells and feeds?

The fee product should never be part of an offer. A few places to check:

• Bundle and upsell apps: exclude the product type sam_protect_shipping from product pickers and automatic recommendations.
• Free shipping bars and cart goals: decide whether the protection fee counts toward the threshold, and set that rule on purpose.
• Product feeds and marketplaces: Shopify says you can’t publish unlisted products to third-party sales channels, and they aren’t included in contextual product feeds. If a feed app still exports it, exclude it by product type in that app.

If you price protection as a percentage of the cart, Sam’s exclusion settings let you leave chosen products out of the price calculation. That is a separate setting from hiding the product.

How do you check the fix worked?

Test from a private browser window, not while logged in as admin:

1. Open your homepage and every collection that used to show the fee product.
2. Search for the product title, for example “Shipping Insurance” or your renamed title, in the search bar and the predictive dropdown.
3. Open a few product pages and check related products and “You may also like” rows.
4. Add an item to the cart, turn protection on, and confirm the widget adds the fee and the total updates.
5. Go to checkout and confirm the protection line item is there.

Steps 4 and 5 matter as much as the first three. Hiding the product should change where it is listed, never whether it can be bought. If the widget itself is missing, see how to add shipping protection to Shopify checkout and shipping protection in a cart drawer.

What should customers see instead?

Once the product is hidden from browsing, customers should only meet protection in two places: the cart widget and the line item at checkout. Make both clear:

• Rename the product to match how you talk about it, for example “Order Protection” or “Delivery Guarantee”. Sam’s guide notes that if you call it “insurance”, your policy should match how you actually handle claims, since Sam does not underwrite coverage.
• Use a clear widget with the price and a link to your policy. See package protection widget design.
• Pick the right default. Whether the widget starts on or off affects trust as much as layout does. See opt-in vs auto-add shipping protection.

If your theme is heavily customized and you get stuck, Sam’s guide says the support team can make the change for you on request.