How do we tell if a merchants Plus store is a Plus 'Staging' store?

GraphQL Admin API Troubleshooting
1

We have a Shopify Plus merchant whose admin UI labels their store as “Staging”. However, when our app connects to the store, all we see is:

{ "displayName": "Shopify Plus", "shopifyPlus": true, "publicDisplayName": "Plus", "partnerDevelopment": false }

From our side, this looks exactly like a standard Plus production store, not a development/sandbox environment, so we can’t safely treat it as a free dev store.

My questions:

  1. Is this “Staging” label part of a newer Plus feature where merchants can create or clone Plus stores specifically for dev/staging?

  2. Is there any official flag or API field that indicates a store is a staging/non‑live environment (distinct from a Partner dev store), or is “Staging” just a name the merchant has given to a normal Plus store?

  3. For apps: how can we programmatically tell the difference between:

    • A Partner/Dev Dashboard development store (which we might treat more freely as a test environment), and

    • A paid Plus store that the merchant considers “staging” but is technically a normal Plus instance that can go live?

Right now, with shopifyPlus: true and partnerDevelopment: false, our assumption is that this is a regular paid Plus store that should be treated as production‑grade, regardless of the “Staging” label in the UI.

Can anyone confirm whether that’s the correct interpretation and whether any new flags exist for formal Plus staging stores?

2

Your interpretation is correct based on the fields you’re receiving.

At the moment, if the store returns:
{
“shopifyPlus”: true,
“partnerDevelopment”: false
}

then the store should generally be treated as a normal paid Shopify Plus store, regardless of whether the Shopify admin UI labels it as “Staging”.

As far as we’re aware:

  • The “Staging” label is not currently exposed as a dedicated API flag.
  • Shopify does not appear to provide an official public field that distinguishes a Plus sandbox/staging environment from a production Plus store.
  • The only clearly identifiable non-production environment exposed via API today is the Partner development store (partnerDevelopment: true).

Many Plus merchants create additional expansion/staging stores and manually label them internally as “Staging”, but technically these are still regular Plus stores that can go live at any time. Because of that, apps should generally treat them as production-grade unless there is an explicit merchant-side configuration indicating otherwise.

So from an app logic perspective, your current assumption is the safest approach:

  • partnerDevelopment: true → Partner development/test store
  • shopifyPlus: true + partnerDevelopment: false → regular paid Plus environment (even if merchant calls it staging)

At this time, we’re not aware of any newer public API flags that formally identify “Plus staging stores” separately from standard Plus stores.