Check that Product Upsells is enabled on the drawer that is actually live. Editing a draft while a different drawer serves customers is the most common cause by a distance. After that, the usual reasons are a trigger product that is not in the cart, or an upsell product the customer already has.
In this article:
Step 1: Check you are editing the live drawer
Only one cart drawer is active at a time.
Open
Cart Upsellsand look at theStatuscolumn.The row marked
Activeis the one customers see.Confirm that is the drawer you configured.
If you have been editing a draft, your changes saved correctly to a drawer nobody sees. See Why do I have more than one cart drawer, and which one is live?
Step 2: Check the module is enabled
Open the live drawer and select Product Upsells. It must show Enabled.
If it is disabled you will see: "Product Upsells are not shown because it is disabled. Activate to show it in your cart. You can preview changes before saving." Select Activate, then Save.
Step 3: Check the trigger products
The trigger controls when the upsell appears.
Open
Configure Upsell Products.Look at
Trigger Product.
Setting | Behaviour |
| Shows for any cart |
| Shows only when one of those products is in the cart |
If it is set to specific triggers, your test cart must contain one of them. Testing with a different product will correctly show nothing.
💡 To rule this out quickly, switch to All Products, save, and test again. If the upsell appears, your trigger configuration was the issue and you can set it back with confidence about what to fix.
Step 4: Check the upsell products
Look at the Upsell Product side of the same panel.
At least one product must be selected, unless you are using AI recommendations
Each product must be published to the Online Store sales channel in Shopify
Each must be in stock, unless you allow overselling
A product that is out of stock or unpublished cannot be offered.
Step 5: Check the already-in-cart setting
Show upsell product if already in cart? decides whether an upsell keeps appearing once the customer has added it.
If this is off, which is the sensible default, the upsell disappears as soon as it is in the cart. That is correct behaviour. Check it before assuming something is broken: testing repeatedly with the same cart will make the upsell vanish after your first add.
Clear your cart and test again.
If you are using AI recommendations
Two different causes, depending on the algorithm.
Complementary requires relationships you configure in Shopify's Search & Discovery app. If you have not set any up, there is nothing for Atlas to show. This is the single most common cause of empty AI recommendations.
Related works from your order history, product descriptions and shared collections. A new store with few orders may produce no recommendation for some carts.
To confirm the module itself works, switch temporarily to manual selection and pick a product. If it appears, the module is fine and the recommendation source is the issue. See Using AI product recommendations in the cart.
If the whole drawer is missing
If the Atlas cart drawer itself is not opening, upsells are not the problem. Start with Why isn't my cart drawer showing on my store?
Still not appearing
Start a chat from the bubble in the bottom right of Atlas, or email support@helloatlas.io. Either way, include:
your store URL
the name of your active cart drawer
which trigger and upsell products you selected
whether you are using AI recommendations, and which algorithm
a product URL you can reproduce it with

