How to Create a Facebook Catalog Without Shopify

What you need

• A Meta business portfolio (Business Manager) and access to Commerce Manager, where catalogs live.
• A website where each product has its own page - every product in the catalog links to it.
• Product data for every item, in the fields Meta requires.

In Commerce Manager, create a catalog, choose E-commerce (online products) as the type, and pick how you'll add items. Those choices are the four options below.

Option 1: Add products by hand in Commerce Manager

Commerce Manager has a form for adding items one at a time. It's fine for a handful of products, but every price change and every sold-out item has to be edited by hand.

Option 2: Upload a Facebook catalog CSV

Build a spreadsheet with one row per product and one column per field, save it as a Facebook catalog CSV (or TSV, XLSX, or XML), and upload it as a data feed. This is the quickest way to add many products at once - but a one-time upload doesn't update itself. When something changes, you upload the file again. Our free Facebook Catalog CSV Template Generator gives you the right columns to start from.

Option 3: A scheduled Meta Commerce Manager data feed

Instead of uploading the file, host it at a URL and let Meta fetch it on a schedule - hourly, daily, or weekly. This is the best option for most shops without Shopify: change your product data once and every Facebook and Instagram surface picks it up on the next fetch. Scheduled Data Feeds in Commerce Manager walks through setting one up.

Option 4: Use your Meta Pixel

Commerce Manager can also add items automatically from the Meta Pixel on your website, using product details (microdata) on your product pages. It needs that structured product data on every page, so it works best on platforms that already output it.

The fields every product needs

Whichever method you use, each product in a Facebook product catalog needs:

• id - unique, up to 100 characters (your SKU is ideal)
• title - up to 200 characters; Meta recommends about 65 or fewer
• description - plain text, up to 9,999 characters
• availability - in stock or out of stock
• condition - new, refurbished, or used
• price - a number and a currency code, such as 9.99 USD
• link - the product page, starting with http:// or https://
• image_link - a JPEG or PNG at least 500 x 500 pixels, up to 8 MB
• brand - up to 100 characters

Clothing and some other categories also need details such as size, color, gender, and age_group to sell in Shops, and google_product_category helps Meta classify each item - our free Google Product Category Lookup tool finds the right one.

Which option should you use?

• A few products that rarely change: add them by hand.
• A one-off import: upload a Facebook catalog CSV.
• Prices or stock that change: use a scheduled data feed so Facebook stays in sync automatically.

If Commerce Manager reports problems after your first upload, Facebook Catalog Feed Errors, Fixed covers the common ones.