Shopify bundles: a guide to building holiday gift sets with the free Shopify Bundles app

You can create bundles on Shopify without a paid app. Shopify Bundles is Shopify's own free app, available on all plans, and it builds fixed bundles and multipacks right in your admin. A bundle becomes its own product with its own price and page, while stock is still counted from the products inside it.

This guide covers how to create bundles on Shopify step by step, how pricing, discounts and inventory behave, what the app can't do, and how to plan a small set of holiday bundles before Black Friday. By the end you'll have a bundle live, priced and checked.

Which kind of Shopify bundle do you need?

Shopify describes three bundle types in its eligibility and considerations guide:

• Fixed bundle: a set of products you choose in advance, such as a gift set. Shoppers can still pick a variant, like a size or scent, where a product has more than one.
• Multipack: several units of the same product sold as one item, such as a three-pack of socks.
• Mix-and-match: shoppers build their own bundle from a group of interchangeable products.

The free Shopify Bundles app handles fixed bundles and multipacks. Mix-and-match bundles need a third-party bundles app or, on Shopify Plus, a custom build with Shopify's Bundles APIs. For most holiday gift sets, a fixed bundle is all you need, and it's the simplest to keep accurate.

Check your store can sell bundles

Before you build anything, confirm three requirements Shopify lists for product bundles:

• You sell through the Online Store channel or a custom storefront.
• You have a bundles app installed, such as Shopify Bundles.
• Your store uses the upgraded checkout. Stores that still use checkout.liquid customizations can't use product bundles.

Also check your purchase options. Subscriptions, pre-orders and try-before-you-buy aren't compatible with bundles, and neither is the Shopify Subscriptions app. If your best seller is mainly sold on subscription, a bundle of it will only sell as a one-time purchase.

How to create a bundle in the Shopify admin

Create and finish the component products first, with their variants, prices and stock. Then follow the steps from Shopify's Shopify Bundles guide:

1. Go to Apps > Bundles and click Create bundle.
2. Enter a title shoppers will understand, such as "Morning coffee gift set".
3. Click Select products, choose the products, then click Select.
4. Adjust the set if needed: change a product's quantity, select or deselect variants, or use the menu next to a product to Duplicate product for a multipack or Add quantity as an option.
5. If several products share an option with the same name and values, such as Size, tick Combine options with matching names so shoppers make one choice instead of three.
6. Click Save and continue, then add any product details. At a minimum, we suggest a description, media, the price and the search listing.
7. Under Publishing, choose the sales channels. Set Status to Active, because new bundles start as Draft, then click Save.

Keep the limits in mind as you build. A fixed bundle can have up to 30 components, with up to 2,000 units per component, and a bundle can have at most 3 options and 100 variants. A combined option still counts toward the three-option limit.

Price the bundle so it still makes sense

The bundle has its own price, and Shopify doesn't update it when a component's price changes. If you raise or lower a component price for the holidays, open the bundle and update its price by hand.

You have three ways to give a bundle a saving, according to Shopify: set a lower bundle price directly, create a discount code for the bundle, or use Cart Transform for customized bundles. Discount codes and automatic discounts both work with bundles, including supported discount combinations. One detail catches people out: a product or collection discount must include the parent bundle product. If you only select the component products, the discount won't apply to the bundle.

When a discount does apply, Shopify calculates it on the bundle first and then splits it across the components by their share of the price. Taxes are calculated on each component. If you're stacking a Black Friday sale on top of bundles, read our guide to Shopify discount combinations before you switch anything on.

A worked example: one gift set, start to finish

Say you sell coffee. All numbers here are an example. You have three single-origin bags at $16 each and a ceramic dripper at $30. Bought separately, the four items cost $78.

Before: shoppers buying a gift add one bag, maybe two, and leave. The dripper sells mostly on its own, and gift shoppers have to work out what goes together.

After: you create a fixed bundle called "Pour-over gift set" with one of each bag and the dripper, and price it at $68. The product page shows one photo of the full set, lists what's inside, and states the saving in plain words: $78 if bought separately.

Now the stock. Shopify works out how many bundles you can sell from the component with the lowest stock, after dividing by the quantity each bundle needs. Say you have 40, 25 and 60 bags of the three origins and 12 drippers. Each bundle needs one of each, so you can sell 12 bundles, and the set shows as sold out once the drippers run out, even with bags left over. That tells you what to reorder before the sale, not after.

Plan your holiday bundles before Black Friday

Bundles take a little setup time, so build them well before your sale starts. A simple plan:

• Pick two or three sets, not ten. Choose products that are clearly used together, and at least one starter set for first-time buyers.
• Check stock on every component. Your bundle count is limited by the scarcest item, so reorder that one first.
• Give each bundle a real product page. Use a photo of the whole set, a list of what's included, and the variant choices shoppers need. Our Shopify product page best practices checklist applies here too.
• Decide the saving once. Either a lower bundle price or a discount, not both by accident.
• Place bundles where gift shoppers look: your gift collection, your sale collection and the product pages of the items inside.
• Write down the post-sale price. Since bundle prices don't follow component prices, note what each bundle should cost after the sale.

Bundle launch checklist

1. Store uses the upgraded checkout and sells through the Online Store (or a custom storefront).
2. Component products are finished, priced and tracked.
3. Bundle created in Apps > Bundles, with at most 30 components, 3 options and 100 variants.
4. Status set to Active and the right sales channels selected.
5. Bundle price checked against the components' current prices.
6. Any discount includes the parent bundle product, and combinations tested.
7. Stock checked on the scarcest component.
8. Bundle added to the right collections and linked from the component product pages.
9. Test order placed to see how the bundle appears in the cart, order and packing flow.

For a wider Black Friday Cyber Monday plan, see our BFCM page.

Point shoppers to the bundle on-site with Atomato

Once a bundle is live, shoppers who already have one of its items in the cart are the ones most likely to want it. With Atomato, a NotiFeed announcement can use the Cart products targeting rule, set to include any of the bundle's component products, with a button linking to the bundle's product page. Targeting rules work on every plan. On the free Starter plan you can run one active NotiFeed campaign with one message; Scale adds unlimited campaigns and start and end scheduling. The message links to the bundle page, where the shopper picks variants and adds the set to cart. See Target campaigns by page, device or cart for the setup.

Common mistakes and what bundles won't fix

• Discounting only the components. A product discount that leaves out the parent bundle won't apply to it.
• Forgetting the bundle price. Changing a component's price, by hand or by import, leaves the bundle price where it was.
• Changing a component SKU. Shopify says that if a component SKU changes, you need to delete and recreate the whole bundle.
• Renaming or deleting a variant. This can switch the bundle to Draft. Open the bundle's product page, click the Bundles icon in Bundled products, and click Save and continue next to the product to relink it.
• Expecting bulk tools. Bundles can't be imported, exported or bulk edited, can't contain other bundles, and can't be used in exchanges.
• Relying on option filters. Bundled products don't show under option filters in the Search & Discovery app.

Bundles also won't fix a product nobody wants. Pairing a slow seller with a best seller can move some stock, but if the pairing doesn't make sense to the shopper, the bundle will sit too. And a bundle won't explain itself: if the page doesn't say what's inside and what it saves, shoppers will skip it.

Common questions

Does Shopify have a built-in bundle feature?

Shopify offers bundles through its own free Shopify Bundles app, available on all plans. It creates fixed bundles and multipacks from the admin. Mix-and-match bundles need a third-party app or the Bundles APIs on Shopify Plus.

How does inventory work for Shopify bundles?

The bundle's availability comes from its components. Shopify divides each component's available stock by the quantity the bundle needs, rounds down, and uses the lowest result. Components that aren't tracked, or that continue selling when out of stock, are left out of the calculation.

Can I sell a bundle as a subscription?

No. Purchase options, including subscriptions, pre-orders and try-before-you-buy, aren't compatible with bundles, and the Shopify Subscriptions app isn't either.

How do orders show bundles?

Orders show the bundle as a group with its title and price, and list each item inside with its own SKU and quantity. Shipping weight comes from the individual items, and in split fulfillments and returns the components appear as separate line items.

Next step

Pick one gift set from your best sellers today, build it in Apps > Bundles, and place a test order before Black Friday traffic arrives. For more ways to raise order value, read 7 ways to raise order value without another discount, and see Shopify's product bundles overview for the latest rules.

Install Atomato free on Shopify