Can I create discount rules for specific product variants on Shopify?

[Graham_Latham]

Hey there - I've seen numerous posts on this topic going back a few years: because Collections can only be created from complete products, Shopify's current discount rules don't allow a shop owner to create discount rules for specific variants (say, items of a certain size). I know you can alter prices per variant to put them on sale individually, but there's no way to create discount rules that would encourage volume sales of particular items based on variant...

Is this something Shopify developers are working on? Is there any way for us to know when a function like this will be made possible?

[May · Accepted solution]

Hey, @Graham_Latham!

May here from Shopify.

At the moment, creating a separate collection for variants is not possible, and you're correct that collections can only be created from complete products. However, you can create a discount code for specific variants. When you create a new discount, you'll want to select 'Applies To > Specific Product' and select the variants you'd like to apply the discount to.

Although at the moment, creating a collection based on variants is not possible, we often take feature requests to send up to our developers for further review. That said, I am going to send a feature request on your behalf, and hopefully we can see this feature implemented in the future. If you're eager to follow the most recent updates on Shopify, you can check out our changelog!

Let me know if this helps! If this isn't what you're looking for, please let me know and I'll be more than happy to continue with our support.

Cheers!

[Graham_Latham]

Thanks so much, May! I was confused about this, I appreciate the clarification!  🙂

[Graham_Latham]

Hi again, May. Another quick question, if you don't mind: when setting up discount rules for specific product variants, there's an upper limit of 100 items. Is there any way to increase this limit?

[May]

Hi again, @Graham_Latham!

That's a good question. At the moment, there isn't a way to increase the variant limit for discounts, however, I can understand why you would want to increase this limit, especially if you have a larger number of inventory on your store. If you are creating an automatic discount, you may want to look into the Automatic Discount app to create an automatic discount for over 100 variants. 

That being said, I've gone ahead and sent a request to our products team to see if this limit can be increased in the near future. If you have any other questions, please let me know!

Kind Regards.

[Graham_Latham]

Thanks May! Yeah, it really is too bad that we can't use discount rules for more than 100 items; I hope that can be addressed by Shopify dev team soon! I'm assuming this restriction also applies to automatic discounts? 

[May]

Hi again, @Graham_Latham!

That's correct, the 100 variant limit also applies to automatic discounts. 

Thank you again for your feedback. I do hope this limit can be increased in the near future.  

[NATURES]

Hi May,  is there any app at the moment to increase the variant limit for discount code promos? Our store has way over 100 variants (for retail and wholesale products) and I'm trying to create a discount code for retail variants only.

[bergmanluggage]

Hi I am also very curious why there is a limit to 100 items and variants for discount codes. I have over 1,000 items on my site and it is very frustrating to be limited to 100 items. This does not make sense to me. You can have 20,000 discount codes but only 100 items?

Customers love using discount codes and they help close a transaction. Please help.

Can this please be corrected.

Thank you

Jeff

[Scootywraps]

I'm running into this exact same issue with 100 variants. Please please please solution

[cmarkowitz]

How can I fix this problem? I want to run a 'Buy 3 get 1 free' sale, but I have 40 products, and multiple colors and sizes for each which leaves me with well over 100 products. I have tried many ways around this, but none seem to work. Can you help me?

[Emilie_Jalie]

We solved this issue by installing Selly. It worked well with our 200 products with 1-3 variants each.

There are various ways to select the variants so it's pretty flexible (you can either include or exclude words, list of words for example).

Of course, we would have preferred a solution without app, but it was a good workaround. 

I hope this helps!

[kathoover]

Have there been any updates on this since I see the original post is a few years old?  We have well over 100 products/variants and would really benefit from being able to offer a discount on specific variants.  Thanks!

[Emilie_Jalie]

There is still nothing available out of the box but Selly does the job.

We did need them to tweak the settings to keep currency throughout the checkout and it did interfere with a shipping app and wholesale app.

Variants are a feature that causes many problems if you need any logic based on them. At this point we hope we had built the whole store differently, with a way to have each variant as a separate product with a way to link them instead. Would have saved us many headaches we are still having three months after launch.

Good luck with everything!

[kitkit123]

One thing I m running into is now with automatic discounts, only 1 can be applied. Hence if i want a discount applied based on variants selected but also the free shipping applied over a certain amount purchased, how does that work?

[Emilie_Jalie]

Get ready to be told to add another app to your store (or not to use variants and duplicate products instead) by customer service 😕

Sad, but it is the answer we always get. 25 apps total to cover all the little things that cannot be done in Shopify or to make things work for variants and customer tags.

For discounts, we use Selly and despite a few occasional glitches (because we also have to use an app for shipping and the two don’t interact well all the time) we are happy with it and their customer service is helpful and responds quickly.

Good luck!

[Derek_Morin]

Thanks @May for quoting our app as an alternative solution. We've recently improved how we bypass the 100-variant limit. 

[Emilie_Jalie]

This solution is ok, but only works under very limited conditions (not too many items, variant being the only condition used).

It would be wonderful to have a discount for variant (or any condition) a product meets. Basically, any field used in the product entry should be available as a condition for discount (weight, physical or not, name, variant, etc).

If that cannot be done in a near future, would it be possible to change the limit or remove it completely? It was a basic function in Magento and I was suprised to see how limited the discount tool is in Shopify, discounts being such a big deal in e-commerce marketing.

I keep my fingers crossed that sholify will improve it so I don't have to try various apps that risk "breaking" things.

Thanks!

[LinenSocietyMeg]

Hi there, 

I would also like to be able to discount more than 100 variants. I'm discontinuing 20 colors from over 40 products and need to mark them all on sale. I hit the variant limit after only 5 products. This is frustrating as I can't create a collection with only the variants that are discontinued. Please add my request to have the discount variant limit of 100 removed to your list of Shopify update requests.

Thank you.

[David_BM]

This is a great solution, however, is it scaleable?

I would like to put a discount on about 1,300 variants (buy a full-size item and get any trial-size item free).

-Cheers

[jessmacedo]

Hello May,

But we still have the 100 variations limitation. And we don't want to slow our store even more with apps. We already need at least 20 apps to operate on Shopify PLUS. Makes no sense. Can you give an update if since 2019 your devs had time to work on this? 

[Derek_Morin]

@jessmacedo It's indeed painful that there is no built-in solution in Shopify discount to get rid of this 100 variant/product limit. My team and I have built this as an alternative: https://automatic-discount.myshopify.com/products/overcome-the-100-variant-limit

As you can see in the video in the link above, there is a simple method using text (e.g. discount all variants "small") and also an advanced one in which sky is the limit, using REGEX (if you are a familiar with it, or maybe your devs are).

You can try our app for free.

[Victor_Borie]

@Derek_Morin would your app offer a way to only apply a discount on full priced variants from one (or multiple) product types?

[kristjan]

Hello @Derek_Morin , Will your app support pushing more than 100 variants with discounts via Shopify graphql from a third party application?

[cronics]

Hi,

That Quantity X app could make it for you. You could create an offer that applies a discount only if a specific variant with several quantities is added to the cart. 

[sarawl]

Hi there,

I understand the challenge —setting up discounts for many specific variants would be a huge task.

App Selly with powerful variant selection in offer setting can help you to select variants easily to set discounts:

Many conditions can be set:

The discount can be shown on product page:

The app interface is customizable and feel free to contact the app support if you need any help.

https://treedify.com/selly-hi

There are also other features such as bundle, gift, motivator... which can also be set for specific variants.