Core Issue:
Shopify merchants cannot natively combine a product discount (percentage or fixed amount) with free shipping in a single discount code. Customers must enter separate codes, which creates friction and can push orders below free shipping thresholds when discounts are applied.
Business Impact:
Discount codes often reduce cart totals below free shipping minimums, negating promotional value
Critical for influencer campaigns, affiliate programs, and first-time customer acquisition
Merchants report customers abandoning purchases or being confused by shipping charges after applying discount codes
Community Response:
Thread spans 5+ years with 350+ posts and dozens of vote requests
Merchants express frustration that this “basic” feature exists on competing platforms (WooCommerce, Ecwid)
Some users threaten platform migration due to this limitation
Shopify’s Evolution:
Initially: Feature marked as “in development” with no ETA, votes collected by support staff
September 2021: Shopify launched “Discount Combinations” allowing customers to stack multiple codes AND introduced automatic free shipping discounts
Current limitation: Still requires customers to enter multiple codes; no single code can apply both effects natively
Workarounds:
Set conditional free shipping rates in shipping settings (applies automatically when threshold met)
Use third-party apps like “Discount Mixer” or “Single Code Discount by Swiftbee” ($0.99-$10/month)
Shopify Plus merchants can use Discount Functions (requires development)
Status: Partially resolved through discount stacking, but original request for single-code solution remains unmet natively.
Summarized with AI on October 26.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
We are migrating from a Magento site where we have offered coupon codes combining a %OFF plus Free Shipping and/or BOGO %Off plus Free Shipping for the past 6 years! If I had known we would not be able to implement such a common promotional combination, we might not have elected to make the switch to Shopify.
I really can’t believe this isn’t a standard option or that none of the app developers I’ve looked at have truly addressed this either- at least not in a manner that is easily implemented and maintained.
Please could we add our vote to this feature. We have a show in a couple of weeks and the most obvious show offer is a discount plus free shipping, and it is a little unbelievable that this isn’t something we can’t just offer, leading to plenty of head scratching and work arounds. Having run wordpress and magento websites in the past this does seem a pretty basic function which, whilst I had issues with coupon codes on both platforms, I could always offer this.
Please, please shopify move this up your agenda of importance - it does seem incredibly basic functionality to be missing.
I’ve been reading through this thread and understand that you would like to know why one would need the feature to combine a discount code with free shipping.
This is the case where we really miss this feature:
Our primary marketing is done in collaboration with influencers. We have found (micro) influencers to be extremely affordable and very good for business.
In a month we might use between 10-25 influencers to promote our products. The agreement we have with influencers is that they get 2 free products including free shipping. The products have a fixed value, for which we would like to add a discount.
Then the problem arise, that we cannot add free shipping, to a discount.
It is simply not an option to ask influencers to pay for shipment of their free products.
On top of this, we could easily increase our sales by adding 70-150 influencers per month.
I could just add all the orders manually, where it is possible to add free shipment + discount on certain products. But the time needed to handle all this manually is simply too much.
If we could give a discount with free shipping most influencers would add extra products to their order to take advantage of the free shipping already included.
Not being able to combine free shipping and discount is a real limitation to the growth of our business.
There are many things I would like to be developed from your side, but nothing more than discount + free shipping.
Beside the use I just described, in certain cases free shipping + discount is also a really good tool to use in customer service.
Thank you both for expressing interest in getting this feature added, as well as providing valuable feedback on how this directly impacts your business. I’ve added both of your use cases to the existing ballot so our product team and developers have a clearer picture of what steps they’ll need to take to ensure the feature covers the functionality you need. For future votes, I will continue to proactively add your votes to the ballot as they come in.
We need this too. Same with lots of other shops, we need to giveaway product to influencers and 100% discount + Free shipping would be the most efficient way! Stackable coupons needs to be a standard feature!
We occasionally do sponsorship packages and other giveaways. Rather than going back and forth with the person, getting all of their information, address, size/color preferences, it’s much easier have them place the order for the free stuff themselves. But, of course, the shipping should also be free and there isn’t a clean way to do this.
Yes, can we please get a more concrete update on when this will be available and/or if it’s even being worked on? We continue to run into issues where the discount we give to potential new customers puts them just below our free shipping threshold, therefore negating the discount value. We started asking for this feature 6 months ago… and now others are chiming in almost daily asking for the same.
Great question and I’ll make a prediction on how it will be answered. One of the mods will reply, probably Peter if he hasn’t gotten smart and quit. This mod will word dribble on and on confusingly like Trump in a press conference about how they can’t give out that top secret information or the scale they use to judge it but rest assured you little Lilliputian your vote really does count and in the end you will be more confused and frustrated than at the beginning - it’s the Shopify pump and dump the clients plan, don’t take it personally, you really don’t matter.
Hah! Yes @BKMc I know that crazed 45* press conference all too well sadly. However I don’t think Shopify is trying to pump and dump or mislead. I feel they do sincerely care about their customers…but I can also see how embedded the “discount” is across the API. Not super easy to solve but would be a major merchant win if they could speed the solution up, and give a time table.
Add our vote. We provide free evaluation samples to our clinical referral sources. They need to be able to order their samples online with a discount code.
