Hello,
With all of the “Discount Code” Sniffers out there I want to offer a discount that is undiscoverable by those BOTs, extensions, or apps, be it Capitol one or whatever. I sell custom pet items. I would like to offer breeders I have worked with in the past a significant discount for them to offer their customers, the issue I run into is that I have already had a discount applied to an item purchased that I never published anywhere. Direct email discount code. Somehow one of these what I call “Sniffers” smelled out this code and applied it to a recent purchase. It wasn’t a significant loss but that made me rethink how I want to offer those discounts to breeders? How can I tweak the code so that these codes are undiscoverable or create a “Secret” area for each breeder to access and create a one time code for each new visitor to their assigned area? I do have some coding experience and access to some really ground breaking programmers. Any advise or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time and troubles.
AI-generated summary
A merchant selling custom pet items wants to offer significant discounts to breeders without the codes being discovered by discount-sniffing browser extensions and bots. They experienced a leak where a privately emailed discount code was found and used by unauthorized customers.
Proposed Solutions:
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Customer segment discounts: Create discount codes restricted to specific customer segments through Shopify’s native Customers > Segments feature, limiting eligibility rather than hiding codes
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Automatic discounts via apps: Use apps like Regios Automatic Discounts or Mechanic to apply discounts automatically to tagged/specific customers at checkout, eliminating shareable codes entirely
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Access-gated content: Use apps like Locksmith to create password-protected areas where only approved breeders can access special products or pricing
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Separate store or wholesale setup: Create a dedicated storefront for authorized customers with pre-discounted pricing
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Backend order validation: Use automation tools (Shopify Flow, Mechanic) to cancel orders from ineligible customers who obtain discount codes
Key Consensus: No discount code can be truly hidden once shared. The fundamental issue is that any reusable code will eventually leak through human sharing or browser extensions. The recommended approach is shifting from hidden codes to customer-specific automatic discounts that don’t require codes at all.
https://xyproblem.info/ Is the actual goal reduced prices for certain customers, but trying to force that through the idea of discount-codes.
Two can keep a secret…
It doesn’t matter what gymnastics you pull if you give someone a reusable discount-code useable by anyone that code will get shared either by them just forwarding, messaging or a browser extension reading it for them.
Restrict discounts to specific customers on Shopify, create a discount code for a customer segment. Here’s how:
- Go to Customers in your Shopify admin.
- Click Segments.
- Choose a segment and click Use segment.
- Select Discount and create your code.
Really you may need
A) an app to give discounts in checkout for specifics customers(tags,metafields,etc).
This should be simpler with the newer shopify-functions features apps can use.
See this thread for customer based automatic discounts feature comments:
https://community.shopify.com/post/569161
And make a formal feature request to shopify support not just a forum thread.
Or B) do backend validation and cancel orders using discount-codes from ineligible customers
A scriptable automation app like mechanic can handle custom scenarios though they don’t have this exact task.
https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=cancel
However,
If you want to gate content areas of the website see apps like locksmith(from lightward also makers of mechanic)
Though that cannot prevent human to human information sharing once they know a discount-code.
If the real goal is reduced prices for certain customers
Use separate products only they can access(locksmith) along with backend order validation(shopify flow, mechanic, etc).
mechanic can make custom draft orders from carts https://tasks.mechanic.dev/create-a-draft-order-from-the-cart
Or use separate store available only to those customers, similar to wholesale customizations or setups.
Also see token gating
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/digital-service-product/nfts#tokengated-commerce
Good Hunting.
Hi RedFern,
It sounds like you have a specific list of people who you want to receive discounts on your products.
If so, then you can try our app, Regios Automatic Discounts (4.8 stars, Built for Shopify), which allows you to automatically discount orders for specific customers, based on tags/metafields/etc.
However, if you don’t already know in advance who exactly you want to be eligible for the discount, then there’s not much you can do to make a manual discount code undiscoverable.
Even if you were to offer unique manual discount codes to each person, it wouldn’t fully solve the problem. It would only make it so that you could track the source of a discount leak.
Best,
Tobe