Hello, we are trying to find a way to apply a discount to more than 100 products, but only certain variants. The Discounty app lets us apply a discount to all the products we need, but we can’t create a discount code for that. The discount code we had set up in Shopify’s native discounts won’t let us select specific variants (in this case, a discount on e-book format, but not physical format).
Being a bookstore, we’d rather not split out the variants so that multiple versions of the same title show up, instead of one product and choose your format.
Are there any apps out there that can do this sort of thing without doubling the annual cost of our store? We can’t pay $30 a month for something that Shopify should already have built in.
Hi @Jason_A_Adams I’m @PaulNewton shopify partner, business consultant, & store customizer.
Merchants that need a built in approach to handle this situation in a themes can reach out to me if you need theme customization services. Click profile-oic on forums for options to connect.
A sidestep might be putting the variant in a bundle with some innocuous free item and discounting the bundle but scenarios and effort needed will differ.
Then there are options of using advanced theme customizations.
“sibling” products - multiple products can be presented as a singluar product with the separate products acting like variants; (aka combined listing generally for Plus plan stores)
make the cart using the ajax api to swap in a standalone product for a specific variant when it’s in the cart.
Clichés that merchants hurt themselves with:
One platform CANNOT do everything for everyone.
There’s 5 million+ merchants that each have some thing that “should just be built in” because they personally need it.
It’s outlandishly unreasonable, do you think your the first to expect another business to do it all for you.
Adjust expectations to reality , there is an api for merchants that need custom behavior.
Use the api to invest in building specific custom behavior that differentiates a business from the run of the mil.
Otherwise off the shelf apps should MAKE you money and save you time therefore make even more money.
When a business model doesn’t already generate enough revenue to pay for specific tools that make that business model possible then it is that business model is bad, it is not the tools.
READ: if your lowering prices but not even breaking $30 a month why waste a seconds thought on it, otherwise invest in your processes.
Look for apps like Regios Automatic Discounts or Discount Kit. They allow you to create a standard discount code but add a specific condition logic: “Apply only if Variant Title contains ‘E-book’.”
I believe that should do the trick. Hope this helps!
Shopify’s native discount system does support variant-level discounts, but it has a couple of big limitations that make exactly your use case difficult.
What’s the Shopify-native limitation
Variant limit for discount codes
When creating a native discount code in Shopify, you can choose “Applies to > Specific products or variants,” but there’s a 100 variant limit. Shopify Community+2Shopify Community+2
Collection limitation
Shopify discount collections don’t work at the variant level — collections are of “entire products,” not individual variants. Shopify Help Center+1
Built-in workaround is limited
Because of the 100-variant cap, if you have more than 100 e-book variants (across many products), you may hit that ceiling even before covering everything. As others in the Shopify community have noted, this is a real pain point.
Recommendation (Given Your Situation)
First, try a couple of the apps above in test mode (if they have a free tier / trial). Specifically, Dr Volume & Bulk Discount and DiscountRay seem most aligned to “variant-level discount.”
If those don’t meet your exact needs, look into a small custom script / Shopify Function (if you’re comfortable or have access to a developer) to apply discounts based on a metafield (“format = ebook”).
As a quick low-effort fallback: use the “compare-at price” trick for your ebook variant so it looks like a discount even without a code.
Discount codes scoped to selected products are supported in Discounty, our Discount Code campaign type covers it, and Advanced Discount Code on Essential and above adds combination control, customer segmentation, and multi-tier logic on top. Sounds like the right campaign type didn’t surface clearly when you set this up.
For your e-book vs. physical-book setup specifically, the filter configuration depends on how your variants are structured (option-based, tag-based, separate products, etc.), so the cleanest path is to ping us via the in-app chat and we’ll walk you through which campaign type and filter combination fits your catalog.
I’m 
Click profile-oic on forums for options to connect.