What is the best app for automatic free gift addition to cart?

Shopify Apps
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Topic summary

Seeking an app to automatically add a rotating (every 24 hours) free gift to a Shopify cart.

Options suggested:

  • Order Automator: Can add a free product based on order contents, but only after the order is placed (post-purchase), not in-cart.
  • Shopify AJAX Cart API: A theme-level approach to add items to the cart before checkout based on events (e.g., when Product A is added, auto-add Product B). Requires developer implementation or custom coding.
  • Shopify Flow: Mentioned as Shopify’s automation tool; capabilities for this specific use are unclear. Advised to try it or ask in the Flow forum.
  • CartBot: Auto add-to-cart when certain items are added. However, changing the free gift every 24 hours must be done manually; no built-in automatic rotation.

Status and open questions:

  • No confirmed app that automates daily gift rotation out of the box.
  • The difference between Order Automator and Shopify Flow remains unanswered.
  • Next steps: test Flow, consider custom theme code with the AJAX API, or use CartBot with manual daily updates.
Summarized with AI on January 9. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello

I’m looking for an app that will automatically add a free gift to cart for customers.

I’m planning to change the FREE gift every 24 hours.

Any recommendations?

1 Like
2

If you don’t find a solution for this, people are using Order Automator app to add free products based on the order contents. This adds the item after the order (if order contains product X, add product Y).

If you’re wanting to alter the cart before checkout, you can use the ajax API: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/ajax/reference/cart

Your developer (or you if you’re willing to put in some learning time) can use that to add items to cart based on events, for example if customer adds Product A to cart, then add Product B… or on the click of a button, or on landing on a certain page, etc.

3

Thank you- isn’t the " Order Automator" app a bit like Shopify Flow? What’s the difference between the two?

4

You’re welcome, hope it helps.

I’m not sure, Shopify Flow came out after Order Automator I’ve actually never used Flow, but from what I’ve seen in the forums it handles various automations.

If you have Flow give that a try maybe it will work for your use case, you could also try posting in the Shopify Flow forum board if you have Flow and it seems like something it could do… but if you are wanting to handle this in the theme / before checkout, your best bet would probably be to hardcode the functionality into your theme.

1 Like
5

Hi @KimB95 ,

If you are still searching for an app, may I suggest CartBot: Auto add to cart :slightly_smiling_face:

This app should allow you to add a free gift to your cart when a customer adds certain pre-selected items to the cart. Unfortunately, if you wish to switch the item added to the cart every 24 hours, you would have to do so manually as there is no feature to automatically change the item yet.

If you are interested and have any other questions, just send us an email to support@cart-bot.net

6

Hi @KimB95

There are many apps on the Shopify App Store that can help you automatically add a free gift to the cart. One option you may want to consider is the BOGOS App.

Regarding your request to change the free gift every 24 hours, that’s quite an advanced requirement, and I’m not aware of any Shopify apps that support this automatically. In this case, you would still need to update the free gift manually.

Alternatively, you could set up a list of free gift options and allow customers to choose one gift from that list instead as below.

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