Eligibility and considerations for using product bundles

There are certain eligibility requirements and considerations you should review before adding product bundles to your online store, including which features are and aren't compatible with product bundles, and how inventory and returns work with product bundles.

Bundle types

You can create the following types of bundles:

Fixed: a bundle made from a predetermined set of products and associated variants. If any products in the bundle have more than one variant, then your customer can choose from the associated variants.
Multipack: a fixed bundle with more than one of the same products.
Mix-and-match: a bundle made of interchangeable products. Your customer composes the bundle by choosing from the products and associated variants.

If you want to create Fixed or Multipack bundles, then you can use the free Shopify Bundles app. This app is available for all Shopify plans.

If you want to create Mix-and-match bundles, then you can choose from one of the following options:

Go to the Shopify App Store to find a curated collection of third-party bundle apps that integrate directly into the Shopify admin and include real-time inventory syncing.
If your store is on the Shopify Plus plan, then you can build a custom bundle offering with Bundles APIs.

Eligibility requirements for product bundles

To sell product bundles, your store must meet the following requirements:

Your store must be using the Online Store sales channel or a Custom Storefront.
You must have a bundles app installed on your Shopify store.
Your store must use Checkout Extensibility. Stores that use checkout.liquid customizations or features are incompatible with product bundles.

If you've previously created bundles, but your store then becomes ineligible, then one of the following actions will take place:

For fixed bundles, the status is set to draft and the bundle isn't published to the Online Store sales channel.
For customized bundles, bundles are visible on your storefront, but products are added as individual items in the cart and checkout.

You can sell bundles only when your store becomes eligible again.

Learn more about the bundles API.

Incompatibility considerations for product bundles

Certain features are incompatible with product bundles. Review the following considerations:

Bundles aren't compatible with purchase options, which includes subscriptions, pre-orders, and try-before-you-buy.
Bundles aren't compatible with the Shopify Subscriptions app.

Inventory

Bundle inventory is determined by the inventory levels of each product included within a bundle. The product with the lowest inventory level determines how many bundles can be sold. Product inventory levels are updated in real-time. A product's inventory isn't included in the bundle quantity calculation if the product's inventory isn't tracked, or if the product is set to Continue selling when out of stock.

In these cases, the product's inventory is ignored when determining the available quantity of the bundle.

You can set up inventory tracking or configure products to continue selling when out of stock in your Shopify admin.

Inventory calculation

Bundle inventory availability creates an estimate based on the inventory availability of products in the bundle. Shopify calculates this by considering the product with the lowest available inventory, and taking into account the quantity required for that product to make the bundle. To calculate bundle inventory availability, follow these steps:

For each product in the bundle, divide the product's total available inventory by the quantity required for the bundle.
The lowest resulting number (rounded down to the nearest whole number) determines how many complete bundles can be sold.

Example of inventory calculation

For example, if a product bundle of home office items contained 2 chairs and 1 desk, then you can manually calculate the number of possible bundles:

Check the inventory levels for each product:
- The chair has a total available inventory of 15.
- The desk has a total available inventory of 8.
Calculate the available inventory for each product:
- Chair: 15 ÷ 2 = 7.5 (rounded down to 7)
- Desk: 8 ÷ 1 = 8
The "home office" bundle's available inventory is 7:
- The lower number (7) determines the bundle availability.
- You can only create as many bundles as you have complete sets of products.

Returns

You can't define bundles as final sale when you set up return rules. The return eligibility of a bundle is based on whether the individual products within the bundle are set as final sale items in your return rules.

Within self-serve returns, customers can submit product return requests for any eligible products. Customers can’t request returns for products set as final sale.

Identifying product bundles

After you create a bundle, the bundle has a separate product listing in the Products section of your Shopify admin. You can identify a bundle product listing in the following ways:

In the Products section of your admin, the Inventory column displays "Bundle with XX variants".
On the product details page, the Bundled products app block displays the products that are included in the bundle.

Bundles in orders display as a nested group of line items. You can identify bundles in orders in the following areas of your Shopify admin and Shopify checkout:

the Shopify checkout order summary
order related notifications
abandoned checkouts in your Shopify admin

The bundle group includes the following information:

the bundle title
the bundle price
the title and quantity of each item included in the bundle

In areas where each line item in a bundle are handled separately, such as orders with split fulfillments and returns and exchanges, the bundle's included items display as individual line items instead.