When running a Shopify store, you're bound to run into shipping-related challenges, such as wanting to separate products with different shipping timelines, or wanting to prevent customers from purchasing room-temperature and refrigerated items together in the same order. These can be solved with "bundling restrictions," which block certain product combinations from being placed in the cart together.
This article explains the basics of bundling restrictions and walks through how to set them up safely and reliably using apps in the "RuffRuff" series, which are built on Shopify's official validation feature.
What Are Bundling Restrictions?
First, let's clarify our terminology. "Bundling" generally refers to packing multiple products together in a single box, but in this article it means "placing multiple products in the cart together on your Shopify store."
"Bundling restrictions," then, are a mechanism that prevents specific products from being purchased together in the same cart due to differences in shipping timing, shipping method, or shipping origin.
When Is This Needed?
Bundling restrictions are mainly used in cases like the following.
- Different shipping timing: regular products and pre-order products
- Different shipping temperature range: room-temperature products and refrigerated products
- Different shipping warehouses: products shipped from multiple locations
Implementing bundling restrictions helps you prevent shipping issues before they happen and streamline your back-office operations.
Shopify Apps That Can Implement Bundling Restrictions
RuffRuff Order Limits
"RuffRuff Order Limits" fully supports Japanese and is the first Shopify app in Japan to use the Cart and Checkout Validation API. It has earned Shopify's official "Built for Shopify" badge, the mark of the highest-quality apps that meet standards for speed, ease of use, and reliability.
More Reliable Order Restrictions
By using Shopify's official Cart and Checkout Validation API, it enforces validation on the server side, not just on the front end. This makes it possible to achieve order restrictions that are more robust and harder to bypass than with conventional apps.
A Single App Handles Every Kind of Purchase Restriction
You can manage a wide range of purchase restrictions with this one app, including quantity limits, price limits, bundling restrictions, payment restrictions, shipping restrictions, access restrictions, and customer restrictions.
Flexible Bundling Restriction Features
The bundling restriction feature lets you configure fine-grained conditions such as the following.
- Cannot be purchased at the same time as other products
- Variants of the same product can be purchased together
- Only products in a specific category can be purchased together
- Only products from the same vendor can be purchased together
- Cannot be purchased on its own
RuffRuff 予約販売
RuffRuff 予約販売
"RuffRuff 予約販売" is a Shopify app that makes it easy to implement pre-orders on your Shopify store. It has earned Shopify's official "Built for Shopify" badge, the mark of the highest-quality apps that meet standards for speed, ease of use, and reliability.
Supports a Wide Range of Sales Formats Beyond Pre-Orders
With a bit of creativity, it can support a wide variety of sales strategies, including limited-time sales, limited-time promotions, launch announcements, recurring sales, member-exclusive sales, VIP-exclusive sales, and deferred payment.
Unique Features Not Found in Other Apps
- Deferred payment: collect payment before a product ships, reducing the risk of cancellations
- Bundling restriction feature: automatically prevents customers from ordering pre-order and regular products together
- Custom buttons: display different messages and buttons depending on a product's status
Bundling Restrictions Centered on Pre-Order Products
For pre-order products, the bundling restriction feature supports settings such as the following.
- Pre-order products cannot be bundled with other products
- Pre-order products can be bundled with each other
- Pre-order products under the same rule can be bundled together
How to Implement Bundling Restrictions with RuffRuff Order Limits
Example
Here's how to restrict a specific product so it can't be purchased at the same time as another product (or variant).
The page below is a demo product that actually has a bundling restriction applied. Please use it as a reference.
How to Set Up a Bundling Restriction
(1) Click "Bundling Rules" in the left-hand menu
(2) On the bundling rules page, click "Create Rule"
(3) On the bundling rule creation page, enter the following
- Title : any text
- Bundling scope: select "Single-item purchase only"
- Target products: select the products or collections you want to restrict
- Alert message : enter any message you like
(4) Click "Save" in the top right of the screen
How to Implement Bundling Restrictions with RuffRuff 予約販売
Example
Here's how to implement a bundling restriction that prevents regular products and pre-order products from being purchased together.
The page below is a demo product that actually has this bundling restriction applied. Please use it as a reference.
How to Set Up Bundling Restrictions
Setting up bundling restrictions takes 3 steps, as follows.
- (Step 1) Create a pre-order rule
- (Step 2) Apply the pre-order rule to the products you want to pre-sell
- (Step 3) Configure the simultaneous-order restriction
Let's look at each in detail.
(Step 1) Create a Pre-Order Rule
First, create a pre-order rule.
(1) Click "Pre-Order Rule List" in the left-hand menu
(2) On the pre-order rule list page, click "Create Rule"
(3) Enter the required information on the pre-order rule details page
(4) Click "Save" in the top right of the screen
(Step 2) Apply the Pre-Order Rule to the Products You Want to Pre-Sell
Next, apply the pre-order rule created in Step 1 to your products
(1) Click "Pre-Order Product List" in the left-hand menu
(2) On the pre-order product list page, select the products you want to apply the pre-order rule to
(3) Click "Apply Rule," which appears at the bottom of the screen
(4) From the pop-up that appears, select the pre-order rule you want to apply
(5) Click "Apply"
(Step 3) Configure the Simultaneous-Order Restriction
Finally, configure the "simultaneous-order restriction" setting.
(1) Click "Order Limits" in the left-hand menu
(2) Under "Simultaneous Order Restriction," select the strictness level of the restriction
(3) Under "Product Page Restrictions," check "Enable Restriction"
(4) Enter any message you like in the alert message
(5) Click "Save" in the top right of the screen
For detailed information on the restriction levels for the "simultaneous-order restriction" and more, please refer to the help page below.
Simultaneous Order Restriction｜RuffRuff 予約販売 Help Center
In Conclusion
In this article, we introduced how to implement bundling restrictions (preventing simultaneous purchases) on Shopify using RuffRuff Order Limits and RuffRuff 予約販売. Implementing this setting can help you prevent back-office confusion caused by complex shipping rules before it happens. Take a look at the demo pages introduced in this article, as well as other purchase-restriction use cases (such as age verification and quantity limits), and build the purchase flow that's the best fit for your store.
