Essential Preorder app: setup and feature walkthrough September 2025

This guide turns the demo transcript into a clear, step‑by‑step walkthrough. It covers setup, all current features, known Shopify limitations, and best practices we use across Essential Apps.

What the app does

Essential Preorder lets you sell products before they are in stock. You can:

  • Create campaigns with product and variant level rules
  • Show a Preorder button on product pages, collections, search, homepage featured products, and Quick Buy modals
  • Offer full or partial payments
  • Set and show discounts for preorders that use Shopify payments
  • Send preorder confirmation emails and manual shipping‑update emails
  • Use your own sender domain for better deliverability (DKIM and link branding supported)
  • Translate per campaign text for all languages in your Shopify store
  • Control order status at creation: Unfulfilled, Scheduled for a future date, or On hold
  • Auto‑tag orders and customers per campaign for easy filtering and flows

Notes on platform rules and Shopify limitations:

  • Any feature that uses Selling Plans: discounts, partial payments, changing fulfilment statuses requires Shopify Payments
  • Shopify Bundles API products are not compatible with Selling Plans
  • Pre-orders are not supported on stores with customized checkouts.
  • Customers cannot use accelerated checkouts like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, or Google Pay to purchase pre-orders.
  • Local payment methods such as Klarna, mollie iDEAL, and Sofort are not supported for pre-orders.
  • Pre-order products are only supported on the Online Store and Custom Storefront sales channels.
  • You can set up multiple purchase options on a product, but customers cannot combine different purchase options in the same checkout (e.g., pre-order and subscription).
  • Buy X get Y discounts are not supported by pre-orders.
  • Pre-orders are not supported by Shop Promise.
  • Pre-orders are currently only available to merchants using Shopify Payments or PayPal Express.
  • Customer payment information is securely stored by Shopify, but you cannot access full credit card details.
  • If you uninstall a pre-order app, pre-order data (excluding payment info) is deleted after 48 hours.

Create a preorder campaign

1) Basics

  • Title the campaign

    Choose products by product or collection. You can add all products, specific products, or a collection

    • Collection adds are not auto‑syncing yet. If you change the collection later, update the campaign products

2) When to show the Preorder button

Choose one of the conditions:

  • When product is out of stock
  • Always show the Preorder button
  • When product is in stock (useful when you want to cap preorder quantity using the stock amount)

Inventory tracking is required for all products in a campaign. The app checks and adjusts these automatically when you publish:

  • Track quantity must be enabled
  • If you show Preorder when out of stock, Continue selling when out of stock must be enabled
  • When you unpublish or remove products, we revert these settings to their original state
  • Large catalogs can take a few minutes to update

3) Inventory limits

  • Set a campaign level limit (example: 100 units) that applies per variant per product

  • Override per product or per variant if needed (example: Grey T‑shirt limit 10)

  • You can also leave the campaign limit blank and define limits per product only

4) Payment options

  • Pay in full

    Partial payment (deposit now, charge the balance later in Shopify Admin)

    • Set deposit as a percentage or fixed amount
    • Set the date the remaining balance is due
    • Shopify Payments required
    • Balance collection is manual in Shopify Admin
    • Checkout clearly shows Total due today and the remaining amount with a due date
    • Cart line items do not display the deposit price by theme default. Use the customizable message fields to show deposit info in cart

Copy fields for payment messaging support variables for amount due now, remaining amount, and due date. Keep these clear to reduce support tickets.

5) Price and discount (optional)

  • Offer a preorder discount and show strike‑through pricing on the storefront
  • Choose fixed amount or percentage
  • Shopify Payments required since this uses Selling Plans
  • Customize the discount label shown in cart, checkout, and emails

6) Fulfillment status at order creation

Choose how preorder orders should appear in Shopify:

  • Unfulfilled: default Shopify behavior
  • Scheduled until date X: the order automatically flips to Unfulfilled on that date
  • On hold: you will manually release to Unfulfilled when ready

These controls help merchants who sync orders to a warehouse or OMS based on status rules.

7) Campaign tags

  • Order tags: added to every order from the campaign (example: preorder‑piano‑sep)
  • Customer tags: added to customers who place a preorder in the campaign

Use tags for filtering, Shopify Flow automations, segments, or loyalty follow‑ups.

8) Translations

  • The language list mirrors your Shopify store languages
  • Select a language, translate the campaign texts, and save
  • Per campaign translations let you tailor messaging for specific launches or markets

9) Design

  • Default button style matches your theme Add to cart button
  • Typography controls are for the preorder message and price details, not the button
  • Adjust font size and price alignment to fit your theme layout

Show the button across your store

  • Preorder buttons can appear on product pages, collections, search results, homepage featured sections, and Quick Buy modals
  • Enabled by default for continuity. If a product is preorder‑only, customers should see that everywhere


Notifications

Preorder confirmation email

  • Off by default. Turn on and customize subject, body, and footer
  • Includes a Cancel link per Shopify rules while the order is unfulfilled

Shipping‑update email

  • Triggered manually from the Preorders list
  • Select one or many orders and send
  • Customize the subject and message each time. Helpful for different delay reasons or goodwill coupons

Sender email and deliverability

  • Default sender: our high‑reputation domain. From name defaults to your store name. You can change the From name and Reply‑To

    Custom sender domain: set your own From address for full branding and control

    • Add the generated DNS records to your domain provider. We support SPF/DKIM and link branding
    • Verify in the app, then send a test email

      Deliverability best practices we follow across Essential Apps

    • We use dedicated infrastructure with monitored IPs and automatic warm‑up when adding new IPs
    • Keep emails transactional, use minimal links, avoid URL shorteners, set a real Reply‑To mailbox
    • We plan to show basic email analytics in the app: sent, delivered, opened


Managing preorders

Preorders list in the app

  • See all preorder orders in one place
  • Open the Shopify order page from a row to collect remaining payment or update status
  • Bulk actions: send shipping‑update emails

On a Shopify order

  • Status: Unfulfilled, Scheduled, or On hold based on your campaign setting
  • Payment status for partial payment: Partially paid
  • Actions: Collect payment now or send invoice
  • Tags: campaign tag and the general Essential Preorder tag
  • Customer profile: shows campaign customer tags


Troubleshooting and common blockers

  1. Inventory tracking
  • Track quantity must be on
  • For out‑of‑stock preorders, Continue selling when out of stock must be on
  1. Locations
  1. Cart deposit display
  • Many themes do not show deposit amounts in cart. Use the cart message fields to make deposit info explicit
  1. Collections not auto‑syncing
  • If you add or remove products from a collection later, update your campaign products
  1. Shopify Payments requirement
  • Partial payments and strike‑through preorder discounts need Selling Plans, which require Shopify Payments
  1. Subscriptions and bundles
  • Preorders cannot be combined with subscriptions at checkout
  • Products created via Shopify Bundles API are not compatible with Selling Plans
  • Bundle apps that use discount codes instead of the Bundles API usually work with preorders
  1. Large updates take time
  • Publishing or unpublishing large campaigns can take a few minutes to propagate product settings

If you have any questions or requests for customisation, reach out to us, we're here to help!

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