Rebuy's Post-Purchase offers allow customers to add products to their order immediately after checkout — before they reach the Thank You page. Because these offers run within Shopify's checkout extension framework, there are several platform-level considerations and limitations that affect when offers display, how fulfillment is handled, and how payments are processed.

This article covers the key limitations and considerations for setting up Post-Purchase offers with Rebuy. For a full list of Shopify's Post-Purchase limitations, visit Shopify's developer documentation.

Post-Purchase offers in Rebuy do not support all Data Source rule types. Because Post-Purchase offers run within Shopify's checkout extension environment, the following rule types are not compatible with Post-Purchase Data Sources:

If you configure a Post-Purchase Data Source using any of these rule types, the offer may not display or may return no results. Use cart-based and product-based rules for the most reliable Post-Purchase targeting.

In some situations, a Post-Purchase offer will not be shown to the customer. If an offer does not display, the customer's original order is maintained and processed as normal. Shopify maintains a full list of limitations in their documentation.

The Post-Purchase offer page will not be shown in the following payment scenarios:

Note: Post-Purchase offers will display for customers who check out using Shop Pay, as long as no other limitations apply.

The following conditions will also prevent a Post-Purchase offer from appearing:

When a customer reaches the Post-Purchase page, Shopify places their order in an "On hold" status (which may appear as "Pending upsell offer" in some interfaces). This hold prevents the order from being fulfilled while the customer is still interacting with the Post-Purchase offer.

The hold is released when one of the following occurs:

Once the hold is released, the fulfillable_quantity is updated to reflect the full order quantity, the fulfillment_status is set to open, and the order can be fulfilled. Orders with an "On hold" status cannot be fulfilled because their fulfillable_quantity is 0 at that time.

By default, Shopify holds a Post-Purchase order for up to 60 minutes. Rebuy gives you the option to configure a shorter hold time — between 1 and 60 minutes — through your Post-Purchase Flow settings. This is useful if you want orders to move to fulfillment faster when customers abandon the Post-Purchase page without completing the flow.

To configure the order hold timer:

What happens when the timer expires: When the hold timer reaches 0, the order moves from "On Hold" to "Unfulfilled" status in Shopify. At that point, the customer can no longer add to the order or accept new Post-Purchase offers — even if the widget's own offer timer is still counting down. If the customer clicks "Pay Now" or "Decline Offer" after the hold expires, they will see an "Offer Period Over" banner and be redirected to the Thank You page.

The difference between the order hold timer and the widget timer: The order hold timer controls how long the order stays in "On hold" status in Shopify before moving to "Unfulfilled." The widget timer is a visual countdown shown to the customer within the Post-Purchase offer page to encourage them to accept the offer. These two timers operate independently.

For full instructions on configuring your Post-Purchase flow, see Creating Post-Purchase Flows.

With the Fulfillment Holds update applied by Shopify on May 3rd, 2021, Rebuy works smoothly with 3rd party fulfillment (3PL) apps and services when those apps use the fulfillable_quantity field as documented by Shopify. More details can be found in Shopify's documentation here.

3PL apps using the Shopify Order Fulfillment API should not be affected by the fulfillment hold and will process orders correctly once the hold is released.

3PL apps using other APIs (such as the Order API) will not be able to fulfill an order while it has "On hold" status and may encounter issues with orders where a Post-Purchase offer was shown or accepted. Using the Shopify Order Fulfillment API is strongly recommended. If your fulfillment provider cannot use the Order Fulfillment API, the recommended workaround is to retry fulfillment after the hold has been released (within 60 minutes or sooner if the order hold timer is configured).

For more details on Shopify's fulfillment hold behavior, see Shopify's post-purchase fulfillment holds changelog.

When a customer accepts a Post-Purchase offer, there are two possible payment outcomes depending on whether the transaction is approved.

Payment declines can occur for two main reasons:

When a Post-Purchase transaction is declined, Shopify automatically sends the customer an email explaining that an item was added to their order but payment was not completed. The email includes a link for the customer to complete payment.

As the merchant, a partially paid order can be handled in the following ways:

Additional considerations:

Another reason Partially paid can show for an order that includes Post-Purchase upsells is if your store uses the Manual payment capture method. In this case, payment must be manually captured for the original order and any Post-Purchase upsells before the order status updates to Paid.

Post-Purchase offers require that payment information is vaulted by Shopify during checkout, which means the customer's payment must be completed directly on the Shopify Checkout without being redirected to an external payment provider.

Shopify Payments is fully supported. For a complete list of supported third-party credit card processors for your store and region, go to Settings > Payments > Third-party providers in your Shopify admin and click Choose third-party provider. Any "direct" payment provider listed there will work with Post-Purchase offers.

Unsupported payment types:

Braintree, PayPal Payments Pro, Authorize.net, and PayPal Payflow Pro are supported with the following conditions:

A Post-Purchase offer can sell a subscription product right after checkout, and every accepted Post-Purchase offer is added to the customer's original order as a new item. The products the customer bought at checkout are never changed, replaced, upgraded, or removed by a Post-Purchase offer, whether they were bought as one-time purchases or as subscriptions.

What a Post-Purchase offer can add depends on whether the customer's original order already contains a subscription, since Shopify does not allow a subscription to be added to an order that already has one. The following table shows which products a Post-Purchase offer can add, based on what the customer bought at checkout.

Whatever the customer bought at checkout, a Post-Purchase offer cannot upgrade a one-time item to a subscription, and it cannot change an existing subscription's delivery frequency, product, or quantity.

No, a Post-Purchase offer cannot upgrade or convert a one-time item the customer already bought into a subscription, because an accepted Post-Purchase offer only adds new items to the original order and never changes the items bought at checkout.

If your Post-Purchase offer shows the subscription version of a product the customer just bought as a one-time purchase, and the customer accepts it, the order keeps the original one-time item and gains the subscription as a second, separate item. The customer pays for the original item and the new subscription, and nothing from the original one-time purchase is refunded.

To give shoppers the option to turn a one-time item into a subscription, offer the switch before checkout, while the item is still in the cart, with Switch to Subscription in Smart Cart or the Switch to Subscription Pop-up.

A subscription upsell in a Post-Purchase offer adds a new subscription product to the customer's original order, and it works only when that order contains only one-time items. The products the customer bought at checkout stay exactly as they were bought, so a subscription upsell never upgrades a one-time item to a subscription and never changes an existing subscription.

When the customer accepts a subscription upsell, the subscription product joins the order as its own line item, next to the items from checkout.

To offer product subscriptions Post-Purchase, set up the following:

When the customer's original order already contains a subscription, a Post-Purchase offer can add only one-time products to that order, since Shopify does not allow a subscription to be added to an order that already has one. If a Post-Purchase offer with a subscription option reaches that order, the customer cannot add the subscription, and the offer shows Shopify's message 'No more subscription change allowed for this checkout'.

To keep subscription offers for the orders that can accept them, keep in mind the following:

No, a Post-Purchase offer cannot change a subscription the customer already bought, including a subscription-to-subscription upgrade such as moving from a monthly to a quarterly plan, because Shopify does not allow a Post-Purchase offer to modify a subscription. The subscription's delivery frequency, product, variant, and quantity all stay as the customer chose them at checkout.

If Enable Updating Partial Order is turned on in your Post-Purchase widget settings, be aware that this automatic removal does not apply to subscription items. If a customer accepts a subscription offer post-purchase but their payment fails, Rebuy will not automatically remove the subscription from the order. You will need to remove it manually from the Shopify order. Learn more about updating partially paid orders.

More on post-purchase subscription limitations can be found in Shopify's documentation.

A customer who accepts a Post-Purchase offer gets a second email from Shopify, its Order edited notification, because the accepted item is added to the order they just placed. Customers often read it as an order updated email. This is standard Shopify behavior on every store that uses Post-Purchase offers, and it does not point to a problem with your store's setup.

The emails arrive in this order:

What to keep in mind:

The email Shopify sends after a customer accepts a Post-Purchase offer is Shopify's Order edited notification, and you manage it in your Shopify admin. Shopify sends it as part of adding the accepted item to the order, so its wording and whether it sends are both Shopify notification settings.

To make changes to the Shopify Order edited email:

For questions about turning off the Order edited email or how Shopify sends it, check Shopify's customer notifications documentation or reach out to Shopify Support.

What to keep in mind: