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  4. Customizable Bundles
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Getting started with fixed-price customizable bundles

Relevant to: Shopify Checkout Integration Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration

Fixed-price customizable bundles let you offer a "build-a-box" experience on your storefront by using a single subscription product to bundle multiple Shopify products, allowing customers to select items for their bundle.

This guide explains key features of fixed-price customizable bundles, plus use cases and considerations.

Platform:

  • Shopify Checkout Integration
  • Migrated Shopify Checkout Integration

Before you start

  • Merchants on Pro or Custom plans can offer customers fixed-price customizable bundles.

Key features

Parent bundle product

In Recharge, a bundle consists of a parent product/SKU and individual products/SKUs for each item in the bundle. Bundles are fixed-price, with the parent product's price representing the total cost.

Bundle item prices and discounts affect Shopify reports. Since bundle items are added at full price and then discounted by 100%, they impact gross sales and discount reports. You may need to reconcile these reports for accounting purposes.

Fixed-pricing

Fixed-price customizable bundles have a fixed-price and the price of the bundle does not change based on the contents selected. 

Customizable after first order

Setting the bundle up as Customizable after first order combines the simplicity of a preset bundle with the flexibility of a customizable one. For the first order, all customers  receive the same set of products, like a preset bundle. From their second order onwards, customers can update their selections in the customer portal. 

Bundles specific product details page

Fixed-price customizable bundles use a custom bundle product template called recharge-bundle, which includes the Recharge bundles widget. After creating and publishing a fixed-price customizable bundle, Recharge automatically set the recharge-bundle template as the product template in Shopify, ensuring the widget displays correctly.

Bundles must be purchased via this widget or a custom widget using  . Customizable bundles cannot be added to the customer's cart using any quick-add methods from another page of your storefront or cart abandonment emails.

When a customer purchases a bundle through the recharge-bundle template, the Shopify checkout order includes a _rb_id line item property. If the Shopify order doesn’t contain this line item property, the bundle was purchased with an unsupported method and the bundle may not process successfully.

On the product details page, customers can:

  • Select bundle products
  • Choose a subscription type
  • Add any available add-ons or extra products

Example of a customizable Bundle's product details page on a storefront


The bundles widget lets customers build their bundles, providing flexibility and convenience. For more information on the bundle widget layout options and customizations, see Bundles layout overview.

Bundles specific customer portal content

Customers can manage their bundle contents and update their selections for upcoming orders from the customer portal.

Customer portal with Bundle widget 

The customer portal widget automatically displays for bundle subscriptions in the Affinity and Unity customer portal themes. 

Bundles management in the merchant portal

Bundle contents can be adjusted through the merchant portal from either the Customer details page or the Subscription details page.

Customizable fixed price bundle editing

Use cases

Scenario

Benefit
A monthly snack subscription service allows customers to build a personalized box with their favorite treats. Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by offering the ability to personalize and select the products included in the bundle.
A children's toy store lets customers create custom one-time gift boxes for birthdays, anniversaries, or holidays. Enhance the shopping experience and boost sales during special occasions with unique, personal gifts. Additionally, use word-of-mouth marketing to attract customers who may not have heard of your brand.
A skincare brand offers build-your-own sample kits of trial-size products so customers can try different products before committing to full sizes. Encourage customers to sample different products and encourage future purchases, while helping customers find what products work best for them.

Set-up instructions

See How to create a fixed-price customizable bundle for detailed set-up instructions.

Considerations

Review the following considerations when configuring and managing fixed-price bundles:

Product compatibility 

Considerations

Notes
Checkout Cross-Sell
  • Checkout Cross-Sell is not compatible with fixed-price bundles.
  • While fixed-price bundles do trigger the cross-sell option at the checkout, you cannot sell these bundle types as cross-sell products.
Local pickup and delivery
  • Local pickup is compatible, but delivery is incompatible with fixed-price customizable bundles.
Automate
  • Automate is not compatible with fixed-price bundles.
Discounts
  • You can offer subscription discounts and use discount codes with Bundles.
Partial order fulfillment
  • Bundles is incompatible with the partial order fulfillment feature. 
Surprise and Delight flows
  • You can add free gifts to orders with bundles, although you should not use fixed-price bundles as the gift option, as customers will not have a way to customize the bundle. Recharge recommends using preset bundles as the gift option for a seamless customer experience.
Gift subscriptions
  • You can allow customers to gift bundles to their friends and family through the Gift Subscriptions feature.
Prepaid subscriptions
  • Fixed-price customizable bundles are compatible with prepaid subscriptions.
  • You cannot set prepaid bundle product options to expire after a certain number of charges.
  • You can use a product with multiple variants as the parent product for a prepaid subscription, however, customers can only select the variant during the initial checkout purchase. Customers cannot change the variant in the customer portal after they check out.
Concierge SMS
  • Concierge SMS is partially supported. Customers can use SMS to skip an order or change their charge date for bundle subscriptions. Concierge SMS sends the customer a link to manage their subscription in the customer portal for more complex actions, such as swapping bundle items or customizing contents.

Theme Engine

Note: Recharge plans to deprecate the Theme Engine customer portal on December 31, 2025. All merchants using Theme Engine must transition to the Affinity theme before this date. Review the Transition to Affinity guide for next steps. Note that the upgrade to Affinity is final.
Multi-currency
  • Fixed-price customizable bundles are compatible with Multi-currency. Orders always process at the correct converted price, but there are a couple of display issues to be aware of:
    • When using a flat conversion or price override in Markets, bundle contents do not display in Recharge.
    • When using dynamic conversion in Markets, the checkout order in Recharge may show incorrect prices.
Store analytics
  • Recharge only tracks the parent bundle product.
  • The product forecast is incorrect as bundle contents are not displayed.
  • The revenue numbers displayed are accurate for fixed-price customizable bundles.

  • Cancellation reasons and Cancellation Prevention data are tracked at the bundle (parent subscription) level. SKU-level cancellation reporting is not supported for fixed-price customizable bundles.
Quick add methods
  • Fixed-price customizable bundles cannot be added to the customer's cart using any quick-add methods from another page of your storefront or cart abandonment emails.
Customer portal 
Workflows
  • Fixed-price customizable bundles are partially compatible with Workflows, with some limitations. Note the following about using Workflows with customizable bundles:
    • If you use a workflow to swap a subscription product to a customizable bundle, the contents are not carried over. In this scenario, the customer must log into their customer portal and select bundle contents prior to the charge date. It is recommended to use default selections for all bundles to prevent empty bundle orders.
    • You can use a workflow to swap a customizable bundle to a regular subscription.
    • Workflows should not impact individual bundle contents. Workflows can swap to or update the parent bundle product but content selections will still need to be made through the customer portal. 
Win Backs
  • Customers can reactivate customizable bundles through Win Backs, however, you cannot offer a customizable bundle as a free gift in a reactivation flow.
  • Customers are subscribed to the original bundle contents when they reactivate. You can bulk swap bundle selections if the original bundle contents are no longer available.
Variant Level Plans
  • You cannot use Variant Level Plans to hide all bundle contents.
    • While you can use Variant Level Plans to hide specific plans from variants, you cannot use Variant Level Plans to hide bundle contents entirely. If you remove all plans from a variant, the variant still appears in the bundle widget.
Third party applications
  • Most third-party applications are compatible with Bundles if the app doesn’t modify the add-to-cart behavior or impact fulfillment. Recharge recommends running a test bundle order to ensure the third-party app is compatible.
Shop app
  • Fixed-price bundles are not compatible with the Shop app.

Bundle logic and behavior

Considerations

Notes
Tax calculations
  • Recharge calculates tax using the parent product's price for fixed-price bundle purchases
Nested bundles
  • Nested bundles are not compatible at this time
Editing bundles content for customers
  • Swapping or changing the variant of a bundle subscription removes the bundle contents and requires the contents to be re-selected
  • Bundle rules configured in the bundle settings must be followed (i.e. single item limits, collection limits, quantity limits)
Product updates
  • You must update product images and adjust product settings such as inventory and taxes directly in Shopify.
Order Management Systems
  • If you use an Order Management System (OMS), ensure it is compatible with your bundle setup. If the OMS pulls order information as soon as the order is placed, it is best to adjust the sync configuration to update after a few minutes, allowing time for the Bundles breakdown to be updated.
Subscription-only products
  • You can sell any product in a bundle collection separately as a subscription in Recharge, but the product cannot be a subscription-only product due to a Shopify limitation.
Shipping rates

Shipping rates for fixed-price customizable bundles differ depending on:

  • If you are trying to process a checkout or recurring order
  • If your store uses the new or old method for processing recurring bundles orders
Inventory See Inventory handling for detailed information on how Recharge handles inventory for bundles.
Product limits per collections
  • Bundles currently support a maximum of 250 products in a collection. To ensure bundles function as expected, Recharge recommends limiting bundle collections to 250 products, so that all available products are visible to customers.

Resources

There are a variety of Bundles resources to help you get started, or to troubleshoot common issues. See the following resources below for additional information:

Getting started guides

How to guides

Using bundles guides

Troubleshooting and FAQs

Developer documentation

Merchant academy resources

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