A gift rule adds a product to a subscription order at no charge, on the delivery you choose. It is the cheapest thing you can do about churn: the customer has a reason to reach the third box rather than cancelling after the second.
It needs a paid plan, Growth or higher, and it works on both billing engines: card renewals through Shopify and Mollie SEPA direct debit alike.
Go to Automations, click Add automation and pick A free gift on a later delivery. Give it a Gift name for yourself, for example "Third box thank you". Customers never see it.
Set the Order number the gift lands on. Deliveries are counted from the one the customer places at checkout, so that first order is number 1 and a gift can start from 2. You can go up to 60.
Leave Give it again, every time they reach that number off and the gift happens once. Turn it on and it repeats: set it to 3 and the gift comes on orders 3, 6, 9 and so on, for as long as the customer stays. The form prints back the sentence it will actually follow, so you can read it before saving.
Any product in your store can be the gift, and you set how many of it go in the box, up to ten. It is added to the order at zero.
Leave Say so on the product page on and shoppers see "Free gift on delivery 3" next to the plan before they subscribe, which is where a gift does most of its work. Turn it off if you would rather it were a surprise in the box.
Applies to is either one plan or every subscription plan in the shop. One rule per shop is usually enough; several become useful when different plans deserve different rewards.
If the gift product is out of stock when the order goes out, the gift is skipped and the order ships without it. It never blocks the order. You see the skip in Activity.
Nobody gets the same gift twice, whatever happens underneath: a retried webhook or a repeated dunning attempt cannot send a second one.
Switching a rule off stops new gifts. One already sitting on an upcoming order stays there, and gifts already sent are not taken back.
The two engines add the gift at different moments. On a card subscription it goes onto the contract before the charge; on Mollie it is written into the cycle being charged, moments before the payment. Either way the customer pays nothing for it.
Open Automations → Activity after the first gift is due, to see what went out and what was skipped.
Check the customer sees it: the subscriber counts down to it in their account, and the reminder email before the renewal names it.
Pair it with a cancellation flow, so a customer who is about to leave is reminded what is coming.
Stuck on any of this? Open the chat in the bottom right corner of the app and we will help you set it up.
