Plans, Pricing & Billing FAQ
Understand Giftnote Core and Pro plan pricing, per-gift fees, volume discounts, free trials, and the Shopify $999 spend cap.
Written By Giftnote Team
Last updated About 2 hours ago
This article covers everything about Giftnote's plans, pricing, per-gift fees, your free trial, and how billing works through Shopify — including how to prevent the spend cap from freezing your account during peak season.
Quick reference
Full details
Core plan — $19/month + $1 per gift message
The Core plan is designed for direct-to-consumer merchants who want to add gift messaging, digital gift cards, and recipient capture to their store.
What's included:
Gift message widget on your product pages, cart drawer, and checkout (checkout extension requires Shopify Plus)
Digital gift cards with direct-to-recipient delivery
Store credit issuance
Recipient notification via SMS and email at the moment of delivery
Klaviyo integration
Merchant dashboard
Post-purchase widget
What's not included:
Multi-Gift corporate gifting portal (requires Pro)
API access (requires Pro)
Pro plan — $99/month + $1 per gift message
The Pro plan includes everything in Core, plus the Multi-Gift corporate gifting portal for merchants whose customers purchase gifts in bulk — employee gifts, client appreciation, event gifting.
What the Multi-Gift portal adds:
Branded corporate gifting portal on a custom subdomain
CSV upload for up to 1,000+ recipients per order
Per-recipient personalised gift messages
Address validation
Live shipping rate calculation
The Multi-Gift portal must be enabled by the Giftnote team after you upgrade. It's not self-serve — contact us and we'll set it up for you, including a walkthrough session.
How the per-gift fee works
You pay $1 per gift message sent, on top of your monthly plan fee. Here's what counts as one gift message:
One order = one fee, regardless of how many items are in the cart
The fee covers both SMS and email delivery to the recipient
For Multi-Gift orders, each recipient counts as one gift message (e.g., a corporate order with 50 recipients = 50 gift messages = $50 in usage fees)
In a quiet month where you send 15 gift messages, your total bill is $19 (plan fee) + $15 (usage) = $34. You only pay for what you use.
When you install Giftnote from the Shopify App Store, you get a free trial period. During the trial:
You can set up your widget, configure gift cards, and connect Klaviyo
No charges are applied — your plan fee and per-gift usage fees begin after the trial ends
Billing is approved through Shopify when you accept the app's terms at installation
If you need more time to complete your setup before going live, contact us at support@giftnote.com — we can work with you to make sure you're not charged until your store is ready.
How billing works through Shopify
Giftnote is billed entirely through Shopify. You'll see charges on your regular Shopify invoice — there's no separate payment method or billing portal to manage.
Your Giftnote charges have two components:
Plan fee — $19/month (Core) or $99/month (Pro), charged at the start of each billing cycle
Usage fees — $1 per gift message sent (or your volume-discounted rate), charged at the end of each billing cycle based on actual usage
You can view your current Giftnote charges at any time:
Go to your Shopify admin
Click Settings (bottom-left corner)
Click Billing
Click View all subscriptions
Find Giftnote in the list and click it to see your plan details and current usage
The $999 spend cap — and why you need to increase it before peak season
This is the single most important billing detail for growing stores.
Shopify sets a default monthly spend cap of $999 on app usage charges. This cap applies to Giftnote's per-gift fees. If your usage fees reach $999 in a billing cycle, Giftnote stops processing new gift messages until the next cycle begins.
That means during your busiest sales period — Black Friday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day — your gift messaging could silently stop working if you haven't raised this cap.
At $1 per gift message, you'll hit the default cap at 999 gift messages in a month. For context, a brand doing well during the holiday season can process hundreds of gift messages per week.
Increase your Shopify billing spend cap
Go to your Shopify admin
Click Settings in the bottom-left corner
Click Billing
Click View all subscriptions
Find Giftnote in the list and click on it
Click View spending limit (or "Approve usage charges" depending on your Shopify version)
Enter a higher amount — we recommend at least $2,000 for peak season or higher if you expect strong gifting volume
Click Save to confirm the new limit
This cap is a Shopify platform setting, not a Giftnote setting. You're not committing to spend that amount — you're raising the ceiling so Giftnote can keep processing gift messages if volume is high. You still only pay for the gift messages you actually send.
We strongly recommend increasing your spend cap at least 4–6 weeks before any major gifting season (Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas). Don't wait until gift messages stop sending to find out your cap was too low.
What happens when you uninstall Giftnote
If you uninstall the Giftnote app from your Shopify store:
All charges stop immediately. No further plan fees or usage fees are billed after the uninstall date
There is no cancellation fee. Giftnote is month-to-month with no contracts
Your gift card codes remain active. Giftnote gift cards are standard Shopify gift cards — recipients can still redeem them after you uninstall the app
Your gift message data is retained on our end in case you reinstall later
If you see a charge after uninstalling, that's almost always a Shopify billing cycle timing issue — the charge covers usage from before you uninstalled. If this happens, contact us at support@giftnote.com and we'll issue a refund immediately.
Important: Disabling the Giftnote app embed in your theme is not the same as uninstalling the app. If you want to stop billing entirely, you need to uninstall Giftnote from Shopify Admin → Settings → Apps and sales channels → Giftnote → Uninstall.
Billing per store, not per account
Giftnote billing applies per Shopify store. If you run multiple Shopify stores (for example, separate stores for different regions), each store has its own Giftnote subscription and usage charges. This is a Shopify billing infrastructure constraint — there's no way to consolidate multiple stores under one subscription.
Can I charge my customers for the gift message?
Yes. Many merchants pass the cost of the gift message through to their customers — some at break-even ($1), others at a margin ($2–$5). Here's how the economics work:
On Shopify Plus: You can enable a surcharge natively through the Giftnote checkout extension. No developer needed.
On other Shopify plans: A developer-required implementation using JavaScript events is needed. See our guide: Implementing Customer Charges for Gift Messages.
Fewer than 10% of Giftnote merchants currently charge for gift messages — but those who do report customers add them without hesitation.
Notes
Billing is usage-based. If you have zero gift orders in a month, you pay only the plan fee ($19 or $99). No minimum usage commitment.
One gift message per order. Whether a customer orders one item or ten, if they add a gift message, that's one gift message and one $1 fee.
The $999 spend cap is set by Shopify, not Giftnote. We cannot increase it for you — only the store owner can change it in Shopify billing settings.
Publishing a new Shopify theme drops your widget settings. If you switch themes during a billing period, you'll need to re-enable the Giftnote app embed in the new theme. This doesn't affect your billing — just your widget visibility.