1. Charging Customers for Giftnote (Developer Setup)

A developer-led way to charge customers for gift messaging on non-Shopify-Plus plans, using a hidden product and cart JS.

Written By Giftnote Admin

Last updated About 1 hour ago

Some brands choose to charge customers for adding a gift message. On Shopify Plus, Giftnote has a native, built-in way to do this — see Upselling and Charging for Giftnote at Checkout on Shopify Plus. This article is for merchants who are not on Shopify Plus: Shopify only allows checkout app blocks (the mechanism the native feature uses) on Plus plans, so on any other plan the only option is a small amount of custom code in your theme.

The gift message widget, where customers add a gift message to their order.

Important: This is a developer-led setup, and every Shopify theme is different — that's why there's no native option outside Plus. Your team will need to implement the logic, but we're here to support if needed. Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app.

Examples in the wild

How to set it up

1. Create a hidden Gift Message product

  • Set the price (e.g. $1.99)
  • Hide it from sales channels
  • Used only via script to charge for Giftnote

2. Detect when a giftnote is added

Use JavaScript to detect when a customer adds a gift message. The Giftnote Control Panel app embed in your theme editor has a Gift Message Event (Javascript) setting your developer can check. Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app, or email support@giftnote.com, and we'll confirm what your script can listen for.

3. Add the product automatically

When a giftnote is detected:

  • Use Shopify's Cart JS API to add the gift message product
  • Check first to ensure only one exists in the cart (don't stack duplicates)

4. Remove it if the giftnote is removed

Keep things in sync:

  • Detect when the gift message is removed
  • If the gift message is gone, also remove the proxy product

5. Prevent desync

To avoid confusion:

  • Hide the remove button for the proxy product in the cart
  • Or, if manually removed, clear the giftnote data too

Why isn't this available natively on every plan?

Shopify only allows apps to place blocks in the checkout editor (the mechanism the native Plus feature uses) on Shopify Plus. Below Plus, apps have no supported way to add a charge to checkout without custom cart-page code — which is why this developer-led path exists as the non-Plus option, not because Giftnote lacks a built-in feature on the plans where Shopify allows it.

Charging for an add-on on the cart page also touches your cart logic, layout and styling, which differ from theme to theme. Rather than ship a half-solution, we leave this to your dev team, with our support if needed.

Selling through a Giftnote multi-gift storefront? Its Pricing tab has a separate Message Fee (Charge a message fee) that is not limited to Shopify Plus. It applies to multi-gift orders only, not to your regular cart. Go to Settings > Multi Gifts, select Edit on the storefront, then open Pricing.

Questions? Not sure how to implement it? Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app, or email support@giftnote.com.