7. Giftnote Go-Live Checklist

Verify every prerequisite before launching Giftnote: the widget, notifications, gift card setup, delivery tracking and a live test order. This checklist backs up the Place a test order and Go live steps of the Setup guide on the Giftnote Home page.

Storefront

• The Giftnote app embed (Giftnote Control Panel) is enabled in the theme you are launching
• Gift message widget is visible on your storefront (product page, cart, and/or checkout)
• The gift message option shows when you check out with Shop Pay (Shopify Plus only)

Notifications

• Klaviyo flows are approved as transactional (if using Klaviyo)
• Native Giftnote emails are disabled (if using Klaviyo)
• SMS template is reviewed and customized

Gift card product (skip if you don't sell gift cards)

• Gift card product created from scratch in Shopify (not converted from an existing product)
• Track inventory is unchecked on every variant
• This is a physical product is unchecked on every variant
• Old or native Shopify gift card product is unpublished
• Only one Giftnote gift card product is live
• The product shows Active in Settings → Gift Cards → Manage gift card products

Delivery tracking

• Your orders carry a carrier name and tracking number in Shopify
• If your carrier doesn't report deliveries, you have chosen what to do instead (On Fulfillment, or hide On Delivery)

Test orders

• Test order placed from your live storefront (not from Shopify admin)
• Gift message appears in Gift Orders in the Giftnote app
• Test order marked as Delivered in Shopify admin
• Recipient received the gift notification (email and/or SMS)

Full details

Enable the Giftnote app embed in your theme

The Giftnote app embed is a master toggle that controls whether the gift message widget renders on your store. Without it, nothing appears, even if the widget block has been added to your theme.

1. Open your themes. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.
2. Customize the theme. Click Customize on the theme you are launching. We suggest turning Giftnote on in an unpublished copy of your theme first, then publishing it.
3. Open App embeds. Click the App embeds icon in the left sidebar (it looks like a puzzle piece).
4. Turn on Giftnote. Find Giftnote Control Panel in the list and toggle it on.
5. Save. Click Save in the top-right corner of the theme editor.

Important: App embeds are switched on per theme. If you switch to or publish a different theme at any point, you'll need to turn the Giftnote app embed on in that theme too.

If you don't see Giftnote in the App embeds list, the app may not be fully installed. Go to Apps in your Shopify admin, open Giftnote, and confirm the installation is complete.

Check it from the Giftnote app. Go to Settings → Overview. In the Online store widgets card, Control Panel (the Giftnote Control Panel app embed) shows Active or Inactive, with Edit on theme and Help buttons. If it shows Inactive, gifting won't show in your store: select Edit on theme and turn the embed on. The widgets below it (such as the Gift Orders Message) show their own status. The card only reflects your published theme: changes on a draft theme appear there once you publish it.

Confirm the gift message widget is visible on your storefront

After enabling the app embed, verify the widget appears where your customers will see it.

1. Open your store. Use your public storefront URL in a new browser tab, not the Shopify admin preview. If you are still on an unpublished theme, use that theme's preview.
2. Check a product page. Look for the gift message button (for example "Send as a Gift", or your own button text).
3. Check the cart. Add a product to your cart and open your cart drawer or cart page. Confirm the widget appears there too, if you've added it to the cart.
4. Check checkout. Proceed to checkout and confirm the widget appears (Shopify Plus only).

If the button doesn't appear on a specific product page, that product may not be assigned to a template with the Giftnote widget block. Go back to the theme editor and check that the block is added to that product page template. Also check the product isn't listed under Hidden products in Settings → Gift Orders → Advanced settings, or tagged with the block's exclusion tag.

What to check for:

• Button text, colour and placement match your expectations
• Clicking the button opens the gift message popup
• The popup lets you enter a recipient name, email or phone, and a gift message

If the widget appears on desktop but not mobile (or the other way round), this is typically a theme CSS conflict. Chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app, or email support@giftnote.com, with your store URL and a screenshot of what you see.

Check the gift message option in Shop Pay (Shopify Plus only)

If the gift message block doesn't show in Shop Pay, those customers won't see the gift message option at checkout. Check that the block is included in Shop Pay: in the checkout editor, select the Gift Message block and make sure Checkout behavior → Include block in Shop Pay is on.

1. Confirm the block is in your checkout. In your Shopify admin, go to Settings → Checkout and click Customize. Use the Giftnote Gift Message block. Don't use the entry labelled [DEPRECATED] Gift Message.
2. Start a checkout with Shop Pay. On your storefront, add a product to your cart and choose Shop Pay.
3. Look for the gift message option. Confirm it shows in the Shop Pay checkout, as it does in your standard checkout.

If the option doesn't show in Shop Pay, go back to the checkout editor, select the Gift Message block and turn on Include block in Shop Pay, then save and test again.

If you don't see the Giftnote checkout block at all, your store may not be on Shopify Plus. The checkout extension is only available on Shopify Plus plans. For non-Plus stores, the product page and cart drawer widgets are your main gift message placements.

Verify Klaviyo flows are approved as transactional (if using Klaviyo)

Klaviyo must approve your Giftnote notification flows as transactional before they'll send to gift recipients. Without transactional approval, Klaviyo only sends to contacts who have opted into marketing, and almost no gift recipients have.

1. Open your flows. In your Klaviyo account, go to Flows.
2. Find each Giftnote flow. They are triggered by Giftnote events such as Received Gift Order for gift messages and Received Gift Card for gift cards. If you connected Klaviyo before our big September 2026 update, flows built on the old metric names keep working.
3. Check the status. Click into each flow. It should show Live and Transactional.

If a flow shows Live but not Transactional, it hasn't been approved yet. Transactional approval typically takes up to 24 hours, so submit the request at least one day before your planned go-live date.

What gets a flow rejected by Klaviyo: call-to-action buttons, promotional imagery, discount codes or split-test blocks. Klaviyo requires transactional flows to be purely informational. If your flow was rejected, remove those elements and resubmit through Klaviyo's live chat.

Important: Any edit to an already-approved Klaviyo template requires resubmitting for transactional approval. The template reverts to non-transactional during the review. Avoid editing approved templates right before go-live or during peak gifting periods.

Disable native Giftnote emails (if using Klaviyo)

If your Klaviyo flows are live and Giftnote's built-in emails are still on, recipients get two emails for every gift: one from Klaviyo and one from Giftnote. Turn off the native emails the moment your Klaviyo flows go live.

1. Open Notifications. In the Giftnote app, go to Settings → Notifications.
2. Turn off the email channel. Open each event you've replaced with a Klaviyo flow and switch off its email channel.

Can't find Notifications? Look under Settings inside the Giftnote app, not in Shopify's own notification settings.

Note: SMS is sent from Giftnote's own platform, not through Klaviyo. Even with Klaviyo handling emails, your SMS messages stay active in Giftnote. See the next section to review them.

Review your SMS template

Gift message SMS notifications are sent directly from Giftnote, not from Klaviyo or any other provider.

1. Open Notifications. In the Giftnote app, go to Settings → Notifications.
2. Find the SMS events. Gift Order - Gift Message Delivered and Gift Card - Delivered to Recipient are the only events with an SMS channel.
3. Review the text. Open each one and edit the SMS message content if you want to customize it.
4. Save your changes.

Gift messages can be up to 210 characters.

Set up your gift card product correctly (if selling gift cards)

Gift card product misconfiguration is the single most common cause of gift card delivery failures. If any of these settings are wrong, gift cards can fail silently, with no error message and no notification to you or the customer.

Verify each of these settings on your Giftnote gift card product:

Check the result in Giftnote. Go to Settings → Gift Cards → Manage gift card products. Each product shows Active, Inactive or Shopify gift card — not supported, with Open in Shopify to fix it. "Inactive products will not process new gift cards correctly."

Discounts on gift card purchases. Settings → Gift Cards → Advanced Settings has an Allow Discounts setting that affects the value issued when a gift card is bought with a discount. Read its description on screen and set it before you go live.

If you previously used Rise.ai, Govalo or another gift card provider, make sure those products are unpublished and those apps are deactivated before going live with Giftnote gift cards. Running two gift card systems at the same time causes duplicate issuance and conflicting widget displays.

Delivery-on-arrival messages: what changed in the September update

The previous version of the app required you to manually map each shipping carrier's Shopify label to a known carrier, with a fallback toggle for when tracking data was missing. Giftnote now does this automatically. Carriers are detected automatically on new orders, so there's nothing to configure. Orders from before the September update keep their stored carrier mapping.

Make sure tracking reaches Shopify. On Delivery messages need a carrier name and tracking number on the Shopify order. This is usually handled by your 3PL or a tool like ShipStation. If you fulfil orders manually, you must enter this information yourself. You can see the tracking number Giftnote picked up under Fulfillments on each gift order.

If your carrier doesn't report deliveries (some local same-day couriers and newer fulfilment networks don't), you have three options:

• Mark the order Delivered directly in Shopify. Giftnote also reacts to Shopify's own delivered status.
• Turn on On Fulfillment in Settings → Gift Orders → Advanced settings. It sends the gift message "when the order is fulfilled (shipped), without waiting for delivery confirmation".
• Turn on Hide 'On Delivery' option in your widget design, which the app suggests "if your store uses shipping carriers without delivery tracking".

If an On Delivery message repeatedly doesn't send for one carrier, chat with us using the chat button in the help centre or in the app. Carriers are no longer something you configure.

Place a test order from your live storefront

This is the most important step. A test order placed from your storefront is the only way to verify the entire gift message flow end to end. Orders placed through the Shopify admin bypass the gift message widget entirely, so they will not appear in Giftnote.

1. Open your store. Use your public storefront URL in a browser, not the Shopify admin.
2. Add a product to your cart.
3. Add gift details. Click the gift message button and fill in the gift details. Use your own email and phone number as the recipient.
4. Complete checkout and pay. Use a real payment method. A 100% discount code can bypass payment processing and cause the test to fail. Use a low-value product, then refund it afterwards.
5. Find the order. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders and find your test order.
6. Mark it delivered. Click Mark as fulfilled, then update the tracking status to Delivered.
7. Check your inbox and phone. You should receive the gift notification within a few minutes.
8. Check Giftnote. Open Gift Orders in the Giftnote app (it also shows under Recent Orders on Home) and confirm the order appears with the correct status.

If the gift message doesn't appear in Giftnote after checkout, double-check that you placed the order from the storefront (not the Shopify admin) and that the Giftnote app embed is enabled on the theme you ordered from.

For complex setups, run a test order for each delivery method you offer:

Notes

You're ready to go live when all three of these are true:

• The gift message widget is visible on your production store (not just an unpublished theme)
• A real gift order has been received and appears in Giftnote
• The correct notification was delivered to the recipient (via Klaviyo or native Giftnote emails)

Timing considerations:

• Klaviyo transactional approval takes up to 24 hours. Submit the request at least one full business day before your planned go-live.
• If you need to launch quickly (during peak season or a holiday rush), go live with Giftnote's native emails first and add Klaviyo afterwards.
• The most common go-live delay is waiting for Klaviyo email template design. Don't let this block your launch.

After go-live:

• Check Gift Orders in the Giftnote app during the first week for any orders in an error state or showing Health warnings
• If you publish a new theme at any time, turn the Giftnote app embed on in that theme

Related articles

• 2. Delivery Options: Send Now, Send Later, On Delivery, On Fulfillment
• 5. Gift Message Not Delivered to Recipient
• 4. Widget Not Appearing on My Store
• 1. How to setup Klaviyo
• 6. Gift Card Not Received by Recipient