Setting up customer purchase limits in Shopify with DC order limits

Customer purchase limits let you track purchases per logged-in customer and enforce lifetime maximums for quantity and or total spend across selected products or variants.

When to use the customer purchase limits

Use this feature if you want to:

• Run limited releases and prevent resellers by capping each customer’s lifetime purchases of specific items.
• Gate special access for certain customers by applying limits only to customer tags or approved emails and domains.
• Control long-term inventory allocation by limiting how much any one customer can buy across a product set over time.

Setting up customer purchase limits

To set up customer purchase limits, follow these steps:

1. Access the form

• Go to the Order Limits page.
• Click on "Create rule" to set up a customer purchase limit.
• Or, click on the title of an existing customer purchase limit rule (e.g., "Customer limit on John Doe") to edit, which will open the form.

2. Fill out Rule Details

Rule information

• Title: Enter a descriptive name for the rule. This title is used internally to identify the rule.

Purchase Limits

• Maximum Quantity: Specify the maximum number of items a customer can purchase for a lifetime.
• Maximum Spending: Specify a maximum spending limit on a customer for their lifetime.

3. Guest customers handling

Purchase limits require tracking individual customers across orders. Since guest customers (who are not logged in) can't be reliably tracked, you need to decide how to handle them.

• Allow purchases without limits: Guest customers can purchase freely with no restrictions. Only logged-in customers are tracked and limited.
  • Pros:
    • No friction for casual shoppers
    • Higher conversion rates
    • Works well for most e-commerce scenarios
  • Cons:
    • Determined resellers can check out as guests repeatedly
    • Limits only apply to customers who bother to log in

Best for: General purchase limits where occasional bypasses are acceptable

• Block and require login: Guest customers see an error message asking them to log in or create an account before purchasing products covered by this rule.
  • Pros:
    • All customers are tracked—no bypasses
    • Creates account relationships for future marketing
    • Essential for high-value limited drops
  • Cons:
    • Adds friction to checkout
    • May reduce conversion rates
    • Requires customers to create/remember accounts

Best for: High-demand product drops, preventing resellers, employee or B2B programs

Recommendation: For limited-edition releases or anti-reseller protection, choose "Block and require login." For general inventory management, "Allow purchases without limits" typically provides a better customer experience.

4. Usage tracking and resetting purchase limits

Purchases are tracked against these limits. Tracking details appear after saving. You can reset customer limits from the usage history page.

How to Reset

1. Go to your purchase limit rule
2. Click View usage history in the Usage Tracking section
3. Click Reset All
4. Confirm the reset

What Happens When You Reset

• All customers tracked under this rule have their counts cleared to zero
• The "Times Reset" counter increments by one
• Customers can immediately purchase again up to the limit
• Historical data is not preserved (this cannot be undone)

Times Reset Counter

The "Times Reset" number indicates the number of times you've reset this rule. This is useful for:

• Tracking how many periods have passed (e.g., "we've done 12 weekly resets")
• Auditing when the limits were last cleared
• Verifying your reset schedule is being followed

5. Define product eligibility

Select which products are affected by the rule:

• All Products: Applies the rule to every product.
• Selected Products: Limits apply to individually selected products with a specific title or product ID
  • Product IDs: The numeric identifier found in Shopify admin URLs (e.g., 7834521098765     )
  • Product titles: The exact name of the product as it appears in your store (e.g., Limited Edition Hoodie     )

Separate multiple entries with commas. You can mix IDs and titles in the same field.

• Example: 7834521098765, Summer Collection Tee, 9012345678901     
• Selected product variants: Limits apply only to the variants you enter by variant ID or title.
  • Finding variant IDs:
    1. In Shopify admin, go to Products.
    2. Select a product.
    3. Click a variant.
    4. The variant ID appears in the URL.
  • Example:  
    • Limit customers to 1 purchase of the "Size XL" variant while allowing unlimited purchases of other sizes
    • Restrict a specific colorway during a collaboration drop
    • Cap purchases of a high-demand bundle option

6. Determine customer eligibility

Choose which logged-in customers the rule affects:

• All Customers: Affects every customer.
• Customers with Specific Tags: Applies only to customers tagged with specific keywords.
• Selected Customers: Affects individually selected customers with email or domain.
  • When selecting specific customers for your rule, you can use email domain patterns to target groups of customers without entering each email individually.
  • How it works: Enter "@" followed by a domain to match all customers with email addresses from that domain.

• Common use cases:
  • B2B/Wholesale accounts: Limit purchases to customers from a specific company (e.g., @bigretailer.com)
  • Employee purchase programs: Restrict access to staff with company email addresses (e.g., @yourstore.com)
  • Partner or affiliate access: Give special limits to partner organization members (e.g., @affiliate.org)

• Combining patterns: You can mix full email addresses and domain patterns in the same field, separated by commas.

  Example: vip@example.com, @wholesalepartner.com, buyer@bigstore.com

7. Set exclusion rules

Decide which products or customers should be excluded from this rule:

• Exclude Specific Products: Type in product IDs or names for any products you don’t want this rule to apply to. Separate tags with commas.
• Exclude Customers with Tags: Enter customer tags that should not be affected by the rule. Customers with these tags can check out without restrictions. Separate tags with commas.

Learn more

8. Save and activate

Click "Save" to apply the settings. Once saved, the rules are live immediately unless you set a future start date.

Once a rule is created, a summary of the rule's settings is displayed on the left side of the form for existing rules. This summary helps you review and confirm the rule's configurations before making further changes.