Gift season changes what an order looks like. One shopper buys six candles and wants two sent to her sister, two to her dad and two to the office. A company orders forty thank-you boxes and sends you a spreadsheet of addresses. A regular calls and asks you to "just send one to each of my kids."
Shopify's checkout is built for one order going to one address, so each of those turns into several separate checkouts, or several orders you build by hand. This guide covers how to handle gift orders to multiple addresses on Shopify: what works with the tools you already have, and how to set up Multi Ship, the app we build for exactly this, before the holiday rush starts.
The short version
- Shopify's checkout takes one shipping address per order. To send one purchase to several people, the shopper checks out several times, or you create one draft order per recipient.
- Multi Ship lets the shopper pay once and assign items to as many addresses as they need. Each address becomes its own order in your admin, with its own shipping rate, tax, gift note and delivery date.
- Large gift lists can come in as a CSV, either uploaded by the shopper at checkout or by you in the admin.
- Do the setup before November: shipping zones, gift notes, recipient emails and your free-shipping rules all behave differently when one order becomes many.
Why gift orders don't fit a normal checkout
Shopify's checkout collects a single shipping address for the whole order. That's fine for most orders, and it's why Shopify's split shipping doesn't help here either: it splits one order into several shipments, all going to the same address.
So a shopper sending gifts to three people has two options on a standard store: go through checkout three times, typing a new address each time, or give up and ship everything to themselves. Either way, your gift season ends up with fewer, smaller orders than it could have had.
You can work around it from the admin. Go to Orders → Drafts → Create order, add the products for one recipient, edit the shipping address, then Send invoice, which emails the customer a checkout link. Repeat for every recipient. It works for a handful of gifts. For forty, it's an afternoon of copy and paste, and the customer gets forty invoices.
One order, many recipients
With Multi Ship installed, the shopper ticks Ship to multiple addresses in the cart, adds the addresses, chooses which items go where and pays once. Behind the scenes, the app turns that single purchase into one order per destination:
The original order stays as the record of payment (the parent order), and each address becomes a child order. You fulfill child orders in your Shopify admin like any other order, so your shipping labels, packing slips and fulfillment apps don't need to change. Shipping rates come from the shipping zones and profiles you've already set up in Shopify, and sales tax is calculated for each destination address.
Gift notes, delivery dates and recipient emails
This is where a gift order is different from a bulk order. In the app, go to Settings → Features and turn on the gift options you want. All three are off by default, and you can use any combination:
- Gift notes: a personal message for each shipment, typed by the shopper at the review step.
- Delivery instructions: notes like "Leave at the back door" for each address.
- Preferred delivery date: the shopper picks a date for each shipment, so recipients know when to expect it.
Whatever the shopper enters is attached to the matching child order, so it's on the order page when your team packs that box.
You can also ask for each recipient's email, under Settings → Order Information → Recipient notifications. With Add recipients as customers and send them shipping updates switched on, each recipient is saved as a customer (tagged multiship-recipient), their order is assigned to them, and Shopify sends the shipping confirmation and tracking straight to them. With it off, the email is just stored on the order for your reference. Turning notifications on for the first time asks you to approve an extra customer permission for the app.
Corporate gift lists: import addresses from a CSV
Typing addresses is the slowest part of a big gift order, and corporate buyers almost always have a spreadsheet already. Multi Ship takes it as a CSV file, in two places:
- At checkout: on the address step, shoppers see Import addresses from CSV and Download sample CSV. Every address in the file is added and selected, ready for items to be assigned. This is on every plan.
- In your admin: when you split an order or build one for a customer, choose Import in the split editor. Each row becomes one shipment, and you assign items afterwards.
A few tips that save a round of back-and-forth with the buyer:
- Send them the sample file first. Its columns are first name, last name, company, address, apartment, city, state, ZIP, country and phone, and those names always work.
- Ask for two-letter country codes (US, CA, DE). They're the most reliable way to fill the country column.
- Excel files need to be saved as CSV first. The upload tells the shopper if they've picked the wrong format.
- Headers in your store's language are fine too: a German buyer can send "Vorname" instead of "first name".
Gift orders by phone or email: build them in the admin
Plenty of gift orders never touch your storefront. Someone emails a list, or calls in December. For those, Create MultiShip order is in the More actions menu on both the Orders and Draft orders pages of your Shopify admin. It opens an order builder where you pick products, assign them to addresses with live shipping rates, and email the customer a payment link. They pay once; you get one order per address.
If an order has already come in and the customer asks for it to go to several people, open it and choose Split Shipments to divide it by hand.
Set your store up before the rush
Splitting one order into several changes how some of your existing settings behave. Check these in October, not in the week before Christmas:
- Shipping zones cover every destination. Rates come from your Shopify zones, so an address outside them gets no rate. Check Settings → Shipping and delivery, and make sure every product is in a shipping profile that covers where gifts are going.
- Free shipping thresholds. Split a $150 order four ways and each small shipment might suddenly qualify for a rate you didn't mean to offer, or none of them does. On the Growth plan and above, Multi Ship can hide rates from split shipments by name ("Express"), or above or below a price you set.
- Packing costs. Four boxes cost more to pack than one. On Growth and above you can add a handling fee per destination, and waive it when shipping is free.
- Make the option visible. The cart shows a checkbox by default. If gifting is a big part of your season, switch to Button mode in Settings → Display so it's harder to miss. The option only appears when the cart has two or more items.
- Test a real order with two addresses before your first campaign email goes out, and check that the child orders, notes and rates look right.
If you're also planning gift-season promotions, our checklists for Mother's Day and Valentine's Day work just as well for the winter holidays.
Keep your revenue reports honest
Because splitting creates new orders, an unadjusted revenue report can count the same payment twice: once for the original order and once for its child orders. Sales tax isn't affected, since tax is calculated per child order from each shipping address and customers are never charged twice.
In Settings → Taxes & bookkeeping, choose a year (and optionally a month) and download the CSV. It lists every split order for the period and ends with the total to subtract, ready for your accountant. If you cancel the original orders after splitting instead, Shopify records the reversal and your net sales need no adjustment, though most merchants keep the originals as the customer's record of payment.
Shopify built-in vs Multi Ship
| Shopify on its own | With Multi Ship | |
|---|---|---|
| Shopper sends one purchase to several addresses | Checks out once per address | One checkout, one payment |
| You build a gift order for a customer | One draft order and invoice per recipient | One order builder and one payment link |
| Gift note per recipient | One cart note for the whole order (if your theme has it) | A note on each shipment |
| Preferred delivery date per recipient | No | Yes |
| Import a list of addresses | No | CSV, at checkout or in the admin |
| Tracking emails to each recipient | Only if each recipient is the customer on their own order | Optional, per recipient |
| Cost | Included | Free to install; you pay per extra destination |
Multi Ship is free to install. On the Pay As You Go plan each destination costs 50¢, and monthly plans include a set number of destinations. There's a usage cap on every plan, so charges can't run away during a big month. Current plans are on the App Store listing.
If something doesn't work
- No "Ship to multiple addresses" option in the cart. Check the Multi Ship app embed is on under Online Store → Themes → Customize → App embeds (you need to turn it on again after switching themes), and that the cart has at least two items.
- No shipping rates for an address. The address is outside your shipping zones or incomplete, or the product's shipping profile doesn't cover it. Try a simple domestic address to narrow it down.
- The order didn't split. Only orders that went through the multi-address flow are split. It usually happens within seconds of checkout; if not, check the app dashboard for warnings.
The Multi Ship help centre covers each of these in more detail.
Common questions
Can a Shopify customer send gifts to multiple addresses in one order?
Not with Shopify's standard checkout, which takes one shipping address per order. A multi-address app like Multi Ship adds it: the customer pays once, and you receive one order per address.
Does each recipient get their own tracking email?
They can. Turn on recipient notifications in Multi Ship and ask for each recipient's email; Shopify then sends that recipient's shipping confirmation and tracking directly to them.
Is sales tax calculated correctly when an order is split?
Yes. Tax is calculated for each child order from its own shipping address, following your store's tax settings, and your Shopify tax reports need no adjustment.
Can I add a different gift message for each person?
Yes. With gift notes turned on, the shopper writes a message for each shipment at the review step, and it appears on that shipment's order in your admin.
Can I ship gift subscriptions to several addresses?
Yes, together with our Subscriptions app. Multi Ship captures the split at checkout, and each address becomes its own recurring delivery.
What's the difference between this and splitting an order into shipments?
Splitting into shipments sends parts of one order to the same address at different times. Multi-address shipping sends parts of one order to different people. Our guide to shipping to multiple addresses in one checkout goes deeper on the checkout side.
Get ready for gift season
Install Multi Ship from the Shopify App Store. It's free to install, and you can test the whole flow with a couple of addresses before your holiday campaigns go out. If you'd like a hand setting up shipping zones, profiles and gift options for the season, talk to us.