Bulk Order Notification Settings: Control Emails in Shopify
Control whether Shopify sends order confirmation and shipping notification emails for bulk orders. Choose recipients and suppress by order type.
By default, we suppress all Shopify notifications for generated orders. This prevents hundreds of automated emails from flooding your recipients and gifters when you run large Sends.
How Suppression Works
We intercept Shopify's outgoing emails using a blackhole address. When an order is created, Shopify generates its usual order confirmation and shipping notification emails but sends them to a suppressed address instead of the recipient. Shopify completes the email workflow normally. The emails simply don't reach anyone.
This approach keeps your Shopify logs and audit trails clean. The order generation succeeds as expected, but no external emails are sent.
Notification Targets
Set where notifications go for each Send preset. You have three options:
Suppress: All emails are suppressed. No one gets notified. This is the default for corporate gifting and influencer seeding.
Send to Recipient: Recipient receives shipping confirmation when the order ships.
Send to Gifter: Gifter receives shipping updates about the recipient's order.
How Order Confirmations Work
Order confirmations follow shipping notifications. You can only send order confirmations if shipping notifications are also being sent, and they always go to the same target. When shipping notifications are suppressed, order confirmations are suppressed too.
For example: if shipping notifications are set to "Send to Recipient," you can optionally turn on order confirmation, and it will also go to the recipient. You cannot send order confirmation to a different target than shipping notifications.
Per-Send Overrides
The Send preset defines the default notification behavior. When you create an individual Send, you can override these defaults. Toggle notifications on or off for that Send alone without changing the preset itself.
This lets you test notification behavior on a small pilot Send before rolling it out to thousands of recipients.
Practical Examples
Corporate gifting: Suppress all notifications. Recipients don't expect an email from the store. The gifter handles the announcement and manages the gift reveal on their own terms. This prevents confusion and keeps the gifting experience clean.
Corporate gifting with perishables or alcohol: Send shipping notifications to the recipient. The recipient needs to know the package is coming so they can sign for it, refrigerate perishables, or make sure someone is available to receive it. Without a heads-up, perishable items risk sitting on a doorstep.
Gifter wants full visibility: Some gifters want to receive all notifications for every recipient order. Set shipping notifications to "Send to Gifter" and turn on order confirmations. The gifter sees each order confirmed and each shipment go out. This works well for clients managing corporate gifting programs who want a paper trail.
Storefront checkout with small order counts: Some merchants leave all shipping and order notifications turned on for the gifter. If the typical gifter is only sending to a small number of recipients, they expect the same confirmation experience as a regular Shopify order. Suppressing notifications in this case feels broken rather than intentional.
Start small with a pilot Send (5-10 recipients) to test notification settings before running larger campaigns. You'll see exactly what recipients and gifters receive before scale.