Shopify gift cards vs a gift card app: what's built in and what isn't

Shopify's built-in gift cards are enough if you sell a few fixed-value cards and issue the occasional one by hand. They are available on every Shopify plan, can be sent to a recipient on a chosen date, and work online and in Shopify POS. You need a gift card app when you want things Shopify doesn't do: buyer-chosen amounts on your online store, issuing or sending cards in bulk, adding value to an existing card, reminders about unused balances, rules for where cards can be spent, or one card that works across several stores.

This guide lays out what native Shopify gift cards do today, based on Shopify's Help Center, and where an app such as Gift Card Hero fills the gaps.

What do Shopify's built-in gift cards do?

Native gift cards cover the basics well. According to Shopify's documentation:

• Every plan. Gift cards are available on all Shopify subscription plans.
• Gift card products. You sell them as products with fixed denominations, up to $10,000 USD or the equivalent. Buyers can't enter a custom amount on the online store.
• Sending to a recipient. Themes that support recipient fields (Dawn and the Horizon family, from version 9.0.0 of Shopify's free Online Store 2.0 themes) let the buyer add a recipient email, name, message and a send-on date. Scheduled cards go out roughly between 4:00 and 10:00 am in the buyer's timezone.
• Issuing by hand. From Products > Gift cards you can create a card worth up to $2,000 USD or the equivalent, attach it to a customer, add an expiry date and an internal note, then send it by email or SMS.
• Point of sale. Shopify POS sells digital and physical cards, including custom amounts, redeems cards, and can refund a return to a new gift card, or to the original card when the payment went through Shopify Payments.
• Redemption. Customers enter the code at checkout, can combine several gift cards on one order, and can use them alongside discount codes. A gift card can't be used to buy another gift card.
• Expiry and wallet. Cards don't expire by default; you can set an expiry period. You can also turn on Apple Wallet passes.
• Management. You can search, filter and export cards to CSV, change expiry dates, deactivate cards and resend the gift card email.

Where do merchants usually hit the limits?

The gaps show up once gift cards become a real channel rather than a checkbox. Shopify's own documentation states several of them directly: balances "can't be edited directly from the Shopify admin" and change only through redemption, a refund or a custom integration; cards "can't be redeemed across different Shopify stores"; and to stop gift cards being used at checkout under certain conditions, you "need to install a payment method customization app".

Others are practical. The Help Center describes creating cards one at a time in the admin, which is fine for a goodwill gesture and slow for 300 employee gifts. Your admin shows only the last four characters of a code, so you can't hand a printer a file of codes you created there.

How does native Shopify compare with Gift Card Hero?

When are native Shopify gift cards enough?

Be honest about volume. Native gift cards are a sound choice if:

• You sell a handful of fixed-value cards, mostly around the holidays.
• You issue cards by hand a few times a month, for refunds or customer service.
• Your theme supports recipient fields and a morning delivery window is fine.
• You run one store and don't need to limit where cards are spent.
• You sell in person and Shopify POS already covers your gift card sales and refunds.

In that case an app adds cost without solving a problem you have. Turn on gift cards, add a gift card product with three or four denominations, and review it after the season.

When do you need a gift card app?

An app pays off when one of these is true:

• Gift cards drive real revenue. Holiday demand is compressed: in Gift Card Hero stores, 43% of December eGift cards were bought December 18–24. A clear gifting flow with designs, a message and a scheduled delivery matters most in those days.
• You issue cards in volume. Corporate orders, giveaways, influencer codes or printed cards need bulk creation and a CSV of results.
• Customers want to add value to a card they already hold, online or at the counter.
• Balances sit unused. A reminder gives the holder a reason to come back, and 63% of orders paid with a gift card went over the card value (Gift Card Hero stores, Sep 2025 – Aug 2026).
• You need spending rules, for example no gift card payment on certain products or when a discount is in the cart.
• You run more than one Shopify store and want one card to work in all of them.

For the season itself, see our holiday gift card guide.

Does a gift card app replace Shopify gift cards?

It shouldn't. Gift Card Hero issues native Shopify gift cards through Shopify's API. The card lives in your Shopify admin, is redeemed at the normal Shopify checkout and in POS, and its balance is Shopify's balance. There is no separate balance system to reconcile, and cards issued by the app appear alongside the ones you created yourself.

How Gift Card Hero handles this

Gift Card Hero adds the pieces above on top of Shopify gift cards: designs and video messages, scheduled delivery with a time, bulk generate and send, a balance widget, top-ups, payment rules, unused balance reminders and multistore networks. The dashboard also shows sales lift, the amount customers spend above the value of the gift cards they use. For scale: $100M+ in gift cards issued with Gift Card Hero, 3.8M gift cards issued, and 4.9/5 on the Shopify App Store from 174 reviews.

Pricing is billed through your Shopify invoice, with a 7-day free trial on every plan. Pay as you go is free to install and costs 2% of gift card sales, minimum $9.99 and maximum $49.99 a month. PRO is $19.99 a month flat, with no percentage or per-order fees. POS tools, balance reminders, storefront top-ups and the API are on PRO. Shopify Plus stores pay $39.99 a month (Pay as you go isn't available on Shopify Plus). Details are on the pricing page and in the help center.

Frequently asked questions