Complex conditions & recipes

Most campaigns only need one or two simple rules. But conditions are powerful enough to express precise, layered targeting. This page explains how rules combine, the "filter then measure" pattern, and the edge cases that trip people up — with copy-and-adapt recipes.

If you're new to conditions, start with How conditions work and the Condition selectors reference first.

Two levels of AND / OR

A condition is built from rule groups, and each rule group contains rules. There are two independent connectors:

• Within a group — joins the rules in that group.
  • AND: every rule must match.
  • OR: at least one rule must match.
• Between groups — joins the groups together (the condition's connector).
  • AND: every group must pass.
  • OR: at least one group must pass.

Filter then measure

This is the most important — and least obvious — behavior.

When a rule group matches on product rules (tag, SKU, type, variants, collection, vendor, title), it doesn't just pass or fail: it narrows the cart to the matching items, and the next group measures totals on only those items.

So "buy 2 items from the Summer collection" is two groups joined with AND: first the collection filter, then the quantity check on the filtered items.

What "subtotal" actually measures

If a shopper already has a discount applied, a "subtotal over $50" rule uses the discounted number. Use original price if you want to ignore discounts. For the exact value format each of these price selectors expects (including multi-currency amounts), see the Selector reference.

Ranges are inclusive-min, exclusive-max

The is between matcher treats the range as min ≤ value < max — the lower bound is included and the upper bound is excluded.

A range of 50–100 matches a subtotal of exactly 50 but not exactly 100. To include 100, set the upper bound a little higher (for example 50–101).

For the precise comparison behavior of every matcher — case-sensitivity, how "contains" and "does not contain" behave, and the empty-value rules — see the Matchers reference.

Multi-currency thresholds

Price rules (subtotal, original price, filtered totals) can hold a value per currency. When a shopper checks out in another market's currency:

• If you set a specific amount for that currency, it's used as-is.
• Otherwise the app converts your base amount using the market's exchange rate.

Important: not every rule works at checkout

Conditions are evaluated in two places, and checkout enforcement supports fewer rule types:

• Storefront widgets & the cart evaluate the full set of rules.
• Cart restrictions and automatic discounts run as Shopify Functions at checkout and only support a subset.

For example, a collection rule works perfectly in storefront widgets but is silently ignored by cart restrictions — swap it for a product tag rule when you need the same targeting enforced at checkout.

The full matrix of which selectors each runtime supports lives in Where each rule works — storefront vs checkout. Check it before you build any restriction or automatic-discount condition.

Customer & marketing rules need a source

• Customer tag rules only match for logged-in customers — a guest has no tags, so the rule won't match.
• UTM and referrer rules read the URL the shopper arrived from. If they navigate away and back without the parameters, the rule won't match.
• Promo code rules match the code applied to the cart, by the code's internal ID — set them up from the promo-code triggers flow.

Empty-cart behavior

When the cart (or the filtered set) is empty, price rules behave intuitively: an empty cart has a subtotal of 0, so "subtotal is 0 or more" passes and "subtotal is less than $X" passes for any positive X. Quantity-based rules on an empty set evaluate against 0.

Recipes

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