Though Alpha Sale has no separate "Buy X Get Y" campaign type, the app still gives you a workaround to build this type of offer using In-cart product discount campaigns.
The setup takes three settings that work together:
Minimum quantity of items — how many items the customer has to add before the offer starts.
Limit number of discounted items per order — how many items get the discount.
Discount value — how big the discount on those items is. In-cart campaigns accept up to 100%, so a free item is possible.
Please read the limitations at the end of this article before you launch the offer. This setup is a workaround, while for a more advanced setup you might want to use a specialized Buy X Get Y app.
How the workaround works
Let's take "Buy 1 get 1 free" as an example. The setup you’d want to use in this case is going to be:
Minimum quantity of items - 2
Limit number of discounted items per order - 1 cheapest item
Discount value - 100%
If you have a setup like this, the offer starts applying when the customer adds at least 2 items from the group of products you selected as campaign targets. That is the Minimum quantity of items requirement.
Once the cart holds 2 targeted items, the campaign gives a 100% discount, but only to 1 item — the item limit takes care of that part.
With Apply discount to → Cheapest items, the discount lands on the cheaper of the two, which is what customers expect from a "get one free" offer.
Example.
The campaign targets the "T-shirts" collection. A customer adds a $30 shirt and a $20 shirt. The cart holds 2 targeted items, so the offer applies: the $20 shirt costs nothing and the customer pays $30.
Every other offer in this family ("Buy 2 get 1 free", "Buy 2, get 2 free", "Buy 1, get 1 at 50% off") follows the same pattern. Only these three settings change.
Setting up the campaign
Go to Campaigns → Create campaign and choose In-cart product discount.
Under Method, select Automatic discount. Customers get the offer without typing anything. You can also use Discount code if the offer should be reserved for people who have the code.
Enter a Title. Customers see this title in the cart and at checkout, so write the offer out: "Buy 1, get 1 free".
In Discount value, select Percentage and set Reduce price by to 100 for a free item, or 50 for a half-price item.
In Campaign targets, select the products the offer covers. You can target specific products and variants, collections, vendors or tags.
Open Minimum purchase requirements, select Minimum quantity of items and enter the total number of items the cart must hold — 2 for "buy 1 get 1", 3 for "buy 2 get 1", and so on. The requirement counts only the items you selected as targets.
In Maximum discount uses, tick Limit number of discounted items per order and enter how many items may be discounted — usually 1. Under Apply discount to, select Cheapest items.
Check the Combinations settings. Decide whether the offer may combine with your other product, order and shipping discounts.
Save the campaign and activate it.
While you are in the campaign form, you can also switch on an announcement bar for the campaign and tell visitors about the offer. Note that the bar is not available when customer eligibility is set to specific customer segments.
Ready-made settings
Offer | Discount value | Minimum quantity of items | Limit number of discounted items | Apply discount to |
Buy 1, get 1 free (BOGO, 2x1) | 100% | 2 | 1 | Cheapest items |
Buy 2, get 1 free (3x2) | 100% | 3 | 1 | Cheapest items |
Buy N, get 1 free | 100% | N + 1 | 1 | Cheapest items |
Buy 1, get 1 at 50% off | 50% | 2 | 1 | Cheapest items |
Buy 2, get 2 free | 100% | 4 | 2 | Cheapest items |
You can change Cheapest items to Most expensive items if you would rather give away the more expensive product — for example, in a "buy any 2 accessories, the better one is free" campaign.
Rewarding bigger carts
One of the limitations of Alpha Sale's workaround is that one campaign always gives away a fixed number of items. This means you can't make an offer sound like "every third item free, no matter how many items the customer buys".
However, to make the offer scale, you can add separate campaigns for higher tiers.
Make sure to create campaigns for each tier using the same discount value (100%), the same targets and Apply discount to → Cheapest items. And make sure to keep Combinations with Product discounts disabled, so that the higher-tier offer replaces the lower one, instead of adding up to it.
For "every 3rd item free", the tiers are:
Campaign | Minimum quantity of items | Limit number of discounted items | Discount |
Tier 1 | 3 | 1 | 100% |
Tier 2 | 6 | 2 | 100% |
Tier 3 | 9 | 3 | 100% |
Please note that every tier is a separate automatic discount, and Shopify allows up to 25 active automatic discounts per store, so this solution has its limitations for bigger stores.
Limitations
Please note that this setup has some limitations compared to the native "Buy X Get Y" discount:
The free item is not added to the cart automatically. The customer has to add all the items themselves. In a "Buy 2, get 1 free" campaign, the discount appears only after the third item is in the cart. So tell customers what to do: "Add 3 items to your cart — the cheapest one is free."
The minimum quantity counts all targeted items, not just copies of the same product. If the campaign targets a whole collection, a cart with three different products from that collection also qualifies. To require the same product or the same variant, create a separate campaign for each product or variant and list only that product or variant in the targets. Keep in mind that Shopify allows up to 25 active automatic discounts per store, so this approach does not scale to a large catalog.
One campaign gives one free item, however big the cart. A "Buy 2, get 1 free" campaign discounts one item, whether the cart holds 3 items or 12. The item limit is a fixed number and does not grow with the cart. To make a bigger cart earn more, add tier campaigns as described in Rewarding bigger carts.