What is a volume discount?
A volume discount lowers the price as quantity rises. It can discount each unit or the whole order. You trade a slice of margin for a bigger basket from the same shopper, and stock that moves faster.
How does a volume discount work?
Say you sell phone cases at $20. The rule: 10% off three or more, 20% off six or more. Three cases for the family run $54 instead of $60; six for a small reseller land at $96 instead of $120. You gave up $24 on that second order, and turned a $20 sale into a $96 order.
Volume discount vs quantity breaks: what's the difference?
The two overlap, and the names get swapped. Quantity breaks are per-product price tiers on the product page: buy four candles and each candle costs less. A volume discount is the wider family, and can cover the whole order: a percent off once the cart reaches a quantity or a spend, whatever's in it.
On Shopify stores
Shopify's built-in discounts apply a quantity rule at checkout, one threshold per discount. The product page is the quiet part: shoppers won't buy six unless something tells them six costs less. So you show product tiers as a small table under the price, and whole-order tiers as a cart message: "Add 2 more to save 10%." The discount must apply in the cart by itself, no code to type. Set the first threshold one step above your typical order, so it stretches orders instead of rewarding what shoppers already buy. Shopify's own quantity price breaks are free and allow up to 10 tiers, but only a buyer on a B2B company profile ever sees them. Showing tiers to every shopper takes a volume discount offer that renders on the product page, and the apps that do it are compared here.
Related terms
Volume discounts with Sledge
Volume discounts are one of nine offer types in Sledge Bundles, set as tiered quantity breaks on any product or collection. Offers sell where shoppers decide: product pages, collections, search results, the cart. And on Pro and up, Growth Intelligence reads your order patterns, suggests which discount to run, estimates the monthly impact in dollars, then measures the result against real sales.
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