Documentation

Running a drop with WaitRoom.

Written for the person running the drop. Where something only half works, it says so.

01Getting startedFifteen minutes to a working drop, most of it waiting for you to decide a start time.02How it worksThree things happen in a drop, and only one of them is trusted. Knowing which is which explains most of the app's behaviour.03Who gets inTwo separate tools. Eligibility rules decide who is allowed to queue at all. Access codes give particular people a head start.04Scheduled restocksStage stock so it lands at a stated moment rather than being typed in at midnight. One plan can cover several products at several locations — "50 at the warehouse, 20 in the shop, 10 of the other colo05TroubleshootingMost reports come down to one of the first three sections. Work down the list — they're ordered by how often they turn out to be the cause.

WaitRoom — merchant documentation

Written for the person running the drop, not for a developer.

Everything here describes what the app actually does today. Where something doesn't work, or only half works, that's said plainly rather than left for you to discover during a launch — see Limits and honest answers.

Start here

The one-paragraph version

You create a drop: some products, a start and end time, and how fast to let people through. Shoppers who arrive are held in a waiting room and released in batches. When someone is released they get a pass, and that pass is checked inside Shopify's checkout — so per-customer limits hold even against someone who skipped the queue entirely.

Limits and honest answers

Worth knowing before you rely on any of it.

  • It does not stop determined resellers. It raises the cost and removes the easy wins. Anyone selling you "bot-proof" is overselling.
  • The redirect into the waiting room is JavaScript, so it can be bypassed. That's why the limit is enforced at checkout instead — see How it works.
  • Guest checkout limits are weaker. Without an account there's no identity to count purchases against. This is a Shopify constraint, not a WaitRoom one.
  • Nothing here makes your store faster. Shopify's infrastructure is not the problem this solves; who ends up with the stock is.