Who gets in
Two separate tools. Eligibility rules decide who is allowed to queue at all. Access codes give particular people a head start.
Eligibility rules
On a drop: Eligibility rules.
Rules are checked when someone tries to join. Anyone who fails is told which rule they failed — assuming you leave that on, which you should: a shopper who is refused with no reason assumes your site is broken and says so publicly.
| Rule | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Minimum order count | Keeping a drop to people who've bought before |
| Minimum total spent | Rewarding customers by value rather than count |
| Required customer tags | A list you maintain yourself — VIPs, a mailing list, members |
| Country allowlist | Drops you can only ship, or only want to sell, in certain countries |
| Account age | Blunting accounts created the morning of the drop |
| Email verified | The same, one step further |
| No previous purchase | The inverse — a first-timers-only drop |
Rules combine. Add three and a shopper must pass all three.
Two things worth knowing
Rules need customer data. Order count, spend and tags come from the Shopify customer record, which Shopify only shares with apps approved for Protected Customer Data. If that approval isn't in place the rules can't run — the app tells you on the rules page rather than letting you configure something that silently never applies.
Rules only work for shoppers who are signed in. A guest has no record to check. If your rules matter, turn on require login for the drop.
Access codes
On a drop: Access codes.
The loyalty boost in Priority mode is computed from order history, so it can
only ever reward people who already have some. A code is the version you can
hand out — to an influencer, a Discord, a newsletter, or the people who queued
last time and missed out.
Creating one
Type a code or press Generate. Then choose:
- Skip the queue entirely — the holder goes straight to the front. Use sparingly; everyone else moves down.
- Head start — they join as though they'd arrived that much earlier.
- Maximum uses — blank for unlimited, counted across everyone who redeems.
- Expires — after this the code is refused, and the shopper is told it expired rather than that it's invalid.
How shoppers use them
A field appears on the waiting room only when the drop has codes. Asking every shopper for a code you never issued makes them all think they're missing out on something.
Case and spacing don't matter: VIP 2026, vip-2026 and VIP2026 are the same
code. A wrong code is refused with a reason, not silently ignored — someone
given a code that appears to do nothing will assume you lied to them.
Use limits are exact
If you set a maximum of 10 and 500 people present the code in the same second, exactly 10 get through. The count is claimed atomically, so a rush can't overshoot it.
One limitation, stated up front
Codes are bearer tokens. Anyone who has the string can use it until it expires or runs out — including someone who was forwarded it. Set a maximum use count on anything you post publicly.