Installing the app and choosing a plan
The first screen you see after install is Choose your plan — the app redirects you there, and the main navigation doesn't appear until you've picked a plan. If you were expecting a dashboard right away, this is expected behaviour, not a stuck install. See "Plans, billing and limits" for what each plan costs and includes.
If you're installing on a development, trial, or partner store, install and plan selection work exactly the same as on a live store — you still go through Choose your plan. The difference is that Shopify doesn't charge these stores: the app requests a non-billing charge automatically, so you can explore every plan's features for free while you build, with nothing billed.
The Home dashboard
Once a plan is chosen, you land on the dashboard, titled Home. Two things are worth knowing about it before you go looking for your bundle:
The Setup guide card lists exactly two steps, in this order:
Create your first bundle — button Create bundle
Activate app in your theme — button Activate app
Progress is shown as "{n} of {n} steps complete". Neither step blocks anything else in the app — they're reminders, not gates. You can dismiss the card from its … menu, and it also has a Need help option that opens live chat.
If you have no bundles yet, you'll also see a card reading "Welcome to MBC Bundles / To get started, create your first bundle."
Turning on the app embed
The app embed is always manual — the app never writes anything into your theme code, and it never turns the embed on for you. Until you switch it on, your bundles don't appear on the storefront at all, no matter how they're placed.
Clicking Activate app (from the Setup guide, from the dashboard's App embed card — which also shows an Active/Inactive badge — or from the banner "MBC Bundles is not activated in your theme" that appears on any bundle page) opens the app's own modal, titled "Activate MBC Bundles on your storefront". It tells you to:
Click Activate app embed to open the theme editor in a new tab.
Make sure the toggle is enabled.
Click Save, top right.
One thing the modal gets slightly wrong: it refers to the toggle as "MBC Bundles", but in the theme editor's App embeds list, the toggle is actually named MBC Bundles App. If you're scanning the list for an exact match to "MBC Bundles" and not finding it, that's why — look for MBC Bundles App instead.
Beyond the embed itself, there are four separate app blocks you can place in the theme editor wherever you want a bundle to appear:
Widget for product page
Widget for bundle page
Featured bundle (temp. 1)
Featured bundle (temp. 2)
If you turn the embed on and a widget still isn't showing where you expect, "Why isn't my bundle widget showing?" covers the full troubleshooting checklist.
Creating your first bundle
You can start a bundle from Create bundle on the dashboard, the Setup guide, or the welcome card. There's also Create bundle with expert, which opens a chat with the support team if you'd rather have someone build it with you.
The first thing you see is the Bundle structure card, with three routes in:
Pick one of the preset tiles — four are shown up front, and View more reveals the rest (14 in total). A preset fills in the structure, the discount type, and the relevant flags for you, so you only need to add products and save.
Under Or build your own, choose Product bundle ("Combo of different products with discount").
Or choose Volume discount ("Discount based on the quantity of a single product").
"Choosing a bundle structure" covers what each layout looks like to shoppers and what happens if you switch structures partway through. Here are all 14 presets:
Preset | Type |
Buy 2 units of the same item and get 10% off | Classic bundle |
Buy 1 = full price, 2 = 10% off, 3 = 15% off | Volume Discount |
Buy Product X (or a few), get Product Y for free | Buy One Get One |
Choose any Product X and Y at a fixed total price | Mix & Match |
Buy X + Y together and get a % off, or fixed total price | Classic bundle |
Buy at least 5 products of your choice and get 15% off | Classic bundle |
Buy any Product X + fixed Product Y = 10% off | Mix & Match |
Buy 2 of X or 2 of Y = 5% off | Mix & Match |
Pick 1 product, then buy at least 2 more for 10% off | Mix & Match |
Buy Product X (or a few) and choose a free item | Buy One Get One |
Choose any Product X + Y, and get Product Z automatically free | Buy One Get One |
Buy 1x3-pack = 10% off, 2x3 = 15%, 3x3 = 20% | Volume Discount |
Buy 3 different items = 5% off, 6 = 10%, 12 = 15% | Variety Pack Discount |
Buy at least 2 items = 15% off, 3 = 25% off | Mini Builder |
A preset saves your bundle live immediately. That happens the moment you save it, unless you turn its status toggle off first. If you want to finish setting it up before shoppers can see it, switch the toggle to Draft before you save.
What the app sets up on its own
On install, the app registers webhooks, imports your products and collections in the background, and registers a Shopify automatic discount named MBC Bundles — you don't need to do any of this yourself. Two related things are worth knowing:
If a product or collection picker ever looks incomplete, go to Settings → Sync collections → Sync now to re-sync. Note that this button re-syncs collections only, not products.
Everything above happens once, automatically, in the background after install — there's normally nothing to check here at all.
If bundles show on your storefront but nothing discounts at checkout
Two different things can cause this, and they look identical from the storefront, so check both.
Shopify caps every store at 25 active automatic discounts. If you're over that cap, the bundles beyond the limit stop discounting, and your dashboard shows a banner saying so. The fix is to reduce the number of active bundles or other automatic discounts in your Shopify admin, then reload the app.
If there's no such banner, but bundles are visible and addable to cart while the discount is simply never applied at checkout, the one-time discount registration the app runs on install may have failed quietly. Contact support and mention that your bundles show on the storefront, no discount ever applies at checkout, and there's no discount-limit banner on your dashboard — this needs the discount registration re-run on our side.