MOQ Use Cases
Minimum order quantities serve different purposes depending on your business model. For wholesale, they ensure orders are large enough to justify your wholesale pricing. For manufacturing or custom orders, they reflect production minimums. For perishables, they may reflect pack sizes.
Understanding your MOQ rationale helps you configure the right type of restriction: minimum quantity per variant, minimum quantity per product, minimum total order value, or a combination.
App Options
The leading MOQ apps for Shopify are Wholesale Helper, Wholesale Gorilla, and Order Limits MOQ. These allow you to set minimum quantities at product, variant, or collection level, with different rules for different customer groups (tagged as wholesale vs retail).
Wholesale Gorilla is widely used for B2B stores as it combines MOQs with wholesale pricing in a single app.
Liquid Customisation
For a lightweight MOQ without an app, add JavaScript validation to your product form. Check the quantity input on add-to-cart and show an error if it is below the minimum. You can store the MOQ as a product metafield and reference it in your Liquid template.
This approach does not prevent adding to cart server-side, so consider adding a checkout validation script or using a Shopify Function to block checkout if quantity requirements are not met.
B2B Minimum Orders
Shopify B2B (Plus) supports minimum order amounts and quantities natively via the B2B configuration. For each company, you can set a minimum order amount in GBP that must be reached before checkout is permitted.
For non-Plus merchants, enforce minimum order values using a discount code trick (a 100% discount that only works above a threshold) or a checkout validation app.
Communicating MOQs
Display minimum order quantities clearly on product pages before customers add to cart. Use clear language: "Minimum order: 12 units" or "Sold in multiples of 6". Unclear MOQ communication leads to cart abandonment when customers encounter restrictions at checkout.
Add MOQ information to your wholesale application page and any wholesale buyer guides.
Exceptions and Edge Cases
Consider how to handle mixed carts containing both products with different MOQs. If a customer can meet the MOQ for one product but not another, can they still check out for the products they have met the MOQ for?
Build your logic to handle these cases explicitly. The simplest approach is per-product MOQ validation with clear error messaging for each product that has not met its minimum.
