Purple Dot Overview

What is Purple Dot?

Purple Dot is a pre-order management platform. It enables you to easily sell stock before it arrives through creating pre-order experiences.

Purple Dot provides all the tooling required to manage pre-orders including the customer experience (display components), transacting the customer (payments, including 100% pay upfront, split payment with a deposit upfront and rest on ship, or full charge on ship) customer service flows (customer self-service, with internal dashboards and integrations), communications (email) and data (as events, visualizations and downloads).

To set-up a product a pre-order, a Waitlist is created that takes an item from your existing catalog, adds estimated ship dates as a date range along with the number of units you want to pre-sell by SKU or total. Purple Dot then enables shoppers to pre-order this product (checking out), the pre-order wait experience (self-serve amend, cancel and email updates), and the transition of pre-orders to regular orders when the product arrives in your warehouse.

Two different integrations

Purple Dot has 2 different integrations depending on your business needs and tech stack. If you are not sure which one you need, contact us and we can help assess your set-up.

Shopify app

Our Shopify app is a fully self-serve integration and the fastest way to start taking pre-orders!

It enables a 100% pay-later flow by vaulting the customer card at checkout, and auto-charging when you are ready to ship.

Merchants best suited for our Shopify app have downstream 3PLs or warehouse / shipping parters that support Shopify's "On Hold" status and mixed cart fulfillment.

No engineering effort required.

Pricing starts at $0.95 per fulfilled pre-order (first 10 pre-orders free), with additional volume discounts available.

Platform Integration

Our Platform Integration is best suited for larger merchants or those with a more complex tech stack. It is compatible with both Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud

It is out-of-the-box compatible with all major downstream 3PL and warehouse / shopping partners, and also is fully FTC compliant in charging upfront for pre-orders.

In order to deliver this downstream compatibility and FTC compliance, our Platform Integration provides a checkout that reflects your brand’s look and feel which activates when a customer's cart contains a pre-order item. This enables the orders to be held outside until stock arrives and a FTC compliant payment flow.

Engineering effort is required, and the integration can be done by you or by Purple Dot. See our Getting Started Guide to set up the Platform Integration.

Pricing is a flat all-in % transaction fee, depending on your country and with additional volume discounts available. This includes all payment processing fees. There are no any additional payment or transaction fees via your eCommerce platform for pre-order transactions since Purple Dot is transacting the pre-order.

Feature Comparison

	Shopify App	Platform Integration
Visual changes in your store	For products that have a Waitlist, a Pre-order button with estimated delivery dates replaces your regular Add to Cart button. Sold Out labels for these products are removed.	Same as Shopify App.
Checkout flow	Clicking the Pre-order button leads into your existing checkout flow.	Clicking the Pre-order button leads into a new checkout flow, that mirrors your brand’s look, feel and existing checkout functionality. This new checkout is what enables pre-orders to be held outside until stock arrives, and compliant payment upfront. Supports single-item, multi-item, and mixed cart flows (where the customer's cart contains both in-stock and pre-order items).
Emails	Pre-order post-purchase transactional emails, including: confirmation, updated shipping dates, amended or canceled order.	Same as Shopify App.
Customer payment	Payment details are vaulted at checkout but customer is not charged until you are ready to fulfil the pre-order.	Customer is charged at checkout and funds are held until pre-orders are exported as ready to fulfil, which enables an FTC compliant payment flow for pre-orders. Customers can cancel for a full refund anytime before ship. See Cancellations. There is an option to release the funds early for an extra charge.
Pre-order tracking	An order with "On Hold" against the pre-order line item is created in Shopify as soon as the checkout completes. Once stock arrives and you are ready to fulfil, you can remove this fulfilment hold in Purple Dot or your Shopify portal.	Pre-orders are held in Purple Dot until you are ready to fulfil (typically when the product(s) arrive at your warehouse), at which point they are exported to your e-commerce platform and fulfilled as regular orders.
Cancellations	Pre-order cancellations can be facilitated by the customer via the Purple Dot self-service pre-order management page or by you via your Shopify portal, at any point before the order is marked as "Fulfilled".	Pre-order cancellations can be facilitated by the customer via the Purple Dot self-serve embedded in your site or the Purple Dot self-service pre-order management page or by you via your Purple Dot merchant , at any point before the pre-order is exported.
Refunds	Refunds for returned pre-orders are handled in your Shopify store.	Refunds for returned pre-orders are processed by Purple Dot, and can be issued from the Purple Dot Merchant Portal. Optionally, refunds can also be triggered automatically based on events from your e-commerce platform delivered as webhooks.
Analytics	Purple Dot integrates seamlessly with your analytics, advertising and CRM tracking libraries. Events like conversions can be forwarded to any client library included on the page.	Same as Shopify App.
Shipping rates	Uses the same settings as your in-stock orders.	Can use the same rate settings as your in-stock orders, or you can configure pre-order specific rates. You can also choose to ship a pre-order and in-stock order together or separately, or let the customer choose.
Cost	Starts at $0.95 per fulfilled pre-order (first 10 pre-orders free), with additional volume discounts available.	A % transaction fee depending on country and with volume discounts available. This includes all payment processing fees. Contact us for pricing.