Troubleshooting Guide: Why is the free gift is not adding to cart?
Wtih Monk, you may encounter situations where the free gift is not automatically added to the cart as expected. This guide will help you identify potential root causes as to why the free gift might not appear & suggest steps to resolve these issues.
1. Status of the Free Gift product
The Free Gift product must be in Stock, Active, and available on the Online Store sales channel. T
o verify this, go to Shopify > Products, open the Free Gift product, and check the relevant fields as shown in the screenshot.
2. App and Offer status
Before testing the offer, please ensure that both the Monk app and the relevant Free Gift offer are enabled.
To enable the app: Go to Online Store > Themes > Customize theme> App Embeds and toggle Monk to active
To check Offer status: Go to the Manage Offers tab in the Monk app and ensure the desired offer is enabled.
3. Interference from other cart apps
Monk is only compatible with your theme’s native cart and not with any other third party cart app. Hence, if you are using any other third party cart, it could cause some interference with Monk’s code causing the gift to not add at all. Such cross app interferences cannot be fixed from our end as there is no data sharing between the two apps.
4. Interference from theme code
For some stores, a visual element in the theme may prevent the gift product from appearing as free, overriding Monk’s display and blocking the app from updating the price. In such cases the gift will get added to cart but not be discounted to appear as free.
This can be resolved quickly and easily by our support team. If you notice that the gift product is not showing as free on your store, we kindly encourage you to reach out to us at support@monkcommerce.com or reach out to us via live chat
5. Slow or unstable internet connection
In some cases, a customer might be on a slow or patchy internet connection or is using a slow device which can cause the entire website to load slow. Monk loads after your entire theme code has loaded (to avoid performance issues) & hence a slow network can cause issues with Monk running its code. Such issues are likely to arise for 1-2% of all eligible orders. If you notice any increase in the frequency of such orders, please contact our support team via live chat/email and we can investigate further.
6. Cache issue
Being a store owner or the one setting up the store/offers, you might be running a lot of tests on your store. As a result, it’s possible that you're checking the offer in an outdated session where the Monk app hasn’t fully loaded, which can prevent the gift from being added. To avoid this, always test in a new private/incognito window and ensure all other incognito tabs are closed—this helps simulate a fresh user session and prevents any caching or session-related issues. Your customers are unlikely to face this issue.
7. Sync not done
If you’ve recently created the gift product in your Shopify Products settings, it’s possible that the product hasn’t synced with the app yet, which may prevent it from appearing on your website.
Monk automatically syncs your store data every 4 hours. However, to sync new products immediately:
- Go to the Offers tab in the Monk app
- Click the Sync button at the top of the page
- Wait for the success message to appear
Depending on the size of your inventory, the sync process may take approximately 5–15 min
8. Check VPN or location
For all country or region-specific offers, Monk determines the customer’s location based on their IP address to trigger the relevant offers, please make sure you are also testing from the same country or using a VPN to do so
If you're still unsure of why the free gift is not adding as intended or is not being discounted, please reach out to us via chat support or write to us at support@monkcommerce.com and we'll do our best to solve the problem.
Updated on: 16/09/2025