Managing a multiship gifting experience means coordinating with a lot of moving parts in your Shopify store — transactional emails, fulfillment tools, loyalty programs, and post-purchase apps.
Zest is designed so that you stay in control of every touchpoint, with no engineering required. This article explains exactly how Zest handles email suppression and how to configure your other tools to play nicely with your Zest orders.
Before you start, you should have:
Admin access to your Shopify store
Access to your email/SMS platform (e.g., Klaviyo)
Access to any third-party apps installed on your store (fulfillment, loyalty, upsells, etc.)
How Zest Handles Transactional Emails
Proxy email addresses and suppression
When Zest creates orders in Shopify on behalf of gift recipients, it uses a proxy email address — an internal Zest email — rather than the recipient's real email address. This ensures that Shopify's standard transactional emails don't reach your recipients directly; Zest manages all recipient-facing communications through its own system.
This proxy email approach is the default behavior for Concierge and Storefront orders whenever Zest fulfills orders through a different seller than the one who owns the template. For cases where the real recipient email is used (such as e-gift orders where recipients enter their own email), see this section below.
In addition to using proxy emails, Zest also instructs Shopify not to send an order confirmation email when creating orders through the API.
Important: Shopify's email suppression behavior can be inconsistent and may change over time without notice. Do not rely solely on this flag. We strongly recommend implementing additional safeguards — either Shopify Flow rules or migrating your transactional emails entirely to Klaviyo — to ensure no duplicate emails slip through.
What Zest suppresses vs. what it doesn't
Email Type | Suppressed by Zest? |
Order confirmation (initial) | Yes — Zest instructs Shopify not to send this |
Fulfillment / shipping confirmations | Not automatically — see this section. |
Carrier tracking updates (e.g., "Your driver is arriving soon") | Not automatically — must be handled by your fulfillment partner |
Consolidated digest emails for gifters
Rather than sending one email per recipient, Zest sends your gifters consolidated digest emails at key milestones: order confirmation, first gift started shipping, all gifts delivered, and similar events. Gifters receive one email linked to their gifter dashboard — not a flood of per-recipient notifications. This works because Zest stores the gifter's real email in its own system and keeps recipient-facing emails internal.
Preventing Duplicate Order Confirmation Emails From Shopify
Zest instructs Shopify not to send order confirmation emails when it creates orders via the API. However, as noted above, Shopify's handling of this instruction is not guaranteed to be 100% reliable.
Recommended additional safeguards:
Set up a Shopify Flow rule that suppresses order confirmation emails for orders tagged
zest-gift.Migrate all transactional emails to Klaviyo so you have full, granular control over what gets sent and when.
To check whether Shopify actually sent an email for a Zest order:
Open the order in your Shopify Admin.
Scroll to the bottom of the order detail page.
Review the Timeline section — any emails Shopify sent will appear there.
If no entry appears, Shopify did not send the email. The notification likely came from another source such as a third-party app or your fulfillment partner.
Preventing Duplicate Shipping and Fulfillment Notification Emails
Zest does not automatically suppress fulfillment-related emails — shipping confirmations, delivery notifications, and carrier tracking updates are triggered separately when your fulfillment system passes tracking information back to Shopify.
To prevent duplicate shipping emails, choose one of these options:
Configure your fulfillment partner to suppress notifications for Zest orders. Ask your fulfillment system (e.g., ShipStation, MACH, or your 3PL) to recognize the
zest-gifttag and skip transactional notifications for those orders.Have your fulfillment partner pass a suppress notifications flag to Shopify when sending fulfillment events.
Migrate all transactional emails to Klaviyo and turn off Shopify's native transactional emails entirely. This gives you full control over every notification that goes out.
Note for multi-recipient orders: Because Zest creates one Shopify order per recipient, a single gifter's email or phone number could receive one shipping notification per recipient if your fulfillment tools aren't configured to exclude Zest orders. Always filter by the zest-gift tag.
Excluding Zest Orders From Klaviyo and Other Email/SMS Flows
All Zest orders in Shopify are tagged with zest-gift. Use this tag to exclude them from any automated flow that shouldn't apply to gift orders.
Excluding from a Klaviyo flow
Open the flow you want to update in Klaviyo.
Add a Conditional Split immediately after the trigger.
Set the condition: Shopify Order Tag does not contain
zest-gift.Route orders matching that tag down the exclusion path (do nothing / end flow).
Excluding from Klaviyo abandoned cart flows
Abandoned cart flows should also exclude Zest Parent Orders to prevent gifters from receiving abandoned cart emails mid-checkout.
Navigate to your abandoned cart flow.
Click the Started Checkout trigger.
Click Flow Filters.
Add an Event-based filter: Order Tag does not contain
zest-gift.
Excluding from third-party SMS and delivery notification services
Services like AfterShip, Via Delivery, and ShipStation will send transactional SMS or email notifications to phone numbers and email addresses found in Zest orders unless you configure them otherwise.
In each third-party service, locate the order filtering or exclusion settings.
Add a rule to exclude orders tagged
zest-gift.Save and test with a sample Zest order.
This is especially important for multi-recipient orders, where one gifter's contact information could receive a separate notification for every single recipient's shipment.
Troubleshooting Common App Conflicts
A third-party app is sending duplicate emails to my gift senders
Check the Shopify order's Timeline to confirm whether Shopify itself sent the email or whether it came from a third-party app.
If it came from a third-party app, find the app's notification settings and add an exclusion for orders tagged
zest-gift.If you use Klaviyo, add a Conditional Split to the relevant flow.
E-Gift Recipients and Email Behavior
E-gift recipients enter their own email address during the gift redemption process, which means their real email address is pushed to Shopify. This is different from direct-ship recipients, where Zest uses a proxy email.
Because real emails are used for e-gift orders:
Standard Shopify transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping notifications) can fire for these orders.
Make sure your Klaviyo flows and fulfillment tools are configured to exclude
zest-gifttagged orders to prevent duplicate or confusing emails.Ensure that shipping confirmation emails for e-gift orders do not include pricing — to avoid revealing the gift amount to the recipient.
Configure your fulfillment tool (e.g., ShipStation) to suppress or rebrand its notifications for these orders.