Four people on one order, and nowhere for their names

Four places, one order. Shopify has recorded quantity four, one email address and one name — the person who paid. What you need is four names, four dates of birth, and sometimes four passport numbers, before anybody can be ticketed.

The answer is not a setting, and it is not the same answer for everyone. It depends on which surface you try to collect on, and both surfaces have a limit the documentation states plainly.

Surface one: the product page, one value per line

Shopify does let a customer type something that travels with what they bought. It is called a line item property, it is built into the product form, and Shopify's own description of when it happens is exact: the value is "specified by the customer on the product page, before adding a product to the cart."

Two things about it decide whether it helps you.

It needs theme code — the fields are name="properties[…]" inputs added inside the product form, which is a developer's edit rather than a setting.

And it is one value per line, not per unit. The documented uses are a monogram, an engraving, a file upload: one thing, said once, about the whole line. Four places bought together are one line with quantity four, so one name field collects one name. That mechanism, including what happens when the quantity control changes underneath it, is covered properly on a different name on each of the three mugs.

Surface two: the checkout, one answer per order — and only on Plus

The other place to ask is checkout itself, and Shopify is unambiguous about who gets it:

Creating a custom field block is available only to merchants on the Shopify Plus plan.

Seven field types are available there, including a date-of-birth picker and a phone field, which is close to what a travel booking needs. What the documentation never mentions is collecting per line or per person — the block is documented for the order.

So put the two together and you have the shape of the problem. On Basic, Grow or Advanced there is no native route at all; on Plus there is one that asks once. Neither reaches four of anything.

Four names needed before four tickets go out? Describe what you need from each person →

What merchants say, in four industries, over five years

The clearest statement of it is a corporate-training merchant:

I sell online courses. I often have corporate buyers that want to enrol multiple team members in multiple courses. For each quantity of each course added to the cart, I want to collect the name and email address of the team member to enrol in the course.

— NeilBenson, 6 May 2023

That thread has one reply, from an app developer, ten months later: "Shopify orders are usually assigned to the buyer. I'm not sure if there's an app around that will allow the buyer to update the names of attendees relative to the quantity that they are ordering."

Travel says it the same way, and notice the parenthesis — the merchant already knows the custom field exists and is telling you it is not enough:

The current solution in Shopify does not allow collection of passenger names and details before checkout (unless it is captured as a custom field). As a result, the order created in Shopify is one order but if there are 4 passengers then we need the details of all 4 passengers…

— GolfSocial, 23 January 2024

Two more merchants arrive in that same thread asking whether anybody found a fix, in August 2024 and January 2025. Nobody had.

And the version worth reading twice, because of how it ends. A merchant selling webinar seats in August 2021 wanted a form requiring six names and emails for six tickets. He came back two and a half years later:

No…we ended up using a different platform to collect registrations. Good luck. If you are successful, I'd love to know the solution you found.

— Evan2308, 26 March 2024

The most recommended answer asks after the money

Here is the part no competing page mentions, and it is the thing to understand before you choose anything.

The highest-ranking source on these searches is a ticketing vendor's own documentation, and it states the industry default outright:

By default, buyers answer on the Shopify order status page after they check out.

With tickets held back until they do: "a ticket isn't downloadable until its required questions are answered."

For a workshop or a club night that is good design. Asking for five people's dietary requirements before payment loses you sales, and chasing them afterwards costs you nothing but an email.

It is the wrong shape for a booking where the record has to be right before the ticket exists. A name collected after payment arrives after the moment it was needed — the carrier wants the passenger exactly as the passport spells it, the venue wants the delegate list before badges are printed, and a name that has to match a government document is not something to find out you are missing on the morning of departure.

To be fair to that vendor, the same documentation does offer the other order: you can "add the Ticket Order Form theme block to the product template" so that answers travel through checkout and "tickets arrive already registered." Note what that is, though — a theme block you install into your product template, and not the default. Follow the setup as written and you get the version that asks afterwards.

What the apps actually offer

Listings read one at a time, and the division is not the one you would guess from their category names.

For the event half, Experiences: Events & Tickets (77 reviews at 4.8) is the one whose own help site says the form appears "for each person included in the order" and that the answers arrive "as line item properties in your Shopify order data" — so they land on the order itself rather than only inside the app, which is worth knowing when you come to get the list out. Evey (328 reviews at 4.5, free to install plus $1 a ticket) says it collects attendee information during checkout; its listing does not say whether that is per ticket or once per order, so ask before you commit. EventTix is the cheapest at free for a single event, and it is ten weeks old with no reviews yet.

For the travel half, none of the five ticketing listings read here serves you — these are ticket products, and a flight or a tour is not a ticket product — so the honest recommendation is the generic one: Aco's product options repeat a field group bound to the quantity, which is exactly the shape four passengers need, for $4.99 a month. It will collect them. What its listing does not say is whether it checks that every repeated group came back complete, so ask before you rely on it for a manifest.

Selling trips rather than tickets? Describe the details each traveller has to give →

A five-minute test before you choose

Put four of something in your own cart, check out as a customer, and then open the order in your admin. Count how many distinct people you can see. If the answer is one, that is the whole problem, and it tells you which half you need: the collecting, or the checking.

What Shopivibe does

You describe who has to give what, and when, and it works for the whole order. "A booking for four needs a full name, date of birth and passport number for each traveller. Do not let the booking count as confirmed until all four are complete, tell me which one is missing, and remind the person who booked."

The part worth paying for is not the form. It is everything after it: four records held against one order, a check that says which person is incomplete rather than leaving you to count, a nudge to the buyer while there is still time to fix it, and the list in the shape the carrier or the venue actually asks for. Group bookings, delegate lists and passenger manifests are the same mechanism with different words on it.

Shopivibe solves the problem in your store and keeps what it adds maintained, including when Shopify changes something underneath. If the app cannot complete your request on the spot, somebody at Shopivibe takes it on straight away and has it working in your store within 24 hours, included in the plan at no extra charge. Shopivibe is free during early access, with 3,500 credits included. Credits beyond the included 3,500 cost $0.06 each.

Ready to stop chasing names by email? Describe your booking in your own words →