Ctrlk
Back To Rafflex.io
For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. This page is also available as Markdown.

How Bonus Tickets Are Counted

How free bonus tickets from Buy One Get One Free and Bundle promotions are counted and where ticket limits can quietly cap them.

The short answer: your promotion gives away free tickets, but those free tickets always count towards your competition's ticket limits. If a customer's paid tickets plus their free tickets would go over a limit, they are stopped when they try to add the tickets and asked to reduce their quantity. Remember that one rule and everything below falls into place.

This page explains exactly how the free (bonus) tickets are worked out for Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) and Bundle promotions, and the two limits that can quietly stop a customer claiming the full bonus you advertised.

New to setting these up? Start with Promos and Discounts, then come back here to understand the counting.

Bundles award one tier, not several added together

When you create Bundle tiers, a customer receives the free tickets from the single best tier they qualify for, not the total of every tier below it.

Say you set up these tiers:

  • Buy 5, get 2 free

  • Buy 10, get 5 free

  • Buy 20, get 10 free

A customer who buys 20 tickets does not receive 2 + 5 + 10 (17) free tickets. They receive 10 free tickets, because that is the best single tier their purchase unlocks. The tiers are alternatives the customer climbs through, not rewards that stack on top of each other.

This is worth saying plainly, because listing the tiers together can make the bonus look cumulative when it is not.

Buy One Get One Free: the maximum is a cut-off, not a cap

With BOGO you set a minimum and, optionally, a maximum.

  • The minimum unlocks the offer. The customer must buy at least this many to start getting free tickets. Below the minimum, they get no free tickets.

  • The maximum is a cut-off, not a cap. This is the part that surprises most operators.

A maximum of 20 does not mean "the most free tickets I'll give is the bonus for 20 tickets". It means the offer simply switches off above 20. So a customer who buys 25 (more than the maximum) gets zero free tickets, not the bonus for 20.

If your intention is "everyone who buys at least the minimum gets the bonus", either leave the maximum blank, or set it high enough to comfortably cover the largest order you expect. A maximum that is too low silently turns the offer off for your biggest spenders.

Bonus tickets count towards your ticket limits

This is the rule that catches people out, so it is worth reading twice.

If your competition has a maximum tickets per customer or maximum tickets per order limit, the free bonus tickets are included in that total, alongside the paid ones. The system counts paid + free together.

So if your limit is 20 per customer and your promotion is "buy 10, get 10 free", a customer buying 10 lands on exactly 20 (10 paid plus 10 free). They are right at the edge. Trying to buy any more is blocked, because the total including the bonus would go over the limit.

When a customer's paid quantity plus the bonus would exceed a limit, they are not silently given fewer free tickets. Instead, as they add the tickets, they are shown a message explaining that the total (including bonus tickets) exceeds the limit, and asked to reduce their quantity.

Two worked examples

Promotion
Limit (per customer)
What happens

Buy 10, get 10 free

20

Works perfectly. Buying 10 gives 20 total, exactly on the limit. The full bonus is claimable.

Buy 10, get 10 free

18

The customer can never reach the full bonus. Buying 10 would total 20, which is over 18, so they are stopped and asked to reduce their quantity.

In the second example the customer can never claim all 10 free tickets, no matter what, because the limit leaves no room for them.

What this means for you

Setting promotions up is easy once you plan around the limits. The practical guidance:

  1. Decide the promotion you want to advertise (for example "buy 10, get 10 free").

  2. Work out the largest total a customer could end up with (paid + free). In that example, 10 + 10 = 20.

  3. Set your maximum tickets per customer and maximum tickets per order to at least that total, so there is room for both the paid tickets and the free tickets you are promising.

If the limit is set too low, customers hit a wall at checkout and the advertised bonus cannot be claimed in full, which leads to confusion and abandoned baskets.

Get the limits right once and the rest looks after itself. Just remember the single rule: limits count paid and free tickets together. Leave room for both and your promotions work exactly as advertised.

You can review your per customer and per order limits, along with your promotion settings, on each competition. See Promos and Discounts for where to find them.

Last updated