Variants let one product cover multiple options — colors, sizes, capacities, brands, models. Customers see a clean picker on the product page; you keep one product record instead of a duplicate per colour. This page is the deepest reference in the Selling section because variants quietly drive most of the dashboard work for fashion, electronics and digital products.

A product with 3 colours × 4 sizes has up to 12 combinations. You don't have to use combinations — most products track stock at the option level or at the product level instead (see §Stock modes).

The type is chosen once per group — every option inside that group renders the same way:

Two things that only apply to Multiple choice (also called selectable) groups: they are always optional, and they never appear in the combination-stock matrix.

The image-text type is newer than color and text. Use it whenever you have more than ~5 text options — the thumbnail prevents customers from misreading similar names ("iPhone 14 Pro" vs "iPhone 14 Pro Max"). When the option is bound to a product image, clicking it can scroll the product gallery to that image (see §Click-to-gallery).

Go to Dashboard → Products at /dashboard/products, then either:

Scroll to the Variants card, then:

Both groups and options can be drag-reordered, and the storefront renders them in that order. Dragging requires a desktop-sized screen with a mouse — there is no touch reorder, and the drag handles are not rendered on small screens. Reordering while combination stock is on regenerates the matrix.

Each option carries:

This is the most common mistake when setting up variants:

If your base price is 2 500 DZD and the XL costs 2 700 DZD, the price adjustment for XL is +200, not 2700.

The pill shows the adjustment, never the total: +200 renders as a green +200 DZD pill, -150 as a red -150 DZD pill, and an option whose adjustment is 0 shows no pill at all. The product's running total recalculates as soon as the shopper picks an option.

The one surface that shows each option's full price is the Digital Product Variants addon.

Show as card appears only on Colour groups. Turn it on to render that colour as a large image card instead of a 40 px circle — useful for fashion, jewellery and brand selectors. It needs a linked product image; without one the option falls back to the plain circle.

You never need it elsewhere: image-text and Multiple-choice options are always cards, and text options are always pills.

Every Colour, Text and Image-text group is mandatory — the shopper must pick one option from each, and the server rejects an order that arrives without a pick (a guard that mainly catches browser tabs left open before you added the group). There is no per-group "required" switch.

For a genuinely optional group — engraving, add-on accessories — create it with the Multiple choice type. Those are always optional and let the shopper tick several options at once.

When an option is bound to a product image, clicking it on the storefront can move the gallery to that image:

Once a product exists, re-opening it and linking an image creates a stable link to that photo, so later reordering or replacing pictures does not break which thumbnail the option shows. Variants configured on the initial Create screen can only remember the image's position — reorder your photos afterwards and the option may end up pointing at a different one. The link becomes stable the first time you save from the edit page.

The gallery scroll itself always jumps to the image's current position in the gallery.

There are three stock modes. They are mutually exclusive and chosen explicitly with the switches in the Pricing & stock card — there is no fallback from one to another:

The storefront still shows a single product-level total — it sums the option or combination counts for display — but the count that actually gates a sale is the one from the mode you enabled.

Once the shopper picks a variant, the quantity stepper is capped by that option's (or that combination's) stock, not by the product total, and the server re-applies the cap when the order is submitted. The one exception: multi-quantity offers are not reduced this way — a bundle whose quantity exceeds the selected variant's stock is rejected instead.

⚠️ Warning — Prerequisites

The Track combination stock switch only appears once the product has at least two variant groups and Track variant stock is already on. If you can't find it, add the second group or turn on variant stock first. Switching it on hides the per-option stock inputs and generates the matrix immediately.

Use it when:

Otherwise leave it off. Combinations explode quickly: 4 colours × 5 sizes = 20 SKUs to manage. 4 × 5 × 3 storage tiers = 60.

🛑 Important — 1 000 combinations is a hard limit

Above 1 000 the matrix refuses to generate and shows a "too many combinations" message. If a payload somehow arrives with more rows, the server keeps only the first 1 000 and drops the rest without warning. Split the product or drop a dimension — support cannot raise the cap.

When combination stock is on, the Combination matrix card appears below the variant groups. Click Generate combinations to build the grid, then fill it in. The matrix gives you:

Options are re-classified on every click, and there are two different "unavailable" looks. Merchants routinely report the second one as a bug:

The product image grid (above the variant section) is where merchants spend most of their time:

The order is saved with the product, and is what the storefront uses for the gallery and for the option-to-image binding.

Variants are painted by several different surfaces, each with its own picker. Check the one your shoppers actually use before you conclude something is broken:

/dashboard/themes has a Variants tab with 12 CSS re-skins of the picker. They restyle the shared product page's picker only — not the Digital theme's product page, not landing pages, and not the add-to-cart modal.

Some catalogs have dependent options — Brand → Model. Selecting Apple should only show iPhones, not Samsung Galaxies. Install the Cascading Variants addon to enable parent-child groups:

One rough edge: on the product page the visual "selected" highlight is cleared only on colour and text options, so an image-text child group can keep a highlighted card after you switch parents — the selection itself is still discarded. Landing pages clear all three types correctly.

Activate it from /dashboard/addons — requires the Pro plan or higher.

When you sell multi-quantity offers ("Buy 3, get 1 free"), the customer needs to pick variants for each piece. DZBuild already does that with a built-in in-page accordion; the Offer Variant Popup addon replaces it with a modal:

Activate it from /dashboard/addons — available on all plans, including Free.

If your store uses the Digital theme, the Digital Product Variants addon transforms the variant selector into a sleek 2-step accordion:

Requires the Pro plan or higher and the Digital theme.