When hundreds of customers rush to enter a penny prize or a free competition at the same time, the resulting surge of simultaneous orders can overwhelm your platform’s processing queue and slow — or even crash — the site for everyone. Volume Control is a plugin that gives operators a fine-grained set of tools to smooth out these spikes, protect server resources, and keep paid orders flowing even when free competitions cause sudden bursts of traffic.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/Rahat-Pagecode/gitbook-competitions/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
With Volume Control enabled you also gain access to increased maximum order limits and a higher overall maximum ticket count per competition.
Per-Product Settings
Once the plugin is installed, a Volume Control widget appears on every Edit Product page. Each competition can be tuned independently to match its expected traffic profile.| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Minimum tickets in 1 order | Prevents a flood of very small orders that each consume processing resources. |
| Maximum tickets in 1 order | Caps the number of tickets a single order can contain, preventing individual resource-intensive orders with 1,000+ tickets. |
| Customers time limit | Introduces a cooldown between successive purchases from the same customer, freeing up resources for other buyers. |
| Disable Add to Cart | Hides the Add to Cart button entirely. Rarely used, but available as a quick emergency toggle if issues arise. |
All of these options are editable by you. The platform does automatically apply recommended limits on penny prizes — we advise keeping them in place, but you can adjust or disable them if your situation requires it.
Queue Mode
Queue Mode is a global safety valve. It monitors the number of orders being placed within the current minute and, if that count exceeds a configured threshold, it temporarily holds new customers in a short queue before redirecting them to the checkout page. From a customer’s perspective the wait is brief — the queue creates just enough space between orders to prevent the website from becoming unresponsive.Free Competition Protection
Free competitions can generate sudden, dramatic spikes in order volume that back up the processing queue responsible for dispatching confirmation emails, instant rewards, and other critical post-order functions. When the platform detects that an influx of free ticket orders is holding back this queue, it will automatically and temporarily disable the Add to Cart button on free competitions only. Paid competitions remain fully open throughout, so revenue is never interrupted while the queue catches up.Daily Ticket Limits
Daily Ticket Limits provide a safe and fast way to calculate and restrict customers from buying too many tickets in a short span of time. You can set a cap on the total number of tickets a single customer may purchase within a given day, and the platform will block further purchases from that customer once the limit is reached.Weekly interval limits are also available but are rarely needed in practice. Daily limits cover the vast majority of high-volume scenarios.
Exclusive Spend Limits
For up to three competitions you can attach an Exclusive Spend Limit — a cap on the total amount a customer can spend over a specific interval. This works similarly to Spending Controls and is particularly effective at preventing bots from exploiting free or low-cost competitions.Navigate to Settings
Exclusive Spend Limits are configured under the platform Settings area, not the individual product page.
Select your competitions
Choose up to three competitions to apply a spend limit to. Only these competitions will be subject to the interval-based cap.