Release 0.97 went out on 2 November. It is our biggest release yet: ten days of work, with new ways to reach your customers, new kinds of business you can run, and a lot of polish besides.

Email campaigns from your own domain

Write a campaign in the admin with text, images, buttons and a grid of your products, send a test to your own inbox, then schedule it in your shop's time zone. It goes out from your own domain, so it reads as coming from you. Each campaign reports how many were delivered, bounced and unsubscribed, and you can switch on open and click counts if you want them. Anyone who bounces, complains or unsubscribes goes on a do-not-email list automatically, so you can't email them by mistake.

Your domain needs to be verified once before the first send: we give you the DNS records to add. See the email campaigns guide.

Consent you can prove

Every marketing choice a customer makes is now recorded with the exact wording they saw and when they saw it: at checkout, at sign-up, in their account and on a table booking. So are agreeing to your terms of sale and the version of your privacy notice. Checkout uses the UK soft opt-in for existing customers, sign-ups confirm by email, and every marketing email carries a one-click unsubscribe.

You can run several mailing lists, such as news, offers or events, and customers choose which they hear about in a new Preferences tab. Messages from your contact form now land in a Contact requests inbox in the admin, where you can answer them. Existing shops turn this on from the platform upgrades list. See customer messaging and consent.

A proper account area for your customers

The customer account has been rebuilt. Customers see where each order is, with parcel tracking, and can buy again in one click. They keep an address book that checkout offers next time, and they can review what they bought from the order page. A sign-in and security tab shows where they're signed in and lets them sign out everywhere. If you choose, customers can also cancel an order themselves until you start work on it.

On shops using Badger sign-in, every customer can now sign in with a code or link sent by email, with no password to remember. Orders they placed as a guest join their account once they confirm their email address.

Appointments (early access)

Opticians, salons, clinics and studios can now take bookings on their own site. A customer picks the service, then a named person or "anyone available", then a time. Appointments can be free, or paid in full at checkout with clear cancellation terms and automatic refunds when someone cancels in time. Staff work from a diary for each practitioner, and after a phone booking they can email a link to pay. Try it on Clearview Opticians, and talk to us if you'd like it on your shop. Deposits and no-show fees are coming next.

Sell on eBay and Google Shopping (pilot)

Your Badger catalogue can now list on eBay and in Google Shopping's free listings, with no second catalogue to keep up. You map your categories and attributes once, and Badger checks each listing and explains what's stopping it. Suggest with AI fills in missing details from your own product text, for you to approve. Stock and price changes follow automatically, and Google's verdict on each listing comes back into the admin in plain words. eBay orders are imported into Badger, to be packed with everything else. This is a pilot: talk to us if you'd like to be one of the first shops on it. See marketplace channels.

Deliver locally from your own shop

Any shop, on any plan, can now deliver from its own premises. Set the postcodes you cover, a minimum order and, if you like, a same-day cut-off, and checkout offers your own delivery to customers in that area. The order confirmation says how a delivery comes and where it leaves from. Delivery dates now follow GOV.UK's bank holidays for every part of the UK, updated automatically. See delivery dates.

Diorama, and shops in more than one language

Diorama is a new dark, photo-first theme: full-screen photos under a see-through header, a blog laid out as a photo wall, and a shop and checkout on the same dark background. The photo-wall blog, with a full-screen viewer, also works on our other modern themes.

A shop can now run in more than one language as linked sites, one per language. A flag menu in the header takes shoppers to the same page in their language, and all the built-in storefront text is now available in Spanish. See storefronts.

Small things that sell

  • Colour swatches in the variant picker, and the price on each option's button when the option sets it, which makes a monthly donation ladder of £3, £5 or £10 easy.
  • Type a quantity straight into the basket.
  • Live subscription figures on a product page: how many members, and if you like the running total, such as a prize fund.
  • Brand colours that are too light to read are adjusted automatically, so text meets the WCAG AA contrast standard.

Send us an update (early access)

Someone at your organisation writes what's happening in their own words and adds up to ten photos, from their phone if they like. AI drafts a news post, a profile or an event page from it, using those photos and suitable ones from your library. Nothing goes live until someone in the admin approves it. It's built for teams whose news comes from people who don't log in to the website. Talk to us if you'd like to try it.

For restaurants

Takeaway and delivery orders now come from the chosen kitchen's own stock, and a food order always comes from one kitchen. A table menu can be set for each dining room. Coming with the Badger app: marking a dish as gone mid-service, a manager's view of the day, refunds after the bill is paid, and guest history on each booking.

Your AI assistant does more

The MCP server now has 79 tools. Your assistant can work with campaigns, contacts and enquiries, marketplace channels and appointments. It can also set a page's search title and description, fill in product attributes and set your social handles. A new Finish setting up list on the admin home page, also available to your assistant, tells a new shop what's still missing and where to fix it. See AI.

Also in 0.97

  • Parcel labels have now been tested against live Sendcloud and Royal Mail Click and Drop accounts.
  • With more than four places to collect from, checkout folds them into the store picker.
  • A location's settings page shows only what that location needs.
  • Every customer email uses the same layout as the order confirmation.