Charge flat rates for shipping

You can charge your customers a flat shipping rate for any order, regardless of quantity. This is useful if you want to deliver products yourself or offer your own fixed cost for different delivery methods.

You can also charge a flat rate based on how many units of a product are in the cart, if quantity matters or if you need to charge extra to ship certain products, such as large or fragile items.

Flat rate per order

With a flat rate per order, you can charge a single rate to ship all orders to specific locations, regardless of how many items are ordered. A flat rate can be a whole amount or a percentage of the order subtotal. Flat-rate shipping is well suited for stores selling items where shipping costs are negligible, all items are approximately the same size and weight, or you deliver orders yourself.

To set up a flat rate per order in your store:

1. Go to Shipping & Pickup.

2. Click “+ Add Shipping.”

3. Select how you ship your goods (by a shipping carrier or a local delivery service) and click “Set up.”

4. Click “Set Up Flat Rate.”

5. Update the name of this shipping method, if necessary. Customers will see this name at checkout.

6. Select either an Amount or Percent rate and then enter the shipping cost or percentage.

7. Click “Add description for customers” and enter the details you want to display at checkout, if necessary.

8. Click “Limit availability by order subtotal,” if you want to offer this shipping method only to customers with orders over a certain amount. Then specify the minimum order subtotal, that is, the sum of all items in the cart before adding shipping costs and discounts. 

9. Click “Limit availability to operating hours” if you want local delivery to be available to customers only on certain days of the week or business hours and set the necessary limitations.

10. Click “Set shipping zone” to specify the destination to which this flat rate applies.

11. Click Save & Finish.

Now the newly configured flat rate will be available at checkout for customers ordering goods to that location.

To offer free shipping over a certain subtotal, while still charging a flat rate for a lower subtotal, use tiered rates. 

Flat rate per item

Some products in your store may require additional handling or packaging, or they may be much larger than other products that you ship. For these products you can set up an individual, fixed per-item fee to cover these extra shipping expenses.

There are two ways you can add a per-item fee to a specific product:

• You can charge a per-item fee on a certain product on top of your regular shipping rates.

• You can charge a per-item fee on a certain product instead of your regular shipping rates.

To set up a fixed per-item rate:

1. Go to Catalog > Products.

2. Choose a product or create a new one.

3. In product details, open the “Shipping & Pickup” tab.

4. Make sure that the setting “This Product Requires Shipping or Pickup” is enabled.

5. Go to the "Shipping Rates" section and choose how you’d like the per-item fee to be charged:

   • To charge a per-item fee for that product on top of your regular shipping cost, select “Use your store’s shipping methods,” click “Add fixed fee per item,” and specify what amount should be added to the shipping cost for each product item in the cart.

     Since this product-specific per-item fee is added on top of your regular shipping cost, you will need to add at least one storewide shipping method on your Shipping & Pickup page.

   • If you want to charge a fixed per-item rate for that product instead of your regular shipping cost, select the "Fixed rate per item" option and specify what amount should be charged for each product item in the cart.

6. Click Save.