Add a shipping zone

A shipping zone is a group of countries that share the same rates. Most stores need three: home country, neighbouring region, rest of world.

Settings → Shipping → Zones

Click Add zone. Give it a name (Domestic, Europe, North America, ROW), pick the countries, and add at least one rate. Save. Customers shipping to a country in the zone now see those rates at checkout.

Rate types

• Flat rate. One price for everything in the zone. Cheapest to set up, worst margin on heavy items
• Weight-based. Price per kg or per lb, with breaks. €5 up to 1kg, €8 up to 5kg, €15 up to 25kg
• Price-based. Price by order subtotal. €5 under €50, free over €50. Drives AOV up
• Real-time carrier. DHL/UPS/FedEx/USPS quote returned at checkout. Most accurate for international, requires a carrier account on Settings → Shipping → Carriers

You can mix types: free domestic over €50, weight-based for Europe, real-time for everywhere else.

Free shipping threshold

Most-recommended setting on the platform. Drives an average 12% lift in AOV without hurting margin. Settings → Shipping → Zone → Add rate → Price-based → set the threshold to roughly 1.4× your current AOV. Higher than that and customers don't bother; lower and you give it away on orders that would have hit the threshold anyway.

Origins

Settings → Shipping → Origins. If you ship from multiple warehouses, list them and we'll pick the closest one to the customer at checkout. Without this, every shipment is calculated from your default origin. Fine if you have one warehouse, painful if you have three.

Customs and duties

For international shipping, decide whether you charge duties at checkout (DDP. Delivered Duty Paid) or let the carrier collect from the customer at delivery (DDU). DDP is a much better experience and reduces returns. Settings → Shipping → International → DDP. Requires a carrier account that supports it (DHL Express, UPS Worldwide).

What goes wrong

The two most common shipping bugs we see:

• A zone covers a country it shouldn't (e.g. "Europe" includes UK and Switzerland. Both are not in the EU customs union). Customs will hold the package
• Free shipping threshold is set in your storefront's primary currency but customers see it converted. €50 = $54 = €55 if EUR is up. Double-check both currencies show the same threshold

After every change, place a test order at checkout to a sample address in the zone. That's faster than reviewing the rates table.