FAQ

Intuitive Shipping lets you control how your shipping is calculated at checkout. Our extensive rules-based Condition system lets you decide when shipping rates appear to your customers.

Intuitive Shipping also helps you manage the checkout experience by letting you customize shipping method titles, descriptions and delivery times, even with live carrier rates!

If your shipping is complex enough that Shopify’s built-in shipping features aren’t sufficient, Intuitive Shipping gives you far more flexibility and control.

Some of the most common reasons merchants need Intuitive Shipping are:

Rules – our Condition system lets you set up a variety of cart-based rules, product-based rules and customer-based rules. You have over 40 Condition types to choose from.

Packages – when you have multiple package options for live rates and can’t rely on a ‘default’ package size, Intuitive Shipping ensures that each order is calculated with the best packaging option. You can even use Intuitive Shipping to package certain products separately from the rest of the order.

SmartBoxing™ – if you have a lot of products of different shapes and sizes, our SmartBoxing™ packing system always ensures that your dimensional shipping is as accurate as possible and that the customer’s order is being packaged in the most efficient way. That saves your fulfillment team time and ensures your customers are paying the right price for shipping.

Advanced blending – when simply adding two shipping costs together isn’t enough, Intuitive Shipping lets you configure rate blending in a number of different ways. Intuitive Shipping can calculate the total, average, highest or lowest blending options. You can also use Intuitive Shipping to simulate dimensional shipping with flat rates by calculating the higher of either weight or volume-based rates.

Customization – Intuitive Shipping lets you create unique shipping method titles and descriptions to help your customers understand their options more clearly. You can add buffer time to carrier delivery times. You can even add custom shipping prices to products that always cost the same price to ship no matter what else is in the cart.

Condition groups – Conditions alone may not be enough. You may have certain rules that require a condition group, such as shipping options that only appear before 4 pm on weekdays, except Friday which needs to be before noon. The most common use of Condition Groups in Intuitive Shipping is for sub-zones based on postal codes and zip codes.

Sub-zones – Shopify shipping zones may not be localized enough, and city conditions may be too localized. Using our Condition Groups feature, you can create sub-zones based on postal code or zip code to either include or exclude shipping options based on the customer’s address.

PO Box exclusion – some carriers may not deliver to PO boxes. Intuitive Shipping lets you easily set up a rule to prevent customers with PO box addresses from checking. Alternatively, you can force them to select a shipping method that does work with PO box addresses.

Advanced shipping requirements – if you want to offer your customers more at checkout like conditional free shipping, wholesale and retail rates, tiered prioritized shipping options, percentage-based shipping costs, per-unit shipping costs, local pickup and delivery options, Intuitive Shipping does it all.

At a minimum, you need at least one (1) Shipping Scenario with at least one (1) live rate or custom Shipping Method

Scroll down to see FAQs about Shipping Scenarios and Shipping Methods.

You will also need to ensure that Shopify’s third-party Carrier-calculated shipping feature is enabled in your Shopify settings.

All Intuitive Shipping features – and our support services – are available on every billing plan. We don’t limit access to any features or functionally once you select a billing plan. Our billing plans are based solely on the number of completed orders you process each month.

Intuitive Shipping billing plans are based on the total number of completed orders processed by your Shopify store each month. Abandoned carts, test calculations, ‘bricks and mortar’ orders and most Shopify POS orders do not count against your plan limit.

If you’re using Shopify POS Pro, orders that require shipping will count against your plan.

Nope! You can use Intuitive Shipping indefinitely – for FREE – as long as you’re in Testing Mode. Take as much time as you need to get your setups just right!

To use Intuitive Shipping in a live setting, you will need to activate your account and begin your 14-day FREE trial. Check out our Billing FAQs below for more information.

We are currently integrated with these carriers:

Australia Post eParcel
Australia Post Parcel
Canada Post
Canpar
DHL eCommerce
DHL Express
Easyship
eShipper
FedEx
FedEx Freight LTL
Purolator
ShipStation
United States Postal Service (USPS)
UPS

If your preferred carrier isn’t on this list, let us know! We’ll add them to our wish list. Check out the Shipping Method FAQs for more information about carriers.

Intuitive Shipping is an advanced shipping calculator that helps you control how shipping rates are calculated at checkout.

You can print shipping labels and manage order fulfillment directly through Shopify or through a third-party fulfillment app.

Yep! Intuitive Shipping is currently integrated with ShipStation. If you’re using other third-party fulfillment and label-printing apps, there are no known compatibility issues. You can continue using those apps with Intuitive Shipping.

Shopify’s Shipping Profiles provide merchants with some flexibility and customization when calculating shipping rates. Intuitive Shipping’s Scenarios can do everything that Profiles were intended to do, and much more!

We strongly recommend that you use only one (1) Shipping Profile with Intuitive Shipping. Learn more about how Intuitive Shipping works with Shipping Profiles here.

Shopify’s Locations feature lets merchants set up multiple shipping origin locations to make it easier to manage inventory and local deliveries. While there are a few exceptions, we generally advise against using Locations with Intuitive Shipping as it may result in calculation errors such as duplicated or missing rates.

With Intuitive Shipping, you can create Live Rate Shipping Methods with custom shipping origin locations.

Absolutely. Take a tour of Intuitive Shipping with one of our amazing team members. Schedule your one-on-one appointment here.

In October of 2021, we launched a brand new version of Intuitive Shipping, rebuilt from the ground up. If you’re using the Legacy version, and you want to migrate to the New version, stay tuned! We’ll be in touch soon with more information about migration.

If you’re not sure which version you’re using, learn more here.

Intuitive Shipping works well with all of Shopify’s plans, so be sure to choose the Shopify plan that suits your overall business needs.

Shopify requires you to enable their third-party carrier-calculated shipping feature to use any third-party rate calculator, including Intuitive Shipping. Intuitive Shipping is unable to display shipping costs at checkout without this feature, even in Testing Mode. If you’re on either the ‘Basic’ or ‘Shopify’ plan, this feature can be enabled for USD $20 per month. If you change your plan to annual billing, Shopify will add the feature for no additional cost, plus you’ll save 10% on your Shopify plan. If you’re on the ‘Advanced’ plan or higher, the Carrier-calculated shipping feature is already enabled.

Learn more about Shopify’s Carrier-calculated shipping feature here.

Most quick pay/ express checkout services will work with Intuitive Shipping, with some limitations:

Apple Pay does not pass customer tags. Any Conditions that rely on customer tags will be ignored when customers choose Apple Pay. The customer’s address will only include their Postal/Zip code. If you are using Zapiet’s Store Pickup + Delivery app with Intuitive Shipping, information from Zapiet will be excluded when Apple Pay is selected. If you are using UPS in your Live Rate Shipping Method along with Apple Pay, please contact us for assistance.

Google Pay does not pass customer tags. Any Conditions that rely on customer tags will be ignored when customers choose Google Pay. The customer’s address will only include their Postal/Zip code. If you are using Zapiet’s Store Pickup + Delivery app with Intuitive Shipping, information from Zapiet will be excluded when Google Pay is selected. If you are using UPS in your Live Rate Shipping Method along with Google Pay, please contact us for assistance.

PayPal passes customer tags, so Conditions relying on customer tags will work as expected when customers choose PayPal. The customer’s complete address is included with PayPal transactions. If you are using Zapiet’s Store Pickup + Delivery app with Intuitive Shipping, information from Zapiet will be excluded when PayPal is selected.

Shop Pay does not pass customer tags. Any Conditions that rely on customer tags will be ignored when customers choose Shop Pay. The customer’s complete address is included with Shop Pay transactions. If you are using Zapiet’s Store Pickup + Delivery app with Intuitive Shipping, information from Zapiet will be excluded when Shop Pay is selected.

Limitations with quick pay services are usually with customer information and generally do not affect other Conditions such as Product or Cart Conditions.

Yes, you can! Merchant Center can’t connect to Intuitive Shipping – or even to Shopify – through an API, so you’ll need to add your shipping costs to Merchant Center manually.

Google requires that any shipping rates on Merchant Center match those on your store’s website. If they don’t, actual rates on your store’s website must be lower than Google Merchant Center. Learn how to make your shipping rates compliant with Google Merchant Center here.

In most cases, subscription apps and subscription-based products will work with Intuitive Shipping.

If you’re using Shopify Subscriptions, or the new version of ReCharge, which is linked to Shopify’s service, you may experience issues with rate calculations. That’s because Shopify Subscriptions works like their Profiles feature. Shopify passes us two payloads (or two ‘carts’) at checkout – one with the subscription price and one with the purchase price. This will typically result in a doubled shipping cost.

Yep! If you are unable to ship to PO boxes, you can use an Address Condition to prevent customers with a PO box in their address from completing their checkout. Learn more here.

Using postal codes or zip codes to limit or restrict shipping to regional areas is one of the most common setups in Intuitive Shipping. Learn how to create a postal code or zip code sub-zone here.

For UK-based stores, we recommend this more detailed guide explaining how to set up sub-zones with UK postcodes.

Splitting a shipment into different shipping methods or shipping to more than one destination is outside the scope of Intuitive Shipping’s functionality and is not supported by Shopify.

If you are shipping from separate locations – i.e. from two vendor locations, you can create a multi-vendor setup. Learn how here.

Not only can you create a basic Free Shipping Scenario, but you can also customize exactly how your customers qualify by adding Conditions that offer or exclude free shipping based on certain criteria. Learn how to use Intuitive Shipping to create a conditional free shipping Scenario here.

Yep! If you have handling fees or want to apply mark-ups to your shipping costs, you can add those costs directly to the Shipping Method. Cost adjustments will be rolled into the final cost. Intuitive Shipping does not itemize or break down additional costs at checkout. Learn how to add fees and adjust the final shipping cost here.

Intuitive Shipping does not handle any tax calculations. For more information about how taxes are handled within Shopify, click here.

Yes, but there are some risks. Shopify doesn’t pass any information about the discount to Intuitive Shipping, so our system can’t tell if a discount has been applied or not. We only see the cart total, not how it was achieved.

In some cases, the discount may be applied before shipping is calculated, and in others, it may be applied after shipping is calculated. If you’re using discounts and you have Scenarios with Conditions that are based on cart total, rates may not calculate accurately.

Promotion and discount codes can be managed directly through Shopify.

Yes! Unlike promo codes and product discount codes which affect the cart total, Shopify’s free shipping digital coupons are applied directly to shipping methods. They force all shipping rates calculated at checkout to be displayed as free, even if they’re being calculated by a third party like Intuitive Shipping.

If you sell products that always require special shipping rates, such as promo items that always ship free or large, bulky items that cost the same to ship, regardless of what else is in the cart, you can assign special rates directly to the product, then blend them with your regular shipping rates. To learn more, click here.

If you want to have shipping estimated on the product page or cart page, Page Calculators or Cart Calculators (sometimes called Shipping Estimators) can be used with Intuitive Shipping, as they will pull rates from our system automatically.

Please note that rates calculated by shipping estimators are not always accurate. For example, if rates are based on customer conditions, such as distance, Postal/Zip code, or customer tags (e.g. ‘wholesale’, ‘member’), rates calculated at checkout may be different than rates calculated by the Cart/Page Calculator.

When creating a draft order, rates from Intuitive Shipping are available to select if any applicable Conditions from your Scenarios are met.

Yes! We want you and your customers to have a great experience. Flash Sales can impact the app’s performance, so if we know about your sale in advance, it will help us prepare for any increased activity. Learn more about preparing for Flash Sales here.

Intuitive Shipping does not touch any Shopify code. Changing your Shopify theme does not impact your Intuitive Shipping settings or setups.

Yep! To learn how to integrate Printful with Intuitive Shipping, go here.

Intuitive Shipping is not able to work with dynamic data, so it is not possible to set up Conditions or rules based on stock levels or availability.

Absolutely! You can have Intuitive Shipping installed in more than one store. Because each Shopify store has a unique shop ID, Intuitive Shipping will need to be installed and managed separately in each store.

Because each Shopify store has a unique shop ID, and because products, shipping zones and Shopify settings are linked to stores, each installation of Intuitive Shipping must be set up and managed independently.

Yep! Intuitive Shipping has been optimized for mobile devices, so you can easily finish your setup or make changes to your settings whether you’re at the office or on the go.

Yes! As a verified app on the Shopify app store, Intuitive Shipping is in full compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law. Learn how here.

The Activity Dashboard is the first thing you see when you finish installing Intuitive Shipping, and it’s the starting point each time you return to the app.

All shipping calculations from the past 14 days are displayed on the Activity page. That includes completed orders, abandoned carts after shipping was calculated and test checkouts.

The Activity page is also where you’ll find banners with important reminders and notifications about the app.

Learn more about the Activity Dashboard.

Intuitive Shipping lets you see all of the recent shipping costs calculated by our system. We keep these activities for the past 14 days since you’re most likely to reference these activities within the first few days after they’re calculated. Activities that are more than 14 days old are purged from our system.

Storing and displaying calculation activities for all of our users for more than 14 days would significantly impact the app’s performance and drive up plan costs.

Click on any Activity in the dashboard to view, among other things, the shipping options displayed to the customer at checkout, the customer’s name and address, the date and time the calculation was completed, and for live carrier rates, the package sizes that were selected.

Activities display all of the shipping methods that were calculated by Intuitive Shipping and sent to Shopify, who in turn display it on your checkout page. Our system doesn’t know which option the customer chose since that occurs after our work is finished. Check the Shopify Order to confirm which shipping option was selected by the customer.

The Activity page only shows you rates that were calculated by Intuitive Shipping. If you’re seeing rates at checkout that aren’t on the dashboard, those rates are coming from another source – either another third-party rate calculator or from Shopify directly. Please double-check to see if you have rates set up in Shopify or another third-party service.

Intuitive Shipping is designed to work best with one Shopify Location and one General Shipping Profile. If you’re using multiple Locations or Profiles, Shopify may be sending us multiple ‘sub-carts’ for the same order, one for each Location or Profile. Our system calculates each ‘sub-cart’ independently and sends the costs back to Shopify, where they are blended into a single rate at checkout.

While your customer is only seeing one rate at checkout, you’ll see a separate Activity for each ‘sub-cart’ calculation performed by Intuitive Shipping.

If you have more than one shipping method with the same title, Shopify will only display one of them. By default, the cheapest option is always shown. If more than one shipping method has the same title and cost, Shopify will show whichever one was calculated fastest.

For example, let’s say you have 3 different Ground shipping methods – one for UPS, one for FedEx and one for Canada Post. Instead of selecting the carrier’s name or actual service title, you’ve titled each shipping method ‘Ground Shipping’. When a customer checks out, they’ll only see one ‘Ground Shipping’ option – whichever one is the cheapest of the three, even though you’ll see 3 separate ‘Ground Shipping’ calculations in the Activity.

We recommend titling your shipping methods something different if they’re being displayed at the same time. If you’re using live carrier rates, we recommend always selecting ‘Use the carrier delivery method title‘ during setup.

If you’re using a shipping estimator that is pulling shipping costs from Intuitive Shipping to either the product page or cart page, those calculations will show up on the Activity dashboard with an ‘Unknown’ customer name.

At this time, exporting Activity records (Transactions) is not available. We may add support for this in the future.

Of course! If you’ve done a bunch of test checkouts, you may want to de-clutter your recent Activities. To remove an Activity from the Dashboard, click on an Activity, then click the Delete button at the bottom of the ‘View Activity’ page.

Deleting an Activity is permanent and cannot be undone.

A Scenario is a set of Conditions (rules) that determine when shipping rates will be displayed at checkout. Along with Conditions, each Scenario can have an unlimited number of custom (flat rate) or live rate Shipping Methods.

While Conditions are not required, each Scenario must have at least one (1) Shipping Method.

You’ll need at least one (1) Shipping Scenario to use Intuitive Shipping, whether you require Conditions or not. The number of additional Shipping Scenarios you’ll need depends entirely on your shipping requirements.

Click here to check out some examples that can help you determine how many Scenarios you’ll need for your store.

Nope! You can create as many Shipping Scenarios as you need. Learn how to add more Shipping Scenarios here.

Fewer Scenarios will allow you to keep your shipping as manageable as possible.

Yes! If you want to add a Shipping Scenario that is similar to an existing one, you can simply duplicate it, rename the copy, then make any settings adjustments that are needed. Learn how here.

No. When you create a duplicate of a Shipping Scenario, it copies all of the settings, but it does not link them. Once you have created a duplicate of an existing Shipping Scenario, the settings for the duplicate are completely separate from the original.

Customers can only see rates from the shipping methods within your Shipping Scenarios, and only when you have Visibility turned On.

Customers cannot see why rates are being displayed – meaning, they don’t see the Conditions controlling the rates.

When Visibility is turned Off, you can bypass the visibility setting by making the customer’s first name ‘Intuitive‘ and last name ‘Shipping‘ in the shipping info during checkout.

Shipping Scenario titles are only visible to you or anyone who has access to your app settings. We recommend using Shipping Scenario titles that help keep you organized within Intuitive Shipping.

Intuitive Shipping lists your Scenarios in alphabetical order. If you want to sort them in a specific order, you can edit your Scenario titles by adding numbers before the title – e.g. ‘1. Large Products’, ‘2. Medium Products’. Scenarios will be listed sequentially by number. This is useful if you have prioritized tiered Scenarios and you want them listed in order of priority.

We strongly recommend having only one (1) Shipping Profile when using Intuitive Shipping. Learn why here.

Intuitive Shipping syncs Shipping Zones with your Shopify settings. When you make a change to any of your Shopify Shipping Zones – whether you add, remove or alter the settings of an existing Zone, you will need to manually re-sync your changes with Intuitive Shipping through Settings.

Shipping Zones are set up in your Shopify Shipping and delivery settings. If you make changes to your Shipping Zones, you will need to manually re-sync your changes by going to Settings in the Intuitive Shipping app.

Conditions are rules that allow you to customize each Shipping Scenario. This powerful feature lets you tailor your shipping costs in a number of different ways. 

You can choose the availability of the Shipping Scenario based on the conditions settings:

All Conditions Below Must Be Satisfied
All conditions in the Scenario must be true. This option is ideal for situations where multiple conditions must be met before rates from the Scenario are made available. For example, the product(s) must be tagged ‘fragile’ and the customer must live within 20 km.

Any Condition Below Must Be Satisfied
Any single condition in the Scenario must be true. This option is ideal for situations where only one condition from a group needs to be met before rates from the Scenario are made available. For example, a product(s) must be tagged ‘free shipping’ or the entire cart must be greater than $75.00.

None of the Conditions Below Must Be Satisfied
All conditions in the Scenario must be false. This option is ideal for situations where you don’t want any of the condition settings to be met. If any of the conditions return true, rates from the Scenario will not be triggered. For example, if the conditions state that the customer tag equals ‘wholesale’ and the product is tagged ‘free sample’, then a wholesale customer ordering a free sample will not be able to get the rates.

Not at all! Conditions aren’t required if you don’t have any rules or restrictions for your shipping. You’ll still need to set up a Scenario with at least one Shipping Method, even if you have no Conditions.

You can add unlimited Conditions to each of your Shipping Scenarios. When adding multiple Conditions to a Scenario, be sure that there are no contradicting conditions and that the condition set is achievable.

For example, if you have two separate Product Conditions in one Scenario – one that states Product SKU must equal ‘SKU12’ and another that states Product SKU must equal ‘SKU34’, the customer must then order both SKUs at the same time. If that’s not what you want, and what you really want is for rates to be displayed when either SKU is ordered, put both SKUs in the same Condition, separated by a comma – e.g. Product SKU must equal ‘SKU12, SKU34’.

Condition Groups are created outside of a Scenario in a different part of the app. They allow you to build a predefined set of common conditions that can easily be applied to any Shipping Scenario as if it were a single Condition. For example, you can create a postal code Subzone using a Condition Group that includes ranges of Postal Codes or ZIP Codes so you don’t have to add them separately to each Scenario.

We strongly recommend against using the Condition Groups feature for product filtering – meaning, avoid adding a ‘Per Product’ Condition to a Condition Group. Instead, adjust the Product Filtering setting and add specific ‘Per Product’ Conditions within the Scenario to achieve your Product Filtering outcomes.

Absolutely! You can set up Product Conditions in a number of different ways. You can use product-identifying Conditions, such as SKU, Name, Type, Collection and Tag, and you can use product amount Conditions such as quantity, price, weight and volume.

If you’re using a tag as a Product Condition, the tag must already be assigned to products in your Shopify Product Information Page. Intuitive Shipping looks for the product tag in your Shopify settings, it does not assign tags.

For example, if you add the Product Condition:

Tag > Equals > fragile

Products required to meet this Condition must already be tagged in your Shopify Product Information settings for this condition to be applied at checkout.

Product tags can be assigned to your products through the Product Information listing in your Shopify settings. When assigned, you can add a Product Condition based on product tags.

Shipping tags can be assigned to Shipping Methods set up in Intuitive Shipping and are only required when creating Combined Shipping Methods.

Entire Cart Conditions apply to the cart as a whole. Let’s say you have shipping rates that can only be displayed when a customer has 5 or fewer total items in their cart. Your Entire Cart Condition would state – Quantity is less than or equals 5. By doing this, the Shipping Methods from this Scenario will only be activated when there are 5 or fewer total items in the cart.

Filtered Cart Conditions apply to any of the Per Product Conditions from the same Scenario. Let’s say you want to offer a Fragile shipping rate only when there are at least 2 qualifying items in the cart. Your Filtered Cart Condition would state – Quantity is greater than or equals 2, and – in the same Scenario – your Per Product Condition would state – Tag equals ‘fragile’. By doing this, the Shipping Methods from this Scenario will only trigger when there are at least 2 items tagged ‘fragile’, regardless of what else is in the cart with those fragile items.

Conditions are not case-sensitive. For example, if you want to limit rates to products with ‘Glass’ in the name – e.g. ‘Royal Wine Glass’ – you can set the value of your Product Name Condition to contain either ‘Glass’ or ‘glass’.

A shipping method determines how shipping costs are calculated at checkout. Shipping methods can be set up with Custom Rates (single flat rates, per-unit rates or a table of rates based on predefined thresholds) or Live Rates (real-time rates from carriers like UPS and FedEx).

At a minimum, you need to add at least one (1) shipping method to at least one (1) Shipping Scenario. You can add as many shipping methods as you need to each zone in each Scenario.

Of course! While you can’t copy an individual shipping method from one Scenario to the other, you can easily make a copy of the entire Scenario by clicking the Duplicate button in the Edit Shipping Scenario screen. This creates an exact copy of the original Scenario, including the shipping method(s). Then, make any minor adjustments you need to the Scenario.

Yes! Intuitive Shipping lets you create customized titles for all of your shipping methods. Whether you’re using custom flat rates or live carrier rates, you control how shipping methods are titled at checkout.

If you’re offering multiple Live Rate delivery services from the same carrier in a single shipping method – for example, if you’re offering Ground, 2nd Day and Priority Overnight – we do recommend using the Carrier Delivery Method Title setting. When you use a custom title with multiple delivery services, each service is titled the same thing. For example, if you use the custom title ‘FedEx’, each delivery service will be called ‘FedEx’, regardless of the actual carrier title. When more than one shipping method option with the same title is activated at checkout, Shopify removes all of the duplicates and only shows the cheapest option to your customers. Instead of seeing options for Ground, 2nd Day and Priority Overnight, they may only see the Ground cost.

Shipping methods are sorted in descending order from least expensive to most expensive. Customizing the order in which they are displayed is outside the functionality of Intuitive Shipping and is not supported by Shopify.

If you have zero-dollar shipping options that are not actually ‘free shipping’ – for example, if you instruct customers to call your store for a special shipping quote – you can change the default Shopify label from ‘free’ to something else. Learn how here.

Absolutely! When using live carrier rates, you can set up a Live Rate Shipping Method for each custom origin location (different than your default Shopify location). If you have multiple drop-ship vendors with their own rate tables, you can create a Scenario for each vendor and blend the rates together using a Combined Shipping Method. Learn how to create a multi-vendor setup here.

Intuitive Shipping is intended to be used with just one Shopify Location. If you’re using Shopify’s multi-origin Locations feature, you may experience rate calculation errors such as duplicated or missing rates.

Splitting a shipment into separate destinations is currently outside the scope of Intuitive Shipping’s functionality and not supported by Shopify.

Splitting the shipment into separate shipping methods – such as having a portion of the order ship Ground, and the remainder of the order ship Overnight – is currently outside the scope of Intuitive Shipping’s functionality and not supported by Shopify.

You can offer multiple shipping options for the customer to choose from, but only one option can be selected per order.

You can also notify your customer – through a custom Description in the shipping method Display settings – that a portion of their order will ship early or via a different service. They are still required to select only one Shipping Method option at checkout, however, you can fulfill the order however you deem necessary.

Yes! You can determine the minimum or maximum amount a customer pays for shipping – even for live rates! – for each shipping method. Learn how here.

Intuitive Shipping does not store rates. Once you edit the rate in a Custom Shipping Method and save your changes, it is permanently overwritten.

If you anticipate having to restore old rates, consider duplicating your Shipping Scenario before you publicly change the rate. After duplicating the original, adjust the rate(s) in the new Scenario’s shipping methods as needed. Then, go back to the original Shipping Scenario and turn Visibility off. If at any point you want to restore your old rates, simply turn off the new Scenario and turn on the old Scenario.

Intuitive Shipping is a powerful and dynamic shipping calculation app. Fulfillment support and shipping labels are available directly through Shopify or through a fulfillment app. If you’re using a label printing and fulfilment app or service currently, you can continue to use it with Intuitive Shipping.

Intuitive Shipping is currently optimized to work with the fixed length, width and height of rigid packages – i.e. boxes. Soft packages like poly mailers have fixed length and width, but variable height. We may offer support for flexible soft packages in the future.

Shipping Zones are geographical regions that determine where, and in some cases how, you ship. For example, you may have a Domestic Zone and an International Zone that have different shipping methods.

Shipping Zones are set up and managed in your Shopify Shipping and delivery settings, then they’re synced with Intuitive Shipping.

Shipping Zones are set up in your Shopify Shipping and delivery settings. When you install Intuitive Shipping, your Zones are synced with Intuitive Shipping and displayed in the shipping methods section of each Scenario. If you make any changes to your Shipping Zones, be sure to resync your settings with Intuitive Shipping.

Shipping Methods are not required in each shipping Zone in your Scenario. If your shipping rates only apply to one Zone – e.g. Domestic, you only need to enter a Shipping Method in that Zone. Anyone whose address resides outside the Zone will not get rates from that Shipping Method.

No problem. Each Shipping Method can be copied and assigned to another zone in the same Scenario with 2 mouse clicks. The copy is identical in every way, including the title, package settings and carrier settings. You can make minor adjustments to the settings in the copy as needed or leave it exactly the same as the original if both zones get the same rates.

To make changes to your shipping Zones, go to your Shopify ‘Shipping and delivery’ settings. Be sure to resync your settings with Intuitive Shipping after making any changes to your Zones.

When you delete a shipping Zone that includes a shipping method, then sync your changes with Intuitive Shipping, a warning message will be displayed in the Shipping Methods section of each Scenario affected by the change. Customers who live in the deleted Zone will no longer be able to get shipping methods at checkout.

If the shipping methods are not being blended in a Combined Shipping Method, only one will appear at checkout. The duplicate will be cancelled out.

If the shipping methods are being blended in a Combined Shipping Method, they will be combined together. For example, if Method X is $10.00, Method Y is $15.00 and an identical copy of Method Y is also $15.00, the customer will be shown a combined rate of $40.00 ($10.00 +15.00 +15.00) instead of $25.00 dollars.

If two shipping methods in the same shipping Zone have the exact same title, such as ‘FedEx Ground’, but their costs are different – one has an additional $5.00 markup – only the cheaper of the two will appear at checkout.

If two shipping methods in the same shipping Zone have the same title and the same cost – but other settings are different – only the original – i.e. the one listed first in the Scenario – will appear at checkout.

Live rates are real-time shipping costs that are returned to Intuitive Shipping by your preferred carrier – e.g. FedEx. When you set up a Live Rate Shipping Method and connect a carrier, shipping costs displayed to your customer at checkout are coming directly from the carrier using dimensional weight (see below for more information on dimensional weight).

Live rates are different from custom (or ‘flat’) rates which are pre-determined and manually entered when you set up a Custom Shipping Method.

We currently have integrations with these carriers:

Australia Post eParcel
Australia Post Parcel
Canada Post
Canpar
DHL eCommerce
DHL Express
Easyship
eShipper
FedEx
FedEx Freight LTL
Purolator
ShipStation
United States Postal Service (USPS)
UPS

Nope! Most of the carriers we support let you access their standard retail rates, which means you don’t need an account to set up a Live Rate Shipping Method with most carriers, including FedEx, UPS, USPS and Canada Post.

When setting up your Live Rate Shipping Method, simply leave the carrier settings fields – where you typically enter account numbers and passwords – blank. When these fields are left blank, carriers will calculate shipping using their standard retail rates.

Some carriers, like Purolator and FedEx Freight LTL, do require account credentials.

To offer discounted shipping rates to your customers, we do suggest setting up an account with your preferred carrier if it’s feasible.

When you select your preferred carrier from the ‘Calculate Shipping Based On‘ section of the shipping method, carrier settings will be displayed below the Packages section. Learn more about entering carrier account credentials here.

Carrier account settings fields are not visible until you have selected a carrier from the ‘Calculate Shipping Based On’ drop-down list.

At this time, you are required to enter your carrier credentials in every shipping method that requires them. For example, if you’re using your USPS credentials in shipping methods for both domestic and international shipping zones, you will need to add them to the shipping method for each zone.

To simplify this process, consider setting up a shipping method with credentials, then copying it into another Zone. The copy will include all of the original shipping method settings, including the carrier settings.

Shopify has access to significant carrier discounts. Unfortunately, they do not provide their carrier account credentials to third-party developers, so Intuitive Shipping is unable to access their discounted rates.

However, you can still use Shopify’s discounted rates for fulfillment and then simulate Shopify’s discounts at checkout by applying a mark down on your Live Rate Shipping Method.

FedEx SmartPost is not currently supported by Intuitive Shipping. This option may be added in the future.

If you enable FedEx One Rate in your FedEx Live Rate Shipping Method, you will need to set up One Rate boxes. FedEx does not permit custom boxes with their One Rate service.

Hold At Location is not currently supported by Intuitive Shipping.

An integration with Stamps.com is coming soon! If you’re using ShipStation to access rates from Stamps.com, connect your ShipStation account here.

Yes! We’re now fully integrated with ShipStation. Learn how in the ShipStation section of the FAQ, and learn now to connect your ShipStation account here.

Please note: this is currently available to all Intuitive Shipping Legacy version users.

At this time we offer integration with FedEx Freight LTL. Other freight carrier integrations may be added in the future.

If your freight carrier has provided a rate table, you can create a Custom Shipping Method and manually enter the carrier’s rates.

Dimensional weight is a theoretical calculation used by most carriers to quote live rates. Using a formula that considers both the size (volume) and weight of a package, dimensional weight estimates the package density, because it is possible to ship a small box that weighs a lot and a large box that doesn’t.

Dimensional weight is calculated by the carriers using the actual dimensions and weight sent by Intuitive Shipping.

Manually entering dimensional weight may result in over-size fees or delivery restrictions and is not recommended.

We offer a few different packing method options:

Simplified Packing System
A value – such as weight or quantity – will be used to determine the combination of Packages required to pack the order. Based on this determination, package weights and dimensions will be sent to the carrier, and a shipping cost calculation will be returned and displayed to your customer.

If you only have a few products or the products you sell are generally the same size, you can typically use this method. Simplified Packaging allows you to add package sizes based on the number of items in the cart or how much the cart weighs. This lets you set up your packages without having to assign dimensions to all of your products.

SmartBoxing™
To use our SmartBoxing™ packing system, all products that need to use this shipping method must have dimensions assigned to them. Using SmartBoxing™, Intuitive Shipping will determine the total size and number of packages required to ship the order. Based on this determination, package weights and dimensions will be sent to the carrier, and a shipping cost calculation will be returned and displayed to your customer.

If you have a number of products and they vary in size, we recommend using this method. SmartBoxing™ will determine the most efficient packaging based on the dimensions of each product.

Learn more about using Smartboxing™ here.

Package Separately
You can assign dimensions to a product and enable the Package Separately setting. When enabled, the product will be packaged separately and will not be packed using either Simplified Packing or SmartBoxing™.  

The dimensions assigned to the product are used by Intuitive Shipping to create package dimensions. Intuitive Shipping will generate a custom package based on the product dimensions and add it to the total number of packages sent to the carrier for a shipping cost calculation.

The Package Separately setting works well If you have products that can’t fit into your standard packages and either ship without packaging or require a custom package.

When you want products with custom packaging to be packaged separately, be sure to enter the dimensions of the custom package in place of the product dimensions. For example, if you sell a vase that has actual (unpackaged) product dimensions of 3.25 inches x 3.25 inches by 4.75 inches, but it’s shipped in a custom box that is 5 inches by 5 inches by 6.5 inches, enter the product dims as 5 x 5 x 6.5 rather than 3.25 x 3.25 x 4.75.

Although Intuitive Shipping is not a part of the fulfillment process, we do send the packing information used for live rates (box dimensions, weight, Service Code) to the customer Order in Shopify. By default, Intuitive Shipping sends package information to the Order Details (Attributes). You have the option to send the information to the Order Notes instead, and you can decide what information is sent.

To adjust the presentation of the packing information, go to the app Settings page and adjust the Packaging Information Details in General settings.

To view packaging information in Shopify, click on a completed Shopify Order, then check the Details or Notes section in the top right of the screen (depending on your General Settings).

Please note: packing information will only be displayed in an Order if the customer has successfully completed their purchase.

If you’re calculating shipping using a Live Rate Shipping Method, the Fallback Rate feature lets you set up a placeholder shipping cost that will be activated only when live rates from the carrier time out. This may happen when the carrier’s system is experiencing lag from high demand, such as during Black Friday, or if their rating system has gone down.

The Fallback rate does not activate when the carrier fails to return a rate due to other reasons, such as oversized package dimensions, excessive package quantity, missing product weights, invalid account credentials, or delivery services not available in the customer’s postal code. Instead, those errors will cause the cart to fail at checkout.

When setting up your Live Rates Shipping Method, you have the option to use the Carrier delivery times, set your own custom range – e.g. 3 to 5 business days, or use a combination of both.

When combined, the Carrier’s delivery time will be added to the minimum setting of your custom delivery range. For example, if your custom range is 1 to 5 business days, and the Carrier returns a delivery time of 3 days, the actual delivery time displayed to your customer will be 4 days. The maximum setting of your custom range – i.e. the ‘5’ will be ignored.

If you selected to have carrier delivery times displayed in the Display Settings, and carrier delivery times are not provided by the carrier, a delivery time will not be displayed to your customer.

To ensure that there is always a delivery time, even when carrier delivery times are not returned, you can combine your own custom delivery range with the carrier delivery times. When combined, the carrier’s delivery time will be added to the minimum setting of your custom delivery range. For example, if your custom range is 1 to 5 days, and the carrier returns a delivery time of 3 days, the actual delivery time displayed to your customer will be 4 days.

When no carrier delivery time is returned, your custom range of 1 to 5 business days will be displayed.

To enable SmartBoxing™, create a Live Rate Shipping Method with Packages split based on the SmartBoxing™ Algorithm. Be sure that all of your package dimensions are entered and verified and that all of your products have weight, either in Shopify or Intuitive Shipping. That’s it! SmartBoxing™ is ready to go. Learn more about setting up Smartboxing™ here.

Yes, in order to use our SmartBoxing™ system, your products must have dimensions assigned to them.

Yes, in order to take advantage of our SmartBoxing™ system, you must input your fulfillment box size dimensions into Intuitive Shipping.

At its core, Intuitive Shipping is a (super advanced) calculator. As with any calculator, you must provide the information you require to be calculated. SmartBoxing™ uses product and packaging dimensions to determine the most efficient packing method possible. If either the dimensions of the products or the fulfillment box sizes aren’t provided, Intuitive Shipping is unable to perform a calculation.

Yes. In order to take advantage of our SmartBoxing™ system, you must enter product dimensions into Intuitive Shipping. You can bulk edit your product dimensions with a CSV file by following the instructions here.

You can use the SmartBoxing™ system to calculate shipping for the suppliers who do provide dimensions for their products. To achieve this, create two separate Shipping Scenarios – one Scenario for vendors who can use SmartBoxing™ and another for vendors who cannot.

For SmartBoxing™, we generally recommend entering the inner wall dimensions of the boxes you ship your products in. However, if there is a significant difference between the inner and outer wall dimensions – for example, if you use an inner and outer carton for fragile items – we recommend entering the outer dimensions to ensure the carrier’s dimensional weight is accurate. To offset or simulate the smaller inside dimensions, add ‘buffer’ to your product dimensions.

The SmartBoxing™ packing system is currently only accessible for Live Rate Shipping Methods. The key benefit of SmartBoxing™ is to package orders as efficiently as possible to ensure accurate dimensional shipping for live rates.

A Combined Shipping Method lets you blend shipping rates from multiple, individual shipping methods into a single rate. If you have more than one product-based shipping rate, we recommend using a Combined Shipping Method.

If a customer orders products that trigger multiple Scenarios, a Combined Shipping Method will ensure that the shipping charges for each Scenario are blended together for a single shipping option at checkout. Without a Combined Shipping Method, each Scenario’s shipping charge will be displayed separately, allowing the customer to choose the cheapest one.

Let’s say you sell products from multiple vendors. Vendor ‘A’ charges a $10.00 flat rate for shipping, while Vendor ‘B’ charges a $5.00 flat rate for shipping.

Without a Combined Shipping Method, a customer ordering items from Vendor A and Vendor B will be able to choose either a $5 or $10 shipping option at checkout. Either way, you’ll lose money.

With a Combined Shipping Method set to SUM the values, a customer placing the same order will be charged $15 at checkout.

You can also use a Combined Shipping Method to add a fee or surcharge to certain ‘standard’ shipping rates in applicable situations when this can’t be achieved through the cost adjustment settings in the shipping method.

A typical Combined Shipping Method can be used to blend multiple custom (flat) rates or a mix of custom and live rates. If you are blending live rates that have more than one delivery service, such as ‘Ground’, ‘2nd Day’, ‘Priority Overnight, we recommend creating a Live Rate Combined Shipping Method which has some additional setup steps not required in the general process.

Yes! Learn how to connect your ShipStation account to Intuitive Shipping here.

Please note: this feature is available to all Intuitive Shipping Legacy version users.

Nope! Our ShipStation integration is available to all Intuitive Shipping Legacy version users, regardless of your billing plan. You can even connect to ShipStation in Testing Mode, before you activate a billing plan, to ensure the connection is working correctly.

Yes, in order to access live rates from ShipStation, you need to have an active account with ShipStation, and you must be on their New Layout version. Start your free trial with ShipStation here.

Nope! To connect your ShipStation account, simply go to the Partners page in Intuitive Shipping and click ‘Connect account’ in the ShipStation section. You’ll be prompted to enter your ShipStation username and password and accept the permission request to let us access your account. That’s it! Learn more here.

ShipStation lets you connect your own carrier accounts or gives you access to their negotiated rates. You can manage all of your carriers from one central location. To learn more, visit ShipStation.

You can quickly and easily connect your ShipStation account to Intuitive Shipping. Once connected, you’ll be able to select ShipStation as a carrier service for a Live Rate Shipping Method. Any carriers and services you have connected to your ShipStation account will automatically sync with when you connect to Intuitive Shipping.

Available carrier delivery services are based on carriers linked to your ShipStation account. Some of ShipStation’s carrier partners may not work with Intuitive Shipping.

And, coming soon, Intuitive Shipping will push the package information from the shipping method selected at checkout to your ShipStation account for labelling.

Not yet, but it’s coming soon!

Unlike other live rate shipping methods where we pass packing info from the selected delivery option to the Shopify Order Notes or Details, Intuitive Shipping passes packing information from your ShipStation shipping method directly to your ShipStation account for a seamless experience.

When this functionality is added, it will be turned on automatically. You won’t need to opt-in or adjust any settings.

At this time, only one ShipStation account can be connected to Intuitive Shipping.

If you have a multi-store setup and you have Intuitive Shipping installed separately on each store, you can connect a different ShipStation account to each store.

Having multiple stores means you have a unique Shopify Shop ID and store domain (‘storename.myshopify.com’), with Intuitive Shipping installed and maintained separately on each store.

You can only be signed in to your ShipStation account once. If you have multiple Shopify store domains, you can only connect one of them to a single ShipStation account. When you attempt to connect ShipStation to more than one store, this will cause conflicts with your account, resulting in one or both stores becoming permanently disconnected from ShipStation.

Yep! Once you’ve connected ShipStation to Intuitive Shipping, you can set up as many ShipStation shipping methods as you need. This is useful if you want to offer different carrier services to different shipping Zones or assign them to different Scenarios.

Of course! Once connected, ShipStation is essentially treated as a carrier service in the shipping method settings and appears among the list of our other carriers (FedEx, Canada Post, Australia Post, etc.) and custom rate calculation types in a drop-down list.

You can set up multiple shipping methods that use all types of carriers and calculation types. There is no limit to how many shipping methods you can add to your Scenarios.

Yes! To add more carriers to ShipStation, go to your ShipStation account directly and make the desired changes to your carrier accounts. After updating your account, be sure to sync your carrier list with Intuitive Shipping.

Changes to your ShipStation account cannot be made directly through Intuitive Shipping.

Absolutely! If at any time you no longer need to have ShipStation connected to Intuitive Shipping, go to the Partners page in the app, then click the Disconnect account button below ShipStation. Learn more here.

Intuitive Shipping syncs product information from your Shopify Product settings. When you first install Intuitive Shipping, your current products will automatically be synced with Intuitive Shipping.

While you’re in Testing Mode, be sure to re-sync your products with Intuitive Shipping each time you add or make changes to products. Once you’ve activated your account, product and Collection syncing will be done automatically.

You will need to add product dimensions to Intuitive Shipping if you are using the SmartBoxing™ packing method or if you are calculating shipping or splitting packages based on volume. Click here to learn how to add dimensions to a single product, and here to add dimensions to multiple products.

Product weights are required if you are using Live Rates. Product weights will be pulled from your Shopify Product settings, or you can enter product weights into Intuitive Shipping when you add dimensions. If the product weight in Intuitive Shipping is different from Shopify, Intuitive Shipping will supersede your Shopify product weight.

While you’re in Testing Mode, be sure to re-sync your products with Intuitive Shipping each time you add or make changes to products.

Once you have activated your account, product changes will automatically be synced with Intuitive Shipping, though we do recommend re-syncing your products if you make a lot of changes at one time.

In order to use Live Rates or weight-based Conditions, all of your products will need to be assigned a weight, either in your Shopify Product Information settings or within the Intuitive Shipping app.

Product weights are not synced with Shopify. You have the option to add product weights to Intuitive Shipping or leave the weight settings blank. If a product weight has not been added to the app, Intuitive Shipping checks your Shopify Product Information settings for a product weight at checkout only if it’s needed for the Condition or shipping calculation.

If you have entered weight in both Shopify and Intuitive Shipping, the weight value in Intuitive Shipping will supersede the value in Shopify (if they are different).

For quantity-based or weight-based packing, only weight is required. When using SmartBoxing™ or volume-based packing, you will also need to input product dimensions.

If you are using the SmartBoxing™ system or you’re using volume to calculate shipping or split packages, you will need to input product dimensions.

Shopify’s Product Information settings do not provide separate values for length, width and height. Intuitive Shipping requires unique values for each of these dimensions in order to accurately calculate volume.

You can! Each product listing in Intuitive Shipping has a ‘package separately’ option. When selected, our system will generate a custom package using the product dimensions as the package dimensions.

The ‘package separately’ option works with Live Rate Shipping Methods, including SmartBoxing™ setups.

If you’re using flat rates as part of a Custom Shipping Method, the ‘package separately’ setting is not required and is ignored.

When you set up either a Custom Shipping Method or a Live Rate Shipping Method, you have the option to enable a free shipping threshold. Products that have ‘Exclude from Free Shipping’ enabled in the Product settings will be excluded from free shipping and will be calculated as if free shipping wasn’t enabled.

Absolutely! If your product has variants, each variant can be set up differently if needed.
If all variants have the same settings, use the ‘parent’ Product to apply the settings to all variants. If one or more variants are different, configure each one individually as needed. The variant settings will override the ‘parent’ settings when enabled.
If every variant is different, leave the ‘parent’ settings blank and only set the variant settings for each variant.

If you have a product that always costs the same to ship – promotional t-shirts that always ship free or large bags of crushed gravel that always cost $100.00 to ship – you can set a custom shipping price for individual products. Learn more here.

You can! Each Product Listing – and each variant – has a ‘Do Not Ship To This Zone’ setting. When enabled, a customer from that zone will be unable to check out until they remove that item from their cart. Learn more about restricting shipping by product here.

If your restrictions are more complex – for example, if you have controlled products that can ship by ground but not by air – check out this guide.

Yes. The Carrier-Calculated Shipping Rates feature is a Shopify requirement to use any third-party shipping calculation app, including Intuitive Shipping.

Shopify requires Carrier-calculated Shipping Rates to be enabled on your Shopify plan so third-party calculators can access the checkout page. By Shopify’s definition, Intuitive Shipping is a third-party rate calculator. Even if you’re not using Live Rates, you’ll still need this feature for Intuitive Shipping to function.

While it isn’t needed for setup purposes, we still require access to your checkout page for testing Scenarios and shipping methods. That means the Carrier-calculated Shipping Rates feature needs to be enabled, even for testing.

If you are on the Advanced Shopify plan or higher, this feature is already included in your Shopify plan. If you are on the Basic or Shopify plans, you will need to contact Shopify via email, live chat, or phone to get the feature added to your plan. Learn more about Carrier-calculated Shipping Rates here.

The Carrier-Calculated Shipping Rates feature is USD $20.00 per month if you are on the Basic Shopify or Shopify plan. When you switch your Basic Shopify or Shopify plan to annual billing, this feature can be added to your plan at no additional charge, and you’ll save 10% on your Shopify subscription. If you’re currently on, or if you switch to annual billing, you’ll still need to contact Shopify to active Carrier-Calculated Rates – it is not enabled automatically.

Note: If you are on the Advanced Shopify plan or higher, this feature is already included in your Shopify plan.

Click Settings in the main menu to access your app settings.

General Visibility lets you quickly and easily turn off Intuitive Shipping so that shipping rates from Intuitive Shipping won’t display at checkout. This is useful if you want to conduct further testing on all of your setups without altering the Visibility settings of individual Shipping Scenarios. Learn more about General Visibility settings here.

Setting Visibility to Off does not disable billing on your Intuitive Shipping plan. It simply hides shipping rates calculated by Intuitive Shipping from your customers. To disable billing, you will need to delete the app from your Shopify apps page.

If you are in Testing Mode (you have not activated a billing plan), setups are not visible to your customers, regardless of the Visibility settings.

When Intuitive Shipping is live and General Visibility is set to On, Intuitive Shipping calculations are visible to your customers. Click the Settings menu button to check your General Visibility setting. This setting is only accessible after you have activated your 14-day FREE trial.

When General Visibility is set to Off, a banner will be displayed on the Activity Dashboard page.

Yep! If you’re using live carrier rates for shipping, the package details included in the calculation are sent to the Shopify Order. This lets you or your fulfillment team see which packages were used so you can complete the fulfillment process and print the label.

By default, we send packaging information to the Order attributes (Order Details). If you need to send the information to the Order Notes, you can change this in General Settings.

By default, we send both the packaging dimensions and the package contents. You can opt to have only the package dimensions sent to the Shopify Order.

Yes! During setup, you can set your preferred dimension and weight units – e.g. cm’s and kg’s. You can change these again at any time in the Units section of the Settings page.

Please note: changing the unit type does not automatically convert any values already entered into Intuitive Shipping. For example, if you have a Scenario with a weight-based Condition of 100 lbs, and you change your weight unit to kilograms, the Condition will now be based on 100 kgs.

To keep the same weight-based value, you must manually change the Condition value to the kilogram equivalent of 100 lbs.

Rates calculated by Intuitive Shipping are based on the currency in your Shopify settings and cannot be changed within the app. To update your currency setting, go to your Shopify settings. Be sure to resync your Shopify settings in Intuitive Shipping after making any changes.

Please note: changing the currency type does not automatically convert any currency values already entered into Intuitive Shipping. For example, if you have a Scenario with a free shipping threshold based on $75 Canadian Dollars, and you change your Shopify currency to US Dollars, free shipping will now be activated when the cart total is $75 USD.

To keep the same price-based value, you must manually change the Condition value to the USD equivalent of $75 CAD.

Distance-based rate calculations use a Google Maps Directions and Geocoding API. If any of your Shipping Scenarios use distance Conditions, or if you’re using distance to calculate shipping, a banner on the Dashboard will prompt you to add your Google API credentials to Intuitive Shipping. Learn more about Google API credentials here.

You only need Google API credentials if you are calculating distance-based rates. City-based and Postal/Zip Code-based rates do not require a Google API.

Google requires you to set up a billing account in order to create an API key. This is because Google charges for each time our system calls their system through the API.

However, Google provides an ongoing USD $200.00 per month credit on your billing account. That means you can have up to roughly 35,000 distance-based rate calculations per month before you will ever be billed by Google.

If you are a Shopify Plus merchant and you anticipate a higher than usual amount of orders – e.g. more than 10 orders per minute – we recommend creating a Private App and adding credentials to Intuitive Shipping to ensure you don’t exceed your Shopify API request limit. Learn more about Private App Credentials here.

You can use your API Key to connect with our integration partners. This allows our partners to retrieve shipping rates from Intuitive Shipping.

When you first install Intuitive Shipping, we sync all required settings with Shopify including your default shipping address/ shipping origin, primary email address, default currency, time zone, Shopify Shipping Zones, Products and Collections.

While in Testing Mode, any changes you make to your Shopify Settings need to be re-synced with Intuitive Shipping. Once you have activated your 14-Day FREE Trial, changes to your Products and Collections (including product Tags) are synced automatically. All other changes to your Shopify Settings will still need to be manually re-synced.

Shipping Zones are set up in your Shopify Shipping settings. If you add or remove a Shipping Zone, be sure to sync your new settings with Intuitive Shipping. Learn how to sync your settings here.

When you install Intuitive Shipping, your products are synced with Intuitive Shipping. If you add or make changes to products while you’re in Testing Mode, you’ll need to resync your product catalog with Intuitive Shipping. Learn how to sync your settings here.

After you activate your account, changes to your Shopify product settings will automatically sync with Intuitive Shipping.

When you install Intuitive Shipping, your collections are synced with Intuitive Shipping. If you add or make changes to collections while you’re in Testing Mode, you’ll need to resync them with Intuitive Shipping. Learn how to sync your settings here.

After you activate your account, changes to your Shopify collection settings will automatically sync with Intuitive Shipping.

When you install Intuitive Shipping, your Fulfillment Services are synced with Intuitive Shipping. If you add or make changes to these services, you’ll need to resync them with Intuitive Shipping. Learn how to sync your settings here.

Yes! You’ll find the error log in the Warnings & Errors section of the Settings page. Any time a shipping calculation results in an error, it will be logged here. Error logs are listed in ascending order, so be sure to scroll to the bottom of the list for the most recent errors. Learn how to check for errors here.

You can! Click the Download button in the Warnings & Errors section to download a text (.txt) file of your error log. The file will include all of the errors in the log. If you don’t have any errors, or if you recently cleared the log, the text file will be empty.

You can use Intuitive Shipping in Testing Mode indefinitely, for free. Once everything is set up and working the way you want it to, simply activate your account to begin your 14-Day FREE Trial.

Nope! You can use Testing Mode for as long as you like. Your 14-Day FREE Trial will begin after you activate your account.

You can easily test all of your Intuitive Shipping Scenarios without making them visible by using the customer name ‘Intuitive Shipping’ at checkout. Learn more about testing here.

Intuitive Shipping can’t override Shopify Shipping rates, which means two things:

When you’re testing your Intuitive Shipping setups, rates from both Shopify and Intuitive Shipping may be displayed at checkout (in Testing Mode, Intuitive Shipping rates are only visible to you when you use the customer name ‘Intuitive Shipping’ at checkout).

When you’re ready to go live and activate Intuitive Shipping, you’ll need to delete your Shopify Shipping Rates so they no longer appear at checkout.

To learn how to remove your Shopify Shipping Rates, click here.

Shopify Shipping Rates have no impact on Intuitive Shipping and can be removed at any time. If your store is live while you’re using Intuitive Shipping in Testing Mode, we recommend leaving your Shopify rates in place until you’re ready to activate Intuitive Shipping so that customers can continue to use them.

After you follow these steps to remove your Shopify Shipping Rates, only your Intuitive Shipping shipping rates will be available to your customers at checkout.

After setting up Intuitive Shipping, we strongly recommend that you run some test checkouts to make sure rates are being calculated properly. Be sure to use the customer name ‘Intuitive Shipping’ at checkout. This is the only way you will be able to see shipping rates from Intuitive Shipping on your checkout page. Learn more about testing your setups here.

Be sure you have the Carrier-Calculated Rates feature enabled on your Shopify plan. While it isn’t required for setup, we still need to access your checkout page for testing. To learn more about Carrier-Calculated Rates, go here.

If you’re testing a new setup on your checkout page and you can’t see the updated rates, you may need to clear the Shopify cache. Learn how to clear your Shopify cache here.

While you’re in Testing Mode, you’ll see shipping rates from Intuitive Shipping along with rates from any other source you’re currently using, such as Shopify.

This is normal.

Intuitive Shipping can’t override rates from other sources, so they will continue to appear at checkout. Only you can see rates from Intuitive Shipping while you’re in Testing Mode. We recommend keeping your existing rates from other sources until you’re ready to activate your account with Intuitive Shipping. Once you activate your account, we recommend removing your rates from Shopify.

If rates are not calculating or displaying, it could be due to one of the following reasons:

Shopify’s Carrier-Calculated Rates feature is not enabled. A red banner will display on the Intuitive Shipping dashboard if third-party carrier-calculated rates are not enabled.

Visibility is turned off. This can be either the General visibility of the entire app (in the app Settings page) or the visibility of individual Shipping Scenarios (in the Edit Shipping Scenario screen).

Intuitive Shipping is not a Carrier Service. In order for rates to be calculated, Intuitive Shipping must be added as a Carrier Service to your General Profile in Shopify.

‘Future Services’ is not enabled. When adding Intuitive Shipping as a Carrier Service, the Future Services box must be checked.

An error has occurred. Check the Warnings & Errors log in Settings for any calculation errors.

Learn more about troubleshooting these issues here. If you still cannot get rates to appear, please contact us for help.

If Live Rates are not appearing at checkout, it may be because Carrier-Calculated Rates are not enabled.

Carrier-Calculated Rates are a Shopify requirement for all third-party calculation apps, including Intuitive Shipping. When Carrier-Calculate Rates are not enabled, we’ll display a warning banner on the Activity Dashboard. You can also verify if the setting is enabled in your Shopify Account settings.

If the Carrier-Calculated Rates feature is enabled and Live Rates are still not appearing, be sure to verify that all of your products have weights – either in Shopify or Intuitive Shipping, package dimensions are entered correctly, carrier account credentials (if required) are valid and do not contain any typos or blanks spaces, delivery service types have been selected in the Shipping Method and are available in the customer’s Postal/Zip code or country. If you’re using the SmartBoxing™ system or if you are using volume to apply conditions or split packages, verify that all of your products have dimensions in Intuitive Shipping.

Also, check that your General Visibility (in Settings) and individual Shipping Scenario visibility settings are set to On.

To learn more about enabling Live Rates, click here.

If your LTL (Less Than Load or ‘Truckload’) rates are not being displayed, it may be because the Billing and Origin addresses are different or because the carrier account information is missing.

LTL Freight carriers require the Billing and Origin addresses to be the same. In addition, you must include your account credentials, as LTL carriers do not provide retail rates when the account credential fields are left blank.

If your carrier account credentials have been partially entered, or if there are any typos or blank spaces in the credentials, rates will not be returned and an error will be generated in the Warnings & Errors log on the Settings tab.

To resolve this, re-enter your carrier account credentials in the Shipping Method(s), then click the Save button. If the error continues to occur, contact the carrier to verify that your credentials are correct. If you have verified that your credentials are correct and the error is still occurring, contact us for support.

Intuitive Shipping lets you save time by importing dimensions for multiple products. The CSV file used to upload your dimensions uses a specific format. Making changes to the formatting – e.g. adding, removing or altering the columns or their headings – will result in an error message during importing.

Errors may not always indicate the issue causing rates not to appear. Errors will typically be logged when there is an issue with the carrier service (incorrect account credentials, over-limit packages or shipments), the product (missing weight or, if applicable, dimensions), or your account status (still in Testing Mode).

Errors are not logged if there is an issue with Conditions, Condition Groups or Combined Shipping Methods. If you’re not sure why rates aren’t being returned, check out the Troubleshooting FAQ section below go here.

In order to ship by USPS (United States Parcel Service) First Class Mail, the weight must not exceed 13 oz (0.81 lbs). If your Shipping Method condition is based on the total weight being less than 1 lb, but the weight still exceeds the 13 oz limit, no rate will be returned.

USPS discourages the use of ‘packages’ with First Class Mail. If your shipment meets the weight requirement and still results in an error, it may be due to the volume of the package. Alternatively, USPS First-Class Package Service allows weights up to 15.99 oz.

our live rate carrier may have a limit on how many packages can be shipped on one order, even if all of the packages are within size limits. When Intuitive Shipping generates more packages than the carrier can ship, rates will not be returned by the carrier and an error will be generated in the Warnings & Errors log on the Settings tab.

To resolve this, you may need to increase the ‘Up To’ limit on your packages if possible, or add larger packages sizes to the Shipping Method if it’s feasible to do so. You can also use Conditions in your Scenarios to limit customer order sizes – e.g. weight, quantity, volume, etc. – to prevent excess packages.

Contact your preferred carrier to learn more about their package count and size limits.

Carrier rates at checkout may not be the same as the rates you’re seeing at fulfillment. Here are some of the reasons why:

Timing – Intuitive Shipping calculates live rates at the moment of checkout. If you’re printing labels and fulfilling the order days after the customer checked out, variances in the carrier rates may be creating noticeable differences.

Fuel Surcharge
Some carriers have a fuel surcharge that changes daily with the price of fuel. If rates at fulfillment are off a little (less than $1.00), it’s most likely due to the fuel surcharge.

API
Sometimes carriers implement rate changes and don’t immediately update their API (the way our system speaks to their system). Recent changes to their rates may take a little time to get pushed to our system.

Account Setup – If you have connected your carrier account to Intuitive Shipping and you’re seeing unusual differences between the prices you pay and the prices your customers are seeing, contact your carrier to ensure that you have Rating API enabled on your account.

Settings
Intuitive Shipping lets you configure live rates in different ways, depending on the carrier. For example, some live rate carriers have residential and commercial rate options. Residential rates are typically higher than commercial rates. Similarly, adding package insurance or selecting carrier pickup instead of package drop-off will impact the final calculation. Ensure that your shipping method settings are configured to match the settings you apply when you get shipping quotes from the carrier.

Weights and Dims
Differences in product weights or package dimensions can throw the dimensional weight off. Be sure that the weights and dims used to calculate shipping are the same values used to get your shipping quotes from the carrier.

Intuitive Shipping can pull product weights from your Shopify settings. If weights are in both Shopify and Intuitive Shipping, our system will supersede Shopify.

If you’re seeing significant differences between the live rates at checkout and the carrier rates at fulfillment and you’re unable to determine the reason, please contact us.

Delivery Times returned by carriers are estimates and not guaranteed. Delays may occur during peak times of the year or because of weather or pandemic-related issues. Check with your preferred carrier directly to gauge the accuracy of delivery time estimates being provided.

Intuitive Shipping displays delivery time estimates provided directly by the carrier. If your Carrier Delivery Times are consistently inaccurate, please contact the carrier to find out why. You can also add buffer time to Carrier Delivery Times by combining their estimates with a custom delivery time. Learn how here.

In certain situations, the estimated delivery times provided by carriers may not be returned. Typically, this is due to an issue on the carrier’s side. If you have tried multiple carriers, and carrier delivery times are not being displayed for any of your carriers or their service levels, first check your settings.

In the Shipping Method Display Settings, ensure that the box beside ‘Use the carrier delivery times’ is checked. If the setting is enabled and you still cannot get carrier delivery times to display for any carrier, please contact us for assistance.

In your Shopify Product Information settings, each product listing has a checkbox that states, ‘This is a physical product’. If this box is unchecked, Shopify assumes that the product has no physical properties and does not require shipping – e.g. a digital gift card. Shopify won’t pass the product information to Intuitive Shipping, and no shipping rates will be calculated when someone attempts to purchase that product.

We recommend reviewing the product settings for each product in the cart that causes the checkout action to go directly to the payment screen, to ensure the ‘physical product’ box is checked.

When there is an issue with your Google API credentials, Google considers the distance to be ‘null’, or zero (0). That means, rates based on distance will not calculate accurately, or at all. Unfortunately, Google typically does not send Intuitive Shipping error messages when there are issues with your API credentials.

To resolve issues with your distance-based rates, we recommend trying these troubleshooting steps in the order they’re listed.

Validate your API key. Double-check that your API key has been entered correctly and that there are no typos or spaces.

Re-save your API key. Cut the API key out of the text field, then save your settings. Paste the API key back into the field, and re-save your settings.

Verify your Billing Account. Confirm that you do have an active Google billing account, and that is connected to the API ‘Project’. If you had a billing account prior to setting up the API Project, it may not have been linked. If necessary, contact Google for additional support with your billing account.

Confirm there are no restrictions. Ensure that the Key is ‘unrestricted’ and that API Restrictions is set to ‘None’. You may notice that Google recommends against unrestricted settings, however, restrictions will prevent Intuitive Shipping from ‘talking’ to Google and your distance-based rates will not calculate properly.

If you continue to have issues with your distance-based rates, please contact us.

Google Merchant Center pulls shipping rates and delivery times from your store. If your Intuitive Shipping Live Rate or Custom Rate Shipping Methods do not have delivery times – either custom or from the carrier – Google will assign a ‘default’ delivery range to them, typically ‘1 to 99’ business days. To resolve this, go into your shipping method Display Settings and add a custom range or select the carrier delivery times (if applicable).

You may receive a notification from Google that delivery times are being shown as ‘1 to 99’, with a request to update your Shopify settings. Resolve this issue in Intuitive Shipping, as described above. You do not need to adjust your Shopify settings.

If you recently made changes to your Shopify store settings, be sure to sync your changes with Intuitive Shipping. Learn how to sync your updated settings here.

ShipStation is currently available to Intuitive Shipping Legacy version users. If you’re using the New version of Intuitive Shipping – or, if you’re having trouble connecting your account to the Legacy version, please contact us.

If you’re having an issue with your login credentials, please contact ShipStation directly.

When you first connect ShipStation to Intuitive Shipping, all of your carrier accounts are synced. Delivery service types are available in the Delivery Methods section of the shipping method. If you added carrier services after connecting your account, be sure to update your carrier list with Intuitive Shipping.

Some ShipStation carrier partners may not work with Intuitive Shipping.

By default, no, we don’t. We can only access your app settings after an Access Request has been sent to the Shopify account holder and that request has been approved.

In order to review your app setup or quickly diagnose an issue with your shipping rates, we need to access your Shopify settings. Typically, we require access only to Apps, Orders, Products and Settings. This allows us to access Intuitive Shipping itself, compare transaction Activities on the dashboard with actual orders you’ve received, view product settings that might impact Per Product Conditions or weight-based calculations, and review your Shipping & delivery settings to ensure that there are no issues or conflicts with your Shopify Shipping Zones, Locations or Profiles.

To diagnose issues with Customer conditions, such as tags, we may require access to Customers.

Intuitive Shipping takes privacy and confidentiality very seriously. We only access and view what is essential for us to diagnose and help resolve issues with your rate calculations.

Not at all! If you’re not comfortable with Intuitive Shipping having access on an ongoing basis, you can remove our access once we have reviewed your setup or diagnosed an issue.

Please keep in mind that if we need to gain access in the future, we will need to send another Access Request. This may delay our ability to identify and resolve the issue.

A notification is sent to the Shopify account holder – the email address used to create the Shopify account, or, if it’s been updated, the current ‘default’ email address assigned to the account. If you do not have access to this email address, you will need to contact someone who does and ask them to approve the request.

Alternatively, if you have access to your store’s Shopify Permissions settings, you can manually provide Intuitive Shipping with limited Collaborator access by checking the applicable boxes.

In certain situations, we may be able to briefly review your setups if we have access to your app settings. If your setup is complex or if you have a number of different Scenarios, shipping methods, combined methods, etc., it may not be feasible for us to do a complete review of your setup.

We strongly encourage you to run test checkouts after you have completed setting up Intuitive Shipping. If something isn’t working as expected, let us know. We can more quickly diagnose issues or spot concerns with your setup if you can identify something that isn’t behaving the way you want it to.

Sure! Intuitive Shipping offers a White Glove Setup service. Learn more about it here.

An Intuitive Shipping White Glove Specialist will configure the app to your specific needs based on information provided by you. We will create Shipping Scenarios, set up shipping methods, and test rate calculations to ensure shipping rates are being displayed as expected. Then, we’ll walk you through the setup so you understand it and can manage it going forward.

White Glove setup does not include adding carrier account credentials to shipping methods, adding physical attributes to products (dimensions or weight) and variants, either individually or in bulk, or editing any settings outside of Intuitive Shipping, such as your Shopify settings or third-party app settings, including our integrated partners.

Yes! If you need help, speak to one of our helpful team members at a time that is convenient for you. Book your appointment here.

At this time we’re offering real-time onboarding and tech support by appointment only through web conferencing software. If you prefer not to talk or are unable to talk during your appointment, you can opt to use the text chat box in the web conference tool. Let us know about your preference to use the text chat feature when you book your Live support appointment here.

We currently use Microsoft Teams for our live support appointments. You don’t need to install the Teams app – Microsoft offers a web browser version – but at a minimum, you do need an internet connection and a compatible web browser to access the meeting link. We also recommend that you join the meeting from a device that has a microphone.

We strongly recommend that you test the link and set up Teams in advance of the meeting in order to reduce the risk of technical problems during the meeting.

We do recommend that you join your support conference from a device that includes a microphone. If your computer doesn’t have a built-in microphone, and you’re unable to access an external mic, you can join Teams from a mobile device.

If you are aware that your device does not have a mic, please let us know when you book your appointment so we can discuss alternative arrangements with you.

At the present time, our web conference software does not support a dial-in option, and we are unable to provide phone appointments at this time. We strongly encourage you to connect to your appointment from a device that supports audio input – i.e. a built-in or external microphone. If that is not possible, please let us know when you book your appointment so we can discuss alternatives, such as using the text chat feature.

At this time we are unable to offer phone support. Due to the nature of most technical issues, we usually need to access the screen sharing feature. We may ask you to share your screen with us so we can guide you through a solution, or we may share our screens with you to demonstrate something within the app.

To ensure that we can provide the best support to everyone in a timely fashion, we ask that you please submit a ticket or book a one-on-one web conference appointment. Your understanding is appreciated.

Absolutely! In fact, we don’t use video either! Our team members only use audio and, when required, screen sharing settings on Teams. And if you don’t feel comfortable with or are unable to use audio, feel free to use the built-in text message feature during your appointment. We want you to feel as comfortable as possible during your appointment.

No worries! While screen sharing may allow us to explain features or diagnose technical problems faster, in some cases this can still be done without screen sharing. We may need to follow up with you by email to share or request screenshots that clearly show some of the things discussed during your appointment.

Yes! We understand things happen and you may not be able to join your appointment at the scheduled time. The email confirmation you received for your appointment includes a link that allows you to reschedule or even cancel your appointment.

Deleting the appointment from your web client calendar does not notify us, nor does it cancel the appointment in our system. We strongly encourage you to use the link provided in the email to help us keep our appointment schedule up to date.

If you had a technical issue while attempting to join your web conference, or if something last minute came up and you were unable to cancel before the start time, you can still reschedule for another more suitable time. Or you can contact us by email if that is more convenient.

Email support might be more suitable for your needs if multiple appointments are missed without explanation or without cancelling.

If you are an active user experiencing an urgent issue with Intuitive Shipping, resulting in rates are not appearing at checkout and you’re actively losing sales, please email us and put ‘URGENT’ in the subject line.

Yes! To submit a ticket, click Support on the main menu and complete the Email Support section. You can also submit a support ticket from the Help Center here.

Absolutely! To return to the Help Center, click Support on the app menu, then click the Go to help center button near the top of the page.

We typically respond to Support Tickets within 1 business day. Email support during weekends and Canadian statutory holidays is limited.

Live Support is by appointment and can typically be scheduled at a convenient time within one business day and sometimes within the same business day. After booking your appointment, we’ll send you an email explaining how to access your Live Support meeting.

If you have an urgent, business-critical issue with Intuitive Shipping, please email us and put ‘URGENT’ in the subject line. Someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

The Intuitive Shipping Status page provides real-time updates during app downtime caused by maintenance or unforeseen technical issues. We also provide updates when our carrier partners have rate-related issues.

Be sure to add the Status page to your browser bookmarks. Or click the Subscribe To Updates button at the top of the Status page to receive status alerts by email.

We pay for top-tier server infrastructure that scales with your Shopify store. Simply put, every shipping calculation costs us money.

Absolutely! All merchants, regardless of order volume, have access to email support and live support.

Nope! Only successfully completed orders count towards your plan.

Only completed orders from your online store count towards your plan.

Orders from Shopify POS Lite do not count towards your plan limit. Orders from Shopify POS Pro that require shipping count towards your plan. Orders that do not require shipping will not count towards your plan.

Only if you choose to upgrade to the next tier. Each Intuitive Shipping billing plan includes an additional cost per order if you exceed the order limit of the plan. If you’re only a few orders over your limit, you’re best to stay on your current billing plan.

Yes! If you exceed your order limit, there is no disruption to your Intuitive Shipping service. Each Intuitive Shipping billing plan includes an additional cost per order if you exceed the order limit of the plan.

The total number of additional charges you can incur is limited by your Billing Limit. See below for more details.

Shopify requires all third-party apps to have a maximum usage Billing Limit that is chosen by the customer. The Billing Limit is the maximum allowable amount we are authorized to bill for overage charges – it does not apply to your regular monthly billing amount.

To avoid service interruptions, we strongly encourage you to set your Billing Limit to at least double your plan price.

No. The Billing Limit is the maximum allowable amount we are authorized to charge for additional per order (i.e. ‘overage’) charges, but you will only be charged the actual amount of overage charges if any.

Let’s say your monthly usage exceeds your plan limit by $10, and your Billing Limit is set to $30. At the end of the billing period, you will be billed the monthly plan rate plus $10 – not plus $30.

Absolutely! You’ll receive a notification email when you have reached 50%, 85%, 90%, 95% and 100% of your Billing Limit.

Notification emails are sent to the Primary and Secondary email addresses displayed in the app Settings tab.

Once you reach your limit, Intuitive Shipping will no longer return rates at checkout until one of the following happens:

Your Billing Limit is increased
You upgrade your Intuitive Shipping plan
Your next Shopify billing cycle begins

If you have exceeded your plan’s order limit and you’re already accruing per-order overage charges, you will be billed only for charges accrued up to the time you upgrade. Once you have upgraded, overage charges will stop accruing.

Changing your plan does not void overage charges already accrued to that point.

Intuitive Shipping app charges will appear on your monthly Shopify invoice. Learn more about how Shopify bills you here.

Because of how our billing plans are structured and invoiced, it is not currently feasible to offer annual billing on any Intuitive Shipping billing plans. All of our plans are billed monthly on your monthly Shopify invoice.

Yes, if the number of orders you have is lower than the order limit of the plan you wish to downgrade to. Your Intuitive Shipping charges will be prorated for that billing cycle, which you can learn more about here.

Yes, you can upgrade to a higher tier at any point during your billing cycle.

To cancel your account, simply delete the Intuitive Shipping app from your Shopify Apps list. That’s it! Monthly billing will stop automatically as soon as you uninstall the app.

Your next invoice will include charges for the current month when billing was stopped plus any overage charges accrued up to the date you deleted the app.

Your settings will be saved for a brief period of time, just in case you change your mind. If you don’t reinstall the app during this time, all of your settings and synced Shopify data will be purged from our system.

And if your shipping needs change in the future, we hope you’ll install us again!

Yep! If you’ve activated your account and you’re still within the 14-day FREE Trial period, you can delete Intuitive Shipping from your Apps list to suspend the free trial. When you’re ready to use Intuitive Shipping again, reinstall the app and reactivate a billing plan. Your free trial will restart where you left off. For example, if you used Intuitive Shipping for 4 days prior to stopping the free trial, you’ll have 10 days left when you resume.

By doing so, your app settings and setups may be lost, meaning you’ll have to begin the setup process again.

However, if you want to suspend your free trial because you need to spend more time testing, immediately re-install the app after you’ve deleted it. This will return you to Testing Mode with all of your app settings intact. You can remain in Testing Mode for as long as you need to test. After you’ve finished testing, you can reactivate a billing plan to resume your free trial where you left off.

No! Once you activate your account, your 14-Day FREE Trial will begin. When it ends, your first billing cycle will begin automatically.

Absolutely not. There is no interruption to your service. When your 14-Day FREE Trial ends, billing begins automatically. You can continue to use Intuitive Shipping the same way you did during the free trial. It’s totally seamless.

Your Primary Email address is automatically imported from your Shopify account and cannot be changed within Intuitive Shipping. To change your Primary Email address, you will need to update it in your Shopify ‘General’ settings. Be sure to re-sycn your Shopify settings with Intuitive Shipping after making any changes.