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. 

In addition to basic cart-based shipping, you can set product-based rates and have them blended for a single cost, or you can build tiered or ‘dominant’ shipping charges that overrule other rates when certain products are added to the cart. 

Free shipping doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. Intuitive Shipping lets you set up conditional free shipping. 

If you offer customer-based rates, Intuitive Shipping lets you configure shipping methods for VIP, wholesale or repeat buyers. You can even set up localized rates based on where customers live.

Intuitive Shipping also helps you optimize the checkout experience by customizing shipping method titles, descriptions, and delivery dates and times, even with live carrier rates!

Our SmartBoxing™ system helps you save time and money – and reduces excess packaging! – by determining the most efficient way to package an order right when the order is placed.

Use Intuitive Shipping to configure shipping costs for just about any situation you can think of.

If your shipping is complex enough that the built-in shipping features offered by your eCommerce platform 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 various cart-based, product-based, customer-based and time-based rules. You have over 40 condition types to choose from.

Packages – when you have multiple package options for live carrier rates and can’t depend on a ‘default’ package size, Intuitive Shipping ensures that each order is calculated with the best packing option. Intuitive Shipping lets you choose from ridge containers like boxes and soft containers like polymailers. You can even pack products separately from the rest of the order or have them packed in custom containers.

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 most efficiently. That saves your fulfillment team time and ensures customers pay the correct shipping price. It also saves material costs and prevents excess waste by minimizing the packaging used to ship the order.

Advanced blending – when simply adding all your shipping costs together isn’t enough, Intuitive Shipping lets you configure rate blending in several different ways. Intuitive Shipping can calculate either the total or average blended rate or let you choose to display the rate with the fastest delivery, the best value or the highest cost. You can set up multiple blended live rates that give customers options like Ground or Overnight, even when you need to blend rates from various carriers.

Customization – Intuitive Shipping allows you to create unique shipping method titles and descriptions to help your customers understand their options more clearly. You can add order processing time to carrier delivery times and custom shipping prices to products that always cost the same price to ship, no matter what else is in the cart. You can offer free shipping using a threshold or only when certain products are included in the order.

Condition groups – Conditions alone may not be enough. Condition groups let you create custom sets of related rules that get applied to a Scenario as if they are a single condition. This can reduce the number of unique Scenarios you need to create, saving you time and making your configuration more straightforward to maintain over time.

Sub-zones – you can create localized sub-zones with postal codes or zip codes to 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 condition to prevent customers with PO box addresses from checking out. 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.

Intuitive Shipping is currently available on Shopify and BigCommerce.

If you’re using Shopify, you’ll first need to ensure that Shopify’s third-party carrier-calculated shipping feature is available and enabled on your Shopify plan. While you can set up the app without this feature, you will need it to display rates from Intuitive Shipping on your checkout page, even in Sandbox mode.

Regardless of which eCommerce platform you’re using, you will need at least one (1) Scenario with at least one shipping method assigned to it. 

Continue scrolling to see FAQs about Scenarios and shipping methods.

All Intuitive Shipping features are available with every billing plan. We don’t limit access to features or functionality once you select a billing plan. 

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

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

Priority support is available to Enterprise plan users.

Nope! You can use Intuitive Shipping for free for an unlimited time, as long as you’re in Sandbox 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 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
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 farther down for more information about carriers.

Learn how to connect your preferred carrier.

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

To print shipping labels and manage order fulfillment, check with your eCommerce platform, if supported, or use 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 Profiles feature provides 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!

If you’re using Shopify, we strongly recommend that you use only one (1) Shipping Profile with Intuitive Shipping, and manage all of your shipping requirements with our Scenarios. Learn more about how Intuitive Shipping works with Shipping Profiles here.

Shopify’s multi-origin 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 Shopify Locations with Intuitive Shipping as it may result in calculation errors such as duplicated or missing rates.

With Intuitive Shipping, you can create locations with custom ship-from addresses.

Intuitive Shipping locations are used to ensure live carrier rates are calculated using the actual shipping origin address, if it’s different than the default store address in your eCommerce platform’s account settings. We cannot see inventory levels and, if you’re using Shopify, we have no visibility of Shopify Locations.

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

You bet! If you’re setting up Intuitive Shipping and have questions or concerns, reach out to our team. We’re here to help no matter what the issue is.

We offer free onboarding sessions too! Our support team will walk you through the setup process to get you up and running as quickly as possible. Book an onboarding session from the Get Started page in the app.

If you don’t have the time or confidence to set up Intuitive Shipping yourself, ask us about our configuration service. We’ll get everything we need and set Intuitive Shipping up for you!

Check out the Support section of the FAQ for more information.

Intuitive Shipping works with all of Shopify’s plans, however there are some limitations for merchants new to Shopify.

Shopify requires you to have their third-party carrier-calculated shipping feature enabled in order 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 Sandbox mode.

If you’re on the ‘Lite’, ‘Starter’ or ‘Basic’ plans, the third-party carrier-calculated shipping feature is no longer offered as a paid add-on as of January 1, 2023. You will need to upgrade to the ‘Shopify’ plan.

If you are on any of these lower-tier plans and you already had the feature enabled, it will be grandfathered in by Shopify, and you can use Intuitive Shipping to display rates at checkout.

If you are on – or if you are upgrading to – the ‘Shopify’ plan, this feature can be enabled for $20 USD per month. If you change your ‘Shopify’ plan to annual billing, the feature is available for no additional cost, plus you’ll save 10% on your Shopify plan. You must contact Shopify support to enable the feature on this plan.

If you’re on the ‘Advanced’ plan or higher, the carrier-calculated shipping rates feature is already enabled, and no further action is required to use Intuitive Shipping.

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

Intuitive Shipping works with all BigCommerce plans. Please note that Intuitive Shipping for BigCommerce is currently in beta.

While there are some minor differences between platforms, Intuitive Shipping’s features and functionality are virtually identical whether you’re using us with Shopify or BigCommerce.

Currently, automated migration of your Intuitive Shipping configuration from one eCommerce platform to another is outside the scope of our functionality. If your setup is complex and you plan to move from one platform to another, please contact us to discuss options.

Currently, automated migration or duplication of your Intuitive Shipping configuration from one store to another is outside the scope of our functionality.

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 code or zip code. PO box conditions will be ignored. 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 parcel service 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 code or zip code. PO box conditions will be ignored. 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 parcel service shipping method along with Google Pay, please contact us for assistance.

PayPal typically passes customer tags, so conditions relying on customer tags should 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 related to 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, so you’ll need to add your shipping costs to Merchant Center manually or use a third-party solution to manage Merchant Center.

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 on Shopify, 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 cannot ship to PO boxes or offer carrier services that restrict PO box shipping, you can use a PO Box condition to prevent customers with a PO box in their address from completing their checkout. Learn how to prevent shipping to PO boxes here.

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

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 currently supported by Shopify or BigCommerce.

You can create a multi-vendor setup if you are shipping from separate locations – i.e. from two different vendor or warehouse locations,

You can quickly and easily create a basic free shipping method.

Or, you can customize exactly how your customers qualify by creating a free shipping Scenario with conditions that either offer or prevent free shipping based on certain criteria.

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 are 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 your eCommerce platform, contact their support team or visit their help center.

Yes, but there are some risks.

If you’re on Shopify, their system 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 override any rates calculated at checkout with free shipping, even if those rates are 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 custom per-product rates directly to the product, then blend them with your regular shipping rates. To learn more, click here.

You can! With Intuitive Shipping, you can control how delivery days are displayed at checkout. If you’re using custom and local delivery rates, you can set your own delivery days for each shipping method. If you’re using live rates from a carrier, you can add order processing time or replace carrier times with your own custom times.

New: Would you prefer to display delivery by dates instead of days? Now you can! Intuitive Shipping now offers Delivery Date settings to show customers an estimated arrival date right at checkout. Learn more here.

Please note: Delivery dates is a beta feature that must be enabled by our team. Please contact us if you are interested in enabling this feature.

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. They 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, like ‘wholesale’ or ‘VIP 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 is connected to your store’s checkout page through an API. Changing your store’s theme does not impact your Intuitive Shipping settings or setups, nor does Intuitive Shipping affect your theme.

Neither Shopify nor BigCommerce pass us any information about inventory. Additionally, Intuitive Shipping does not work with dynamic data, so setting up conditions or rules based on stock levels or availability is outside the scope of our functionality.

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

Because each store has a unique shop identifier, 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 store, or on the go.

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

The Activity page displays shipping calculations from the past 14 days. That includes completed orders, abandoned carts after shipping was calculated, and test checkouts.

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

Click View on any Activity to see, 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 Activity page, 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. Similarly, if you’re using Shopify’s subscription system, or the v2 version of ReCharge, Shopify may be sending us one ‘sub-cart’ for the subscription and one for the sales order. 

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.

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 naming each of your shipping methods something different if they’re being displayed at the same time. If you’re using live carrier rates, we recommend always using the carrier’s service title when you’re offering multiple rates.

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 page with an ‘Unknown’ customer name.

Yep! You can export activities – either the entire list or a filtered list – in a JSON file. Only listed activities from the past 14 days can be exported. To export activities, to the Activity page, then click Export below the ‘Activity’ header.

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 list, click View 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. 

Shipping methods are assigned to Scenarios. Each Scenario can have an unlimited number shipping methods.

While conditions are not required, each Scenario must have at least one (1) shipping method assigned to it.

You’ll need at least one (1) Scenario to use Intuitive Shipping, whether you require conditions or not. The number of additional 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 Scenarios as you need. Fewer Scenarios will allow you to keep your shipping as manageable as possible.

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

When you create a duplicate of a Scenario, it copies all of the settings, but they are not linked. Once you create the duplicate, the settings are completely separate from the original.

Customers can only see rates from the shipping methods within your Scenarios, and only when you have the Scenario status set to On.

Customers see shipping rates on your store’s checkout page. They cannot see why rates are being displayed – meaning, they don’t see the filters or conditions controlling the rates.

When the Scenario status is on Test, customers won’t see shipping methods from the Scenario. But you can, by using ‘Intuitive‘ as either the customer’s first or last name at checkout.

Scenario titles are only visible within the app. We recommend using Scenario titles that help keep you organized within Intuitive Shipping.

If you have been using multiple Profiles in Shopify, you can recreate that setup in Intuitive Shipping using Scenarios. Our Scenario system works like Profiles, and gives you even more control and flexibility. Once your Scenarios have been configured, your Profiles are not longer required, and all of your products should be moved into a single General profile.

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

Scenarios are listed alphabetically and cannot be manually rearranged. If you do want Scenarios listed in a particular order, you can use prefixes to force Scenarios to be sorted a certain way. Learn more here.

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

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

All Conditions
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
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, at least one product must be tagged ‘free shipping’ or the entire cart must be greater than $75.00.

No Conditions
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 because this is where you assign shipping methods that calculate rates.

You can add unlimited conditions to each of your 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 require all conditions to be met, and you have two distinct 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 (and no others) 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, like ‘Product SKU equals SKU12, SKU34’.

Condition Groups are created outside of Scenarios in a different part of the app. They allow you to build a unique, predefined set of related conditions that can easily be applied to any Scenario as if it were a single condition. 

For example, you can create a condition group for same day conditions if a shipping method needs to trigger before a certain time of day on weekdays, but the time varies from day to day.

Condition groups are not required for product filtering. The New version of Intuitive Shipping has a slick new product filtering system built right into Scenarios.

Product filtering can be done right from the Scenario.

If you have product filters set to ‘Match product conditions’, and you’re using a condition group that contains a product condition, the filter will be ignored. That’s because a condition group is treated like a single condition and our system doesn’t check to see which conditions make up the group. In order for product filters to match product conditions, you must use individual product conditions in the Scenario.

If you need to use product conditions in a condition group, you’ll have change the product filter settings. Learn more here.

Learn more about product filters in the next section!

Yes, you can. If you do, you may need to adjust your product filter settings in the Scenario. That’s because our system doesn’t recognize condition groups containing product conditions as product conditions. Learn more here.

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 product tag condition, the tag referenced in the value field must already be assigned to products in your Shopify Product Information Page. Intuitive Shipping looks for the product tag in your Shopify settings during checkout. It does not assign tags.

For example, if you add the Product Condition:

Product 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.

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 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 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 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.

Delivery conditions determine if shipping methods assigned to the Scenario will be displayed at checkout based on the delivery preference selected by the customer and the settings from your delivery app, such as Store Pickup + Delivery by Zapiet.

Same day conditions determine if shipping methods assigned to the Scenario will be displayed at checkout based on the current day, date and time at the moment shipping is calculated by Intuitive Shipping.

Conditions are not case-sensitive. For example, if you want to limit rates to products with ‘Glass’ in the name, such as ‘Royal Wine Glass, you can set the value of your product name condition to contain either ‘Glass’ or ‘glass’.

Product filters let you determine which products are calculated by the shipping methods in the Scenario. For example, if you have a custom service shipping method with a table of rates based on quantity, and the rates only apply to items tagged ‘fragile’, product filters ensure only fragile items are included in the quantity check that determines the rate.

Without a product filter, every product in the cart, tagged fragile or not, would be included in the quantity check for the rate.

Think of conditions as the ‘when’ in your setup. A product condition restricts when a shipping method is displayed to a customer at checkout.

Product filters are the ‘what’. Only products that meet the product filter settings are calculated by the shipping methods in the Scenario.

If you want to restrict when shipping methods are displayed based on products, use product conditions. If you want to limit which products are included in the rate calculation, use product filters.

In the vast majority of cases, when you are restricting shipping methods based on products, you probably want only those products included in the rate calculation.

Whereas, if you choose ‘No filters’, it means all of the products in the cart will be applied to the shipping method in that Scenario. This might be desired occasionally, but in most cases, it isn’t. 

Alternatively, you can set filters manually if you want to filter products, but they’re either different from the product conditions, or you don’t have any product conditions.

Yes! If you don’t want to restrict shipping methods by product, but you still want to limit certain products from the rate calculation, you can set a product filter.

Let’s say you have a Wholesale Scenario that looks for customers tagged ‘wholesale’. In it, you have assigned a custom service shipping method with a rate table based on cart total. 

Now, let’s say you want your wholesale customers to be able to buy mattresses, along with any other products, like bedding or accessories, but you don’t want mattresses to count towards the cart total that determines the wholesale shipping rate (because you have a separate Scenario that handles only mattresses).

In your Wholesale Scenario, you have no product conditions, but you would have a customer condition, such as, Tag equals ‘wholesale’, then set a product filter, such as, Tag does not equal ‘mattress’.

A product condition that excludes mattresses would prevent the wholesale customer from checking out altogether, whereas the product filter simply removes the mattresses from the cart total that determines the wholesale shipping cost. The separate cost of the mattress can then be blended with ‘wholesale’ rate after the fact.

Yes, but there are risks. We typically advise against using product conditions in condition groups. If you do, you usually need to adjust the product filtering settings in the Scenario.

When you create a condition group – a unique, pre-determined set of related conditions that can be applied to a Scenario as a single condition – you have the option to add product conditions to the group. But, condition groups that contain product conditions are ignored by product filtering.

Let’s say you’ve created a condition group that looks for VIP customers who order a certain amount of a food products. Your condition group might include a customer condition, such as Tag equals ‘VIP’, a product condition, such as Tag equals ‘frozen food’, and a filtered cart condition, such as Total is greater than ’50’ ($50.00).

This condition group will require a VIP customer to order at least $50.00 worth of frozen food, regardless of what else is in the cart.

When you add this condition group to a Scenario, the product filtering is set to ‘Match product conditions’ by default. If the shipping rate in the Scenario only applies to frozen food, you need to filter ‘frozen food’. But, because the product condition is part of the condition group, there is technically no product condition to ‘match’. That means, all of the products in the cart – not just frozen foods – will be applied to the shipping method calculation. In some cases, that might be ok, but in most cases, it won’t be.

Instead, you’ll need to manually set a product filter that looks for frozen food. Learn more about this here.

A shipping method determines how shipping costs are calculated at checkout. Shipping methods are generally set up as custom service(free shipping, single flat rates, per-unit rates or a tiered rate tables) or parcel service (real-time rates from carriers like UPS and FedEx). 

Other types of shipping methods include local delivery (using a Google API key to measure distance), freight services (similar to parcel service, using our integrated freight partners), and integrated services (using an API with our integrated partners).

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

Yes! You can duplicate a shipping method within the same zone or to a different zone within the same Scenario, then make changes to the copy as needed.

Or, if you added the shipping method to the wrong zone by accident, you can easily move it from one zone to another within the same Scenario.

Copies are not linked to the original. Once a duplicate is created, the settings for the copy and the original are completely independent and unrelated.

Of course! While you can’t directly copy a shipping method from one Scenario to the other, you can easily duplicate an entire Scenario by clicking the Duplicate button in the Edit Scenario screen. This creates an exact copy of the original Scenario, including the shipping methods. 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 creating a parcel service shipping method with live rates, we do encourage you to use the carrier-provided shipping method titles. If you choose to customize parcel service shipping method titles, and you select multiple carrier services, like Priority Overnight, 2nd Day and Ground, they will all be assigned the custom title and only the cheapest option will be displayed. 

(tip: if you only want the cheapest option to be displayed, you can do that in the shipping method settings without having to customize the title).

On the checkout page, shipping methods are sorted in descending order from least expensive to most expensive. When there are two or more shipping method titles with the same cost, those shipping methods are sorted alphabetically. This is restricted by Shopify and cannot be customized.

Within Intuitive Shipping, shipping methods are sorted alphabetically in the Shipping rates and services section of the Scenario. As with Scenario titles, you customize the order of shipping method titles by adding a prefix such as ‘1’ or ‘a’ or ‘_’ before the shipping method title.

Shopify’s default text for zero-dollar shipping methods is ‘free’. 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 setting up parcel service shipping methods, you can assign a custom location which is different from your default Shopify location. Live rates will be calculated using the custom location address as the shipping origin point.

If you’re setting up a custom service shipping method, you can use conditions to separate products in different locations. For example, you can use product tag conditions or product vendor conditions to restrict rates to certain products, then create a blended rate so the customer only pays one single shipping cost at checkout.

Intuitive Shipping locations are different and independent from Shopify’s Shipping Locations. Intuitive Shipping is designed 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.

Alternatively, you can use a custom shipping method description to notify your customer that portions of their order will ship separately by different services. They are still required to select only one Shipping Method option at checkout, however, you can fulfill the order however you need to.

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 acustom service shipping method and save your changes, it is permanently overwritten.

If you anticipate having to restore old rates, consider duplicating your shipping method in the same zone. Set the status to Off. Update your new shipping cost in the duplicate, and leave the status On.

When you need to change back to the old rate, set the status of the current shipping method to Off, and set the status of the older shipping method back to On.

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.

Yes! You can add a soft package directly to a parcel service shipping method or save it in your main Packages settings. When you add the package, select ‘Soft package’ instead of ‘Box.

Soft packages use our FlexDims™ system to adjust the height of the package depending on the products being packed.

A ‘no shipping’ shipping method lets you assign a shipping ‘fail’ to a particular zone or sub-zone when you want to prevent shipping to that zone. Let’s say you ship to throughout the entire UK, but want to prevent shipping to high cost areas like the Scottish Highlands. You can create a sub-zone for the Highlands, then assign ‘No shipping’ to it in your Scenarios. Customers who live in the Highlands won’t get any shipping rates at checkout, while customers in the rest of the UK will.

Learn how to set up a ‘no shipping’ method here.

Advanced formulas let you create more sophisticated calculations for shipping methods. If you need to use advanced formulas, or if want to learn more about how they work, please contact us. The Advanced formula feature can only be enabled by our Customer Success team.

Zones are geographical regions that determine where your products can ship. For example, you may have a domestic zone that covers your home country and an international zone that covers all the other countries you ship to.

Zones are managed in Intuitive Shipping. While you do need at least one Shopify Shipping Zone that covers all of the countries you ship to, Intuitive Shipping zones are otherwise separate from Shopify zones and can be completely customized within the app. 

Learn more about zones here.

When you first install the app, you have the option to import your Shopify shipping zone settings. This can save you from having to rebuild your zones all over again. Any countries that are not in your imported zones are automatically put into a ‘Rest of World’ zone, which cannot be manually edited. Similarly, if you choose not to import zone settings from Shopify, the Rest of World zone includes all countries by default.

After the installation is complete, you can add, remove or edit zones as needed. You manage zones in the app.

When you create a shipping method from within a Scenario, the first thing you’ll have to do is assign it to a zone. That means you do need at least one zone before you can start creating shipping methods. However, you do not need to assign a shipping method to every zone. Only customers who live in the zone will see the rates calculated by that shipping method.

No problem. Each shipping method includes a ‘duplicate’ feature that lets you create an exact copy. You can copy the shipping method to the same zone, and make minor changes to settings as needed, or you can copy the exact same shipping method to another zone.

If you don’t need a zone any longer, simply delete it from your main zones settings.

When you try to delete zone that’s being used by shipping methods, a warning message will be displayed indicating that the zone is being used by one or more shipping methods. You’ll still have the option to continue deleting it, or you can cancel and keep the zone. Deleting zones is permanent.

Deleting a zone in Intuitive Shipping does not affect your Shopify shipping zones settings.

Think of ‘Rest of World’ as a placeholder for any country or region you don’t want to specifically define in a custom zone.

When you install Intuitive Shipping, you have the option to import your existing Shopify shipping zone settings. If you choose this option, any country or region that doesn’t belong to one of your Shopify shipping zones will automatically be put into Intuitive Shipping’s default ‘Rest of World’ zone.

If you choose not to import your Shopify settings and start from scratch, every country and region begins in ‘Rest of World’ until you assign them to custom zones.

Regardless of which option you choose, countries or regions that you add to your custom zones will be removed from ‘Rest of World’, and countries or regions that you remove from your custom zones will be added back into ‘Rest of World’.

Nope! Rest of World works the same way as any of your custom zones – with the exception of manual editing. If you assign a shipping method to Rest of World, rates will be displayed to any customers who live if the countries or regions included in Rest of World. If you don’t assign a shipping method, customers who live in those countries or regions will not get any shipping rates.

If the shipping methods are not part of a blended rate, only one will appear at checkout. The duplicate will be cancelled out.

If the shipping methods are being blended, they will all be combined together. Let’s say you have two shipping methods. Method X is $10.00 and Method Y is $15.00. Then, you create an exact duplicate of Method Y, including the $15.00 cost. When a customer activates the blended rate, rate will be displayed as $40.00 ($10.00 +15.00 +15.00) instead of $25.00 dollars.

If two shipping methods in the same 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 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.

Not completely.

Intuitive Shipping zones are fully independent of Shopify shipping zones. That means, whether you choose to migrate your shipping zones during installation or build your zones in the app from scratch, your shipping zones configuration in Shopify is completely irrelevant after you start using Intuitive Shipping.

You can either leave your Shopify shipping zone settings as-is – because our system will ignore the settings anyway – or you can edit them so that every country and region you ship to is in one large master shipping zone.

The main thing is that any country or region you ship to must be in at least one Shopify shipping zone, and that zone must have Intuitive Shipping added as a rate provider.

That’s because Shopify still uses shipping zones to assign rates, and by Shopify’s definition, Intuitive Shipping is a rate provider.

That means two things: First, if you completely delete all of your shipping zones, you won’t be able to connect Intuitive Shipping to your Shopify store as a rate provider. Second, even if Intuitive Shipping is connected to a Shopify shipping zone as a rate provided, any country or region not included in that zone will be unable to get rates from Intuitive Shipping at checkout.

A sub-zone is a more localized area within a main zone and is determined by postal codes or zip codes. 

For example, if you have a UK zone, and you want to either charge higher rates or exclude shipping altogether for certain areas, like the Scottish Highlands, you can create one or more sub-zones for those areas using postcodes.

Learn more about sub-zones here.

Sub-zones are managed within the zone they’re associated with. For example, a sub-zone containing the Manhattan zip code 10010 must be set up in whichever parent zone includes New York. 

Sub-zones work just like zones. When you set up a shipping method, you have the option to assign it to the parent zone or a sub-zone within it. When a shipping method is assigned to sub-zone, it will only be activated by a customer whose address is within the sub-zone. Customers who live in the zone – but not the sub-zone – will not activate the shipping method. 

Let’s say you have New York State set up as a parent zone, with a shipping method for UPS, and you want to set up a local pickup option for a sub-zone in Lower Manhattan. When you assign the local pickup option to the sub-zone, only customers who live in the Lower Manhattan zip codes will see the local pickup option. All other New York customers will see UPS only.

The customer’s address must be in both the main zone and the sub-zone to work correctly. For example, if you create a sub-zone with zip codes for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and assign it to a parent zone that does not include the state of Texas, the shipping method assigned to the sub-zone will never be activated.

Intuitive Shipping does not validate if postal codes and zip codes are being assigned to the correct state, province or region.

Unlike parent zones, which can be migrated from your Shopify settings, Sub-zones are not included in the settings migration process during installation because Shopify doesn’t offer this feature natively. All sub-zones and sub-zone settings are configured by you after installation, and only if needed.

No. Unlike parent zones, where you need to have at least one, sub-zones are not required at all if you don’t need to control your shipping with postal codes or zip codes.

You can create as many as you need.

Unlike parent zones, which can only include a country or region once, you can create overlapping sub-zones. That means, the same postal codes can be included in more than one sub-zone.

Let’s say you offer local delivery for Los Angeles County, but certain special-order products can only be delivered within your immediate area. You can create a larger sub-zone that includes all zip codes within the county for most products, then create a smaller sub-zone for specific areas, like Malibu and Topanga, for special order products.

There is no limit to how many postal codes you can add to a sub-zone.

If your sub-zone includes a lot of postal codes, we do recommend using postal code ranges and abbreviations whenever possible, rather than listing each individual, full-format postal code.

Nope! If you want to cover a lot of postal codes or zip codes, you can use ranges. For example, you can add a range like ‘10012:10025’ to a sub-zone to include every zip code between the first and last zip codes. 

For Canadian and UK postal codes, you can use prefixes instead of ranges if all of the postal codes are applicable. For example, you can add the Canadian postal code prefix ‘M5B’ to a sub-zone to include every postal code that starts with M5B. Similarly, you can add the UK postcode EH1 to a sub-zone to include every postcode that starts with EH1.

You can use prefixes for UK postcodes. For example, your sub-zone can include the prefix ‘EH1’ if you want to cover every postcode in ‘EH1’. Intuitive Shipping can distinguish between ‘EH1’ and ‘EH10’ prefixes, and you can even include both prefixes in the same sub-zone.

You must select the UK formatting setting when using UK postcodes in a sub-zone.

Learn more about postal code formatting here.

No. Regardless of your keyboard settings, postal codes will always be entered in caps.

Sub-zones require postal codes or zip codes to work. If you want to localize your shipping in different ways, there are alternatives.

One alternative is to use Customer conditions. A city condition can be used to restrict shipping to one or more cities. A delivery distance condition can be used to restrict shipping to a certain radius. 

Another alternative is to create a local delivery shipping methodwhich uses distance to calculate rates. Customers who live outside the maximum distance will not get a rate at checkout.

Parcel service shipping methods let you connect to your preferred carrier so you can access live rates – real-time shipping costs that are returned to Intuitive Shipping by carriers like UPS and FedEx. This is different from a custom service shipping method, which lets you set up pre-determined shipping rates.

When you set up a parcel service 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).

We currently have integrations with these carrier services:

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

Learn how to connect your preferred carrier.

Generally, no, you don’t. 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 shipping method with carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS and Canada Post.

When setting up your parcel service shipping method, you’ll have the option to select Standard retail rates, if it’s offered by the carrier. If the option isn’t included in the shipping method, it means an account is required for that carrier.

Some carriers, like Purolator and FedEx Freight LTL, do require account credentials, as do subscription services like ShipStation and Easyship

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

There are two ways you can add a carrier account to Intuitive Shipping. The first is to connect a carrier through your main Carrier accounts settings. The second is to add the carrier account while you’re setting up a parcel service (or freight service) shipping method. If you choose the latter, you’ll select the carrier at the beginning of the setup process. Then, later in the setup you can add your account credentials. 

Adding a carrier account directly through a shipping method also saves the account credentials to your main carrier settings, so the account can be used later if you create another shipping method with the same carrier.

Nope! Once you enter a carrier account once – either in Carrier account settings or while creating a parcel service shipping method – the carrier account is saved and can be used again each time you create a shipping method for the same carrier.

Yes! If you have more than one account with a carrier, you can connect each account to Intuitive Shipping. When you create a parcel service shipping method with that carrier, you can choose which account you want to assign to the shipping method.

Each account must be assigned to a different parcel service shipping method, as there can be only one account per shipping method.

Parcel service shipping methods are carrier-based, which means only one carrier and one account can be assigned to a shipping method. However, you can create as many shipping methods as you like for each Scenario.

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

You can still use Shopify’s discounted rates for order fulfillment and simulate Shopify’s discounts at checkout by applying a markdown on your parcel service 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 shipping method carrier settings, 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.

If you have a ShipStation account with rates from Stamps.com, you can access Stamps rates through ShipStation.

Yes! We’re now fully integrated with ShipStation. Learn how in the ShipStation section of the FAQ.

Please note: this integration requires you to use the ‘New Layout’ version of ShipStation. Learn more in the ShipStation FAQ below.

Yes, UPS introduced a new format for account credentials called OAuth 2.0. The new format replaces User ID and XML Access Key with Client ID and Client Secret. If you create a new account with UPS you can only use the new format.

If you’re a legacy account holder with an XML access key, you can still use those credentials to connect to your UPS account. Our system supports both formats until June 3, 2024 (see below).

When you set up a parcel service shipping method, you can choose ‘UPS’ or ‘UPS Legacy’. ‘UPS’ uses the new OAuth 2.0 method, which requires a Client ID, Client Secret and account number. ‘UPS Legacy’ requires a User ID, Password, XML Key, and account number.

Learn more about connecting both OAuth 2.0 and Legacy UPS accounts here.

Please note: as of June 3, 2024, UPS and Intuitive Shipping will no longer support legacy accounts that use an XML access key.

If you have a legacy account, you will need to migrate to the new format before this date. If you already use an XML access key for your UPS parcel service shipping methods in Intuitive Shipping, you will receive a notification in the app prompting you to migrate. Learn more about how to migrate from XML to OAuth 2.0 here.

We currently support OAuth 2.0 and XML access key credential formats. As of June 3, 2024, UPS and Intuitive Shipping will only support OAuth 2.0 account types.

We will continue to support legacy UPS accounts that use XML access keys until UPS stops supporting this account format on June 3, 2024.

Learn more about connecting OAuth 2.0 and Legacy UPS accounts here.

If you use an XML access key for parcel service shipping methods in Intuitive Shipping, you must migrate to OAuth 2.0 before the above date. Learn how to migrate here.

As of June 3, 2024, Intuitive Shipping and UPS will stop supporting legacy accounts that use an XML access key. If you have not migrated to the new credential format by this date, you may experience rate calculation errors with your UPS shipping methods. We strongly encourage you to migrate by this date.

If you have any parcel service shipping methods that use a UPS XML access key, you will see a warning banner on the Get Started page within the app, prompting you to initiate the migration process. You can learn how to migrate here.

Please leave the Callback URL blank. It is not required for Intuitive Shipping.

Intuitive Shipping supports both formats. If you have a Legacy UPS account with an XML key, you can continue to use those credentials for your UPS account.

UPS has announced that they will move all Legacy accounts onto the new credential system by June 2024. Accounts will be migrated over time between now and then. When your account is migrated your UPS rates may stop working until your credentials have been updated.

For more information about when your account is being migrated to the new system, please contact your UPS Account Manager or contact their support team.

At this time we offer an integration with FedEx Freight LTL. To connect your FedEx Freight LTL account, select Freight Services when you create a shipping method within a Scenario.

Other freight carrier integrations may be added in the future.

If your freight carrier has provided a rate table, you can create a custom service 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.

Always use actual weight when setting up your shipping methods. Dimensional weight is calculated by the carriers using the actual dimensions and weight provided by Intuitive Shipping during the shipping calculation process.

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:


SmartBoxing™
To use our SmartBoxing™ packing algorithm, 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. Final 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.

Product dimensions must be added to Intuitive Shipping.

Product weights must be available in Shopify or added to Intuitive Shipping.

Learn more about SmartBoxing™ here.


Weight-based
Product weight will be used to determine the combination of packages required to pack the order. Final 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 when weight is the limiting factor for packaging. Weight-based allows you to add package sizes based on the weight of items in the cart. This lets you set up your packages without having to assign dimensions to all of your products. 

Product weights must be available in Shopify or added to Intuitive Shipping.

Product dimensions are optional and only required if you want Intuitive Shipping to overrule a package selection because of product dimensions, even if weight is within the package limit.


Quantity-based
Product quantity will be used to determine the combination of packages required to pack the order. Final 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 when quantity is the limiting factor for packaging. Quantity-based allows you to add package sizes based on the number of items in the cart. This lets you set up your packages without having to assign dimensions to all of your products. 

Product weights must be available in Shopify or added to Intuitive Shipping.

Product dimensions are optional and only required if you want Intuitive Shipping to overrule a package selection because of product dimensions, even if quantity is within the package limit.


Volume-based
Product dimensions will be used to determine the combination of packages required to pack the order. Final 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 when size is the limiting factor for packaging. Volume-based allows you to add package sizes based on the shipping dimensions of items in the cart. 

Product dimensions must be added to Intuitive Shipping.

Product weights must be available in Shopify or added to Intuitive Shipping.


Points-based
Product packing points will be used to determine the combination of packages required to pack the order. Final 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 when smaller products can be nested within larger products. Points-based allows you to add package sizes based on the points assigned to the products in the cart. Points are an arbitrary value assigned by you. 

Product weights must be available in Shopify or added to Intuitive Shipping.

Product dimensions are optional and only required if you want Intuitive Shipping to overrule a package selection because of product dimensions, even if points is within the package limit.


Total-based
Cart total will be used to determine the combination of packages required to pack the order. Final 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 when the only limiting factor for packaging is the price of the products. Total-based allows you to add package sizes based on the total value of items in the cart. This lets you set up your packages without having to assign dimensions to all of your products. 

Product weights must be available in Shopify or added to Intuitive Shipping.

Product dimensions are optional and only required if you want Intuitive Shipping to overrule a package selection because of product dimensions, even if total is within the package limit.



Package Separately
You can assign shipping dimensions to any product in Intuitive Shipping and enable the Package Separately setting. When enabled, the product will be packaged separately and will not be packed using any of the above packing algorithms.  

The dimensions assigned to the product are used by Intuitive Shipping to create custom package dimensions. Intuitive Shipping will generate a custom package based on the product’s shipping dimensions, then 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 any packaging or require their own unique, custom package.

Be sure to enter the shipping dimensions. For example, if you sell products with actual physical dimensions of 3.5 x 4.5 x 6 inches, but they come in custom boxes that are 5 x 5 x 7 inches, the shipping dimensions should be entered as 5 x 5 x 7.

When Package Separately is selected, Intuitive Shipping will general a package for each item purchased. For example, if a customer orders three mugs that ship separately in a 5 x 5 x 7 box, three boxes of 5 x 5 x 7 will be added to the overall package set.

Although Intuitive Shipping is not a part of the fulfillment process, we do send the packing information used for live rate services, including box dimensions, package weights, products names and quantities, to the customer Order in Shopify. We also send the service code, if available, to your fulfillment service or app (service codes do not get sent to the Shopify order).

By default, Intuitive Shipping sends package information to the Order details. You have the option to send the information to the Order notes instead, and you can decide if the package contents are included in the information provided.

Or, you can choose not to have the information sent at all.

To adjust the presentation of the packing information, go to General Settings page and adjust the Packaging Results 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 Intuitive Shipping general settings).

Please note: packing information will only be displayed in the Order Notes or Details if the customer has successfully completed their purchase. Information is not available for test calculations or abandoned carts after shipping is calculated, nor is available while in Sandbox mode, even if you do a complete test order in Shopify. However, you can view the package information used for those calculations on the Activity page.

If you’re using parcel service shipping methods, the Fallback rate 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 offline.

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, or delivery services not available in the customer’s postal code. Instead, those errors will cause the cart to fail at checkout.

Learn more about checkout errors in the Troubleshooting of the FAQ.

When setting up your parcel service shipping method, you have the option to use the carrier-provided delivery time estimates or set your own custom delivery time, or range, like ‘3 to 5 business days’.

If you want to use carrier delivery times, but you want to include buffer time, you can add Order processing days to delivery estimates returned by the carrier. Customers don’t have visibility of order processing days; they’re rolled into the total delivery time estimate.

However, you can include a custom shipping method description that informs the customer that the delivery time includes order processing time.

To help manage customer expectations, we also recommend informing your customers, either through a custom description or somewhere on your shipping information page, that carrier delivery times are estimates.

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

To enable SmartBoxing™, create a parcel service shipping method. In the Packages section, select the SmartBoxing™ packing algorithm. 

Be sure that all of your package dimensions are entered and accurate, and that all of your products have shipping dimensions in Intuitive Shipping and shipping weight. Weights can be either in Shopify or Intuitive Shipping. That’s it! SmartBoxing™ is ready to go.

Yes, in order to use our SmartBoxing™ packing algorithm, or the volume-based algorithm, your products must have dimensions assigned to them.

Yes, in order to take advantage of our SmartBoxing™ packing algorithm, you must input your fulfillment box size dimensions into Intuitive Shipping. Once you’ve added packages – either to your Packages settings, or directly to a parcel service shipping method – they’re saved in the system and can be selected again when you create new shipping methods later.

At its core, Intuitive Shipping is a calculator – a really 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.

In order for SmartBoxing™ to work, you must add shipping dimensions to your products in Intuitive Shipping. Because Shopify does not have dedicated values for product length, width and height, dimensions cannot be pulled from Shopify like product weights. To help make the process easier, you can bulk edit product dimensions with a CSV file by following the instructions here.

If you have some products that can’t use or don’t require SmartBoxing™, you can exclude those products from the SmartBoxing™ calculation and have them go through a different shipping method that uses another type of packing algorithm. Learn more about excluding certain products from SmartBoxing™ here.

You can use the SmartBoxing™ packing algorithm to calculate shipping for the suppliers who do provide dimensions for their products, then use another packing algorithm to calculate shipping for the suppliers who don’t. To achieve this, create two separate Scenarios – one Scenario for vendors who can use SmartBoxing™ and another for vendors who cannot. Learn more about separating products from SmartBoxing™ here.

For SmartBoxing™, we generally recommend entering both the inner wall and outer wall dimensions when you add packages.

Outer dimensions are used by the carrier for calculating shipping rates, and are required whether you enter inner dimensions or not. Inner dimensions are used by the packing algorithm to determine the best fit, and are optional.

The SmartBoxing™ packing system is currently only accessible for parcel service shipping methods. The key benefit of SmartBoxing™ is to package orders as efficiently as possible to ensure accurate dimensional shipping for real-time carrier rates.

Yes! Learn how to connect your ShipStation account here.

Please note: you must be on ShipStation’s New Layout version. The integration cannot be completed with their legacy version

Nope! Our ShipStation integration is available to all Intuitive Shipping users, regardless of your billing plan. You can even connect to ShipStation in Sandbox 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 Shipstation’s New Layout version. Start your free trial with ShipStation here.

While you’re using ShipStation, look at the URL at the top of your browser. The New Layout version will contain ‘ship’ followed by a group of numbers (typically two digits), such as ‘ship11’.

While you’re using ShipStation, click the ‘Try new layout’ button at the top of the screen. For more information about the New Layout version, please contact ShipStation directly.

Nope! To connect your ShipStation account, simply click Settings on the main menu, then select Partner Integrations. Click ‘Enable integration’ on the ShipStation card. 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!

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 an integrated service shipping method. Most 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.

In addition to accessing rates from ShipStation, Intuitive Shipping will push package dimensions to your ShipStation account when a customer completes their order. You can use this information to manually set up your shipping label.

Coming soon: packing information sent from Intuitive Shipping to your ShipStation account will auto-populate a suggested shipping label based on the shipping method selected by the customer. See an example of how this will work here.

Yes – with more functionality being added soon.

In a typical parcel service shipping method, Intuitive Shipping passes shipping method packing info from the selected delivery option to the Shopify Order Notes or Details (depending on your settings). 

When ShipStation is connected to Intuitive Shipping, and a shipping method uses rates from your ShipStation account, Intuitive Shipping passes packing information directly to ShipStation. In ShipStation, you can review the shipping method selected by your customer, then set up the shipping label. 

Intuitive Shipping will soon automatically populate a suggested shipping label, which you can either confirm or change as needed. When this functionality is added, it will be turned on automatically. You won’t need to opt-in or adjust any settings. 

See how process will work here.

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 zones or assign them to different Scenarios.

Of course! Once connected, ShipStation is similar to and set up just like a parcel service shipping method, with virtually the same settings for display attributes, packages, locations and cost adjustments.

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 update your carrier services with Intuitive Shipping through the Partner integrations page of the app.

Please note: 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 Partner integrations page, then click the Disable integration button in the ShipStation card. Learn more here.

Check out the Troubleshooting section of the FAQ below for ways to diagnose issues with ShipStation.

A blended rate is a combination of two or more shipping rates. If you have more than one product-based shipping rate, we recommend using a blended rate. You can also use rate blending to apply add-on fees, like a white glove delivery service, or to cause a ‘forced fail’ when certain blending options can’t be achieved.

Intuitive Shipping gives you the option to use simple blending or advanced blending. Learn more about rate blending.

If a customer orders products that trigger multiple Scenarios, a blended rate will ensure that the shipping charges for each Scenario are combined together for a single shipping option at checkout. Without a blended rate, each shipping charge will be displayed separately, allowing the customer to choose one – likely 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 blended rate, 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 blended rate, a customer placing the same order will be charged $15 at checkout.

You can also configure blended rates to show only the cheapest rate or most expensive rate, or display the rate with either the fastest or slowest delivery time. You can even display the rate with the best value in the blending, which considers both cost and delivery time.

Blended rates can be customized with their own titles, descriptions, delivery times and service codes.

Simple blending lets you quickly and easily blend multiple rates together. When simple blending is activated, rates from any shipping methods set to blend rate will be combined together. 

Advanced blending gives you more control and flexibility over rate blending. You can customize the blended rate title and description, and you can set up multiple blending groups. This is useful if you want to have separate blended rates for Ground and Overnight options. When advanced blending is activated, rates from shipping methods set to blend rates will be combined together based on the blending group they’re assigned to.

Learn more about the difference between simple and advanced blending here.

Syncing your products with Intuitive Shipping is part of the initial onboarding experience when you first install the app.

While you’re in Sandbox mode, be sure to manually re-sync your Shopify connection with Intuitive Shipping each time you add or make changes to products. Once you’ve activated a billing plan, product and collection syncing will be done automatically each time you make a change to your Shopify product settings.

You will need to add product dimensions to Intuitive Shipping if you are using the SmartBoxing™ or volume-based packing algorithms, or if you are calculating shipping or splitting packages based on volume. If you have a lot of products, you can add dimensions in bulk using a CSV file.

Product weights are required if you are using parcel service or freight service shipping methods with live rates from carriers. That means you must have product weights in either Intuitive Shipping or Shopify. Product weights in Intuitive Shipping override Shopify. That means, if you have product weights in both systems, the weight in the app will supersede Shopify if they’re different.

You can add product weights to Intuitive Shipping the same way you add product dimensions – individually, or in bulk using a CSV file.

While you’re in Sandbox mode, you do need to manually re-sync your Shopify connection each time you make changes to products in Shopify, whether you’re adding, removing or editing a product.

Once you have selected a billing plan and activated your account, product changes will sync automatically, though we do recommend re-syncing your products manually if you make a lot of changes at one time.

Sync your product catalog changes in the Shopify connection page of the app.

All parcel service shipping methods that use live carrier rates require product weight, as do any shipping methods or Scenarios using weight-based packing or conditions. Products will need to be assigned a weight, either in your Shopify Product Information settings or within the Intuitive Shipping app.

Intuitive Shipping does not sync product weights from Shopify. Weights can be added to Intuitive Shipping the same way you add product dimensions – by individual product or by bulk update using a CSV file. During checkout, if weight is required, Intuitive Shipping first checks the product listing in the app to see if there is a weight value. If not, Intuitive Shipping checks your Shopify product information settings for the weight.


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’re different.

If you do not have a weight in either Shopify or Intuitive Shipping, live carrier rates, as well as rates using weight-based packing or conditions will fail.

If you are using the SmartBoxing™ or volume-based packing, or if 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 stand-alone values for length, width and height. Intuitive Shipping requires unique values for each of these dimensions in order to accurately calculate volume.

If dimensions are not available, rates using product dimensions will fail.

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

The ‘package separately’ option works with parcel service (live rate) shipping methods.

If you’re using flat rates as part of a custom service shipping method, the ‘package separately’ setting is not required and is ignored.

If you’re setting up a custom service or parcel service shipping method, you have the option to enable free shipping only when a threshold is met, such as over a certain order value or under a certain weight limit or quantity. 

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.

The ‘Exclude from Free Shipping’ setting does not work with zero-dollar rates on rate tables in custom service shipping methods.

When you enable the ‘Qualifies for free shipping’ setting, it means the product will be included when free shipping is enabled at checkout, whether it’s a free shipping method or a free shipping threshold applied to a paid shipping method. This is the default product setting.

The ‘Always ships for free’ setting means that the product will not contribute to the shipping cost. For example, if you quantity-based shipping rate, such as ‘$2.00 per item’, if a customer orders 6 items, including 2 of a product set to ‘Always ship for free’, the customer will be charged $8.00 for shipping at checkout (4 x $2.00, 2 x free).

When using ‘Always ships for free’ with Smartboxing™, Intuitive Shipping will still use the product dimensions to calculate the total dimensional volume of the order.

Absolutely! If your product has variants, each variant can be set up differently if needed.

Each variant has the option to use the primary product’s settings or have its own variant-specific settings. You can set some variants to use the primary settings and others to have their own. It’s up to you!

If you have a product that always costs the same to ship – promotional t-shirts that always ship for $3.00 or large bags of crushed gravel that always cost $75.00 to ship – you can set a custom shipping price for individual products in Product shipping settings. When those products are ordered with other products, the custom shipping prices can be blended together with your other shipping rates.

Yes, you can! Each product – and each variant, if needed – has a ‘Do not ship to region’ setting. When enabled, a customer from that zone will be unable to check out until they remove that item from their cart.

‘Do not ship’ settings are intended for zones. Currently there is no option to restrict a product from shipping to a sub-zone in the product settings. If you have products that can’t ship to certain sub-zones, you will need to assign a ‘No shipping’ method to those sub-zones in applicable Scenarios.

Learn more about creating no shipping options for sub-zones here.

Yes. The carrier-calculated shipping rates feature is a Shopify requirement to use any third-party shipping calculation app, including Intuitive Shipping, even for testing in Sandbox mode.

Shopify requires carrier-calculated shipping rates to be enabled on your Shopify plan so third-party rate providers can access your store’s checkout page. By Shopify’s definition, Intuitive Shipping is a third-party rate provider. You’ll still need this feature for Intuitive Shipping to function even if you’re not using a parcel service shipping method for live rates.

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. Without this setting enabled, rates cannot be displayed on your checkout page.

If you are on the ‘Advanced’ plan or higher, this feature is already included in your Shopify plan and enabled.

If you are on the ‘Shopify’ plan, you will need to contact Shopify via email, live chat, or phone to get the feature added to your plan.

If you’re on the ‘Lite’, ‘Starter’ or ‘Basic’ plans, this feature is no longer offered as a paid add-on, and you will need to upgrade to the ‘Shopify’ plan to add it. However, if you are on any of these lower-tier plans and you already had the feature enabled, it will be grandfathered in.

Learn more about carrier-calculated shipping rates here.

Carrier-calculated shipping rates is $20.00 USD per month for those on the ‘Shopify’ plan. When you switch your ‘Shopify’ plan from monthly to annual billing, the carrier-calculated shipping rates feature can be added to your plan at no additional charge, and you’ll save 10% on your subscription.

If you’re currently on, or plan to switch, to annual billing, you’ll still need to contact Shopify support to activate carrier-calculated shipping rates – it is not enabled automatically.

If you’re on the ‘Advanced’ plan or higher, this feature is already included in your Shopify plan and enabled by default.

Click Settings in the sidebar menu, then select General settings from the drop-down list.

If for any reason you want to prevent rates from Intuitive Shipping from being displayed at checkout, you can change the Status in General Settings.

By default, Intuitive Shipping status is set to On when you select a billing plan to activate your account. If you need to conduct system wide testing or troubleshooting, and you don’t want to manually change the status of each Scenario, you can quickly set the general status to ‘Test’ or ‘Off’.

On means customers can see rates calculated by Intuitive Shipping at checkout when you have an active billing plan. When you first install the app, and you’re still in Sandbox mode, On functions the same as Test.

Test means that customers cannot see rates from Intuitive Shipping. Only you can see rate calculations performed by the app when you use the word ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name at checkout.

Off means that no one can see any rate calculations from Intuitive Shipping at checkout, even when ‘Intuitive’ is used as the customer’s first or last name. 


Setting the status to Off does not deactivate your account or pause billing. It simply prevents rates calculated by Intuitive Shipping from being displayed at checkout.

If you are in Sandbox mode (you have not yet activated a billing plan to begin your free trial), shipping rates from Intuitive Shipping are not visible to your customers, regardless of the Status settings in any of your Scenarios or shipping methods. Rates can only be displayed by using ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name.

When Intuitive Shipping is live and the general Status is set to On, Intuitive Shipping calculations are visible to your customers. To check the general status, click Settings on the sidebar menu, then select General settings. 

When general Status is set to Off, a banner will be displayed at the top of the General settings page, the Activity page and others.

Yes! During the onboarding process, you can select your preferred dimension, weight and distance units, such as cm, kg and km. You can change these again at any time in the Units section of the General settings page.

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 (kg), the condition will now be based on 100 kgs. You will need to change the value to kilogram equivalent of 100 lbs.

Changing the unit type does not affect your Shopify settings. If you use kg in Shopify, it will remain kg in your Shopify admin even if you switch to lbs in Intuitive Shipping.

Rates calculated by Intuitive Shipping use your base (default) currency from Shopify and cannot be changed within the app. To update your currency setting, go to your Shopify admin settings. 

Be sure to resync your Shop settings with Intuitive Shipping on the Shopify connection page after making changes to your base currency in Shopify.

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. You will need to change the value to the US equivalent of $75 CAD, if applicable.

Delivery dates can be displayed instead of the number of days. Learn more about this beta feature here.

Yes, delivery date settings are universal throughout your configuration. Any shipping methods that display estimated delivery by the number of days will display estimated delivery by date when you toggle the setting

Simple blending lets you quickly and easily configure a single blending setup with your preferred blending mode option – you can add rates together, or offer another option like the best value or slowest delivery. Any shipping methods that have blending enabled will be added to your simple blended rate.

Advanced blending gives you greater control of blended rates. You can customize display settings and assign blending group tags to create more than one blended rate. Any shipping methods that have blending enabled will be added to your advanced blending rate.

Simple blending is enabled by default when you install Intuitive Shipping.

Learn more about rate blending.

Intuitive Shipping is not part of the fulfillment process, but we can assist your fulfillment team by providing the packing information used for the rate calculation. Any shipping calculations that use package dimensions – typically parcel service and freight service shipping methods – include packing results. 

By default, Intuitive Shipping sends this information to the Shopify Order Details when a customer completes their order. If you use a fulfillment service or a fulfillment app, this information can be pulled from the Order Details to ensure the shipping label is purchased using the correct packing information. If your fulfillment service app pulls the information from the Order Notes, you can change the ‘push’ location in General settings.

Packing information is not applicable to custom service or free shipping methods, since there are no packages associated with those methods.

Nope! By default, ‘push packing results to platform’ is turned on. If at any time you want to turn it off, just change the Packing results setting in your General settings.

Yes. By default, packing results are sent to the Shopify Order Details. If your fulfillment services needs the information in Notes, you can change the save location.

By default, packing results also include cart contents – the product names on the order and the quantity of each product in each package.

If you don’t want this information included, you can change the setting to only push the package dimensions and weights.

Intuitive Shipping lets you set up alternative shipping origin locations so you can calculate live rates from the actual shipping location, if it’s different from your primary location in Shopify. And, if you ship some products from your primary location and other products from your alternative location, you can assign different locations to each shipping method.

Locations are intended to work with parcel service or freight service shipping methods, which calculate live rates from carriers, and local delivery services, which calculate rates based on distance. Locations are not applicable to custom service and free shipping methods.

Locations are optional, and only required if you want to set up an alternative ship-from location. If you don’t have any locations set up in Intuitive Shipping, we’ll calculate live rates using your primary location in Shopify.

Shopify’s multi-origin Locations feature lets you set up multiple locations for shipping, local delivery and inventory management. Intuitive Shipping has no visibility of your multi-origin locations in Shopify and we can’t see inventory levels. 

We strongly encourage you to use one Location in Shopify. If you need to set up custom ship-from locations, you can add them to Intuitive Shipping from the Location settings or directly from a parcel service shipping method.

Unfortunately, we have no visibility of your store inventory. Locations are used only for calculating live carrier rates or distance-based from an address other than your primary Shopify address.

Locations are used for calculating live rates in parcel service and freight service shipping methods, or distance-based rates in local delivery shipping methods. At this time, locations cannot be assigned to custom shipping methods or free shipping methods.

If you have multiple shipping locations with different products at each location, and you’re using flat rates or a rate table that aren’t determined by distance, you can use product conditions such as product tag and product vendor to set up different rates based on where products ship from.

Carrier accounts are optional. Most major carriers like FedEx and UPS let you use their standard retail rates if you don’t have an account with them. 

If you have a carrier account with any of our integrated carrier partners, you can add it to your Carrier accounts settings. Each time you create a new parcel service shipping method for that carrier, you’ll have the option to select your carrier account or their standard retail rates.

A carrier account lets you access discounted or negotiated rates directly from the carrier based on your shipping volume.

Nope. Many major carriers like FedEx, UPS, Canada Post and USPS let you access their standard retail rates. If you have an account with any of them, or if you’d like to get one, you can easily connect your account to Intuitive Shipping, either in the Carrier accounts settings or directly from a parcel service shipping method.

Some carriers, like Australia Post and Canpar, do require an account. They don’t have a standard retail rates option.

Absolutely! You can have an account with all of our integrated carrier partners if you like. And, you can even set up multiple accounts with the same carrier. Each time you set up a parcel service shipping method, you select which account you want to use with that carrier.

Shopify doesn’t provide third-party developers with their carrier account credentials, so we can’t access their carrier discounts.

Carrier accounts are intended for account credentials managed by your business.

If you want to keep using Shopify discounts, you can continue to access Shopify carrier discounts at fulfillment, then you can simulate those discounts by adjusting the cost that is displayed at checkout. For example, if Shopify gives you a 60% discount on UPS at fulfilment, you can set up a parcel service shipping method for UPS, using standard retail rates, then use the Cost Adjustment settings to apply 60% discount at checkout.

Yes. Freight services do not offer standard retail rates, and you must set up an account in order to complete the setup of your freight service shipping method. If you don’t have an account, you will be unable to save the shipping method.

Our development team works directly with the teams from our partners to create a direct API connection between our services. If you’re using one of our partners as part of your shipping strategy, setting up an integration allows you easily pass key information between the two systems.

We are currently integrated with:

Zapiet Store Pickup+Delivery – set up local pickup and delivery options and let customers select a date and time with Zapiet’s calendar selector. You can also use SP+D to set blackout periods for shipping.

ShipStation – connect your account to access carriers and rates from ShipStation and allow Intuitive Shipping to pass packing information directly to ShipStation.

Other partner integrations may introduced in the future.

Yes, you must have an active account with our partners in order to enable the integration.

No problem! If you terminate your account with any of our integrated partners, or if you just don’t need the integration setup any longer, simply disable the integration at any time from the Partner integrations page.

When you install Intuitive Shipping, we connect your Shopify account to our system so we can access your checkout page. This allows Shopify to send us the cart information at checkout.

When you complete the onboarding process, we sync some of your Shopify account information to our system, such as your primary currency, your primary contact email address, and your default shipping origin address.

We also sync your product catalog. This allows us to see things like product tags, collections and types at checkout. It also allows you to add dimensions to products, which are required for dimensional packing algorithms like SmartBoxing™, and to customize product-specific shipping settings, such as excluding products from free shipping or restricting them from shipping to certain zones.

Shop information needs to be re-synced each time you make a change. If you do something like update your primary email, edit your primary store location, or switch currencies, you’ll need to re-sync your Shopify connection to make sure we have the latest information.

Product catalogs are synced automatically once you’ve activated your account. That means, if you add or remove a product, or if you make any changes to your Product Information settings, like add tag or move a product into a collection, our system will sync those changes automatically. We recommend that you manually re-sync your product catalog if you make a lot of changes to your product catalog at one time.

While you’re in Sandbox mode, changes to your product catalog need to be synced manually.

Notifications are used to alert you to important events, such as letting you know that a product export or import has been completed. You can retrieve your product export downloads in Notifications.

For important and time-sensitive reminders, such as letting you know that Shopify’s carrier-calculated shipping rates feature is not currently enabled, or that Intuitive Shipping is currently in ‘Off’ status, we’ll display a banner at the top of certain pages.

We’ll display a number over the Bell icon at the top right of the Intuitive Shipping app header indicating how many unread notifications are waiting. You may also receive an email at the primary – and, if applicable, the secondary – contact email address alerting you that a notification is waiting.

Notifications cannot be deleted at this time.

Notifications don’t expire. If your notification includes a download link, the link will expire after 14 days.

When you first install the app, you automatically begin in Sandbox. This allows you to set up Scenarios and shipping methods, add packages, zones and carriers, and perform testing to ensure your rates are displaying as expected.

While you’re in Sandbox, rates can only be displayed on your checkout page when you use ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name at checkout, even if the app status is set to On. This allows you to test all of your setups without worrying about rates from Intuitive Shipping being visible to customers at checkout.

Sandbox mode is free and has no time limit. You can take as long as you need to complete your setup and finish testing everything.

Yes! Sandbox mode is free for an unlimited time. Once everything is set up and working the way you want it to, simply activate your account by selecting a billing plan. This will kick off your free trial.

Nope! You can stay in Sandbox for as long as you like. Your free trial will begin after you select a billing plan to activate your account.

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

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

First, when you’re testing your Intuitive Shipping setups using ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name, rates from both Shopify and Intuitive Shipping will be displayed. That’s okay! Only you can see the rates from Intuitive Shipping. Your customers will only see rates from Shopify.

Second, Intuitive Shipping cannot override Shopify shipping rates. When you’re ready activate Intuitive Shipping, you’ll need to delete your Shopify Shipping Rates so they no longer appear at checkout.

If you’re using another app to calculate shipping rates, this also applies to other third-party rates. 

To learn how to remove your Shopify Shipping Rates, click here. You can use the same process to remove other third-party rates as well.

Shopify shipping rates, or rates from another third-party app or service, 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 Sandbox mode, we recommend leaving your current public rates in place until you’re ready to activate Intuitive Shipping. Otherwise, customers won’t have any rates with which to complete their checkout.

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.

If you’re using Shopify, be sure to use ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name at checkout.

If you’re using BigCommerce, be sure to put ‘Intuitive’ in the ‘optional’ address field for ‘Apartment/Suite/Building’.

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.

Using ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name works on Shopify only. If you’re on Shopify, be sure you have the carrier-calculated shipping 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 shipping rates, go here.

If you’re on BigCommerce, put ‘Intuitive’ in the optional address field for ‘Apartment/Suite/Building’.

If you’re using Shopify, your checkout results are cached for a period of time. 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 Sandbox 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 Sandbox 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 shipping rates feature is not enabled. A red banner will display on the Intuitive Shipping Activity page if carrier-calculated rates is not enabled. If the banner is not displayed, and rates still don’t appear, it’s possible that the feature was enabled and has since been disabled. Learn more about carrier-calculated shipping rates here.

Status is set to Test. This can be either the status of the entire app (in the app General settings page) or the status of individual Scenarios or shipping methods. To see rates while Test is enabled, use ‘Intuitive’ as either the customer’s first or last name at checkout.

Status is set to Off. This can be either the status of the entire app (in the app General settings page) or the status of individual Scenarios or shipping methods. When the General status is set to Off, no rates from Intuitive Shipping can be displayed at checkout, even when using ‘Intuitive’ as the customer’s first or last name. Similarly, when a Scenario or shipping method is set to Off, rates associated with that Scenario or shipping method will not be displayed at checkout, even when using ‘Intuitive’ as the customer’s first or last name.

Shopify Shipping Zones are missing. Intuitive Shipping zones are independent from Shopify Shipping Zones. However, we still rely on Shopify Zones to calculate shipping rates. Your Shopify Shipping Zones and Intuitive Shipping zones do not have to be configured the same way. Zone settings in Intuitive Shipping will take precedence. However, you still need at least one Shipping Zone in Shopify that covers every country or region you ship to, and Intuitive Shipping must be a carrier service in that zone.

Intuitive Shipping is not a carrier service. In order for rates to be calculated, Intuitive Shipping must be added as a carrier service to Shopify Shipping zones that include countries you ship to.

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

An error has occurred. Go to the Activity page, then filter activities by ‘Unsuccessful requests only’. View an ‘unsuccessful’ activity and check for ‘Warnings and errors’ in the Details section.

If you cannot get rates to appear and you’re not sure why, please contact us for help.

If you – or your customers – are able to get rates to appear at checkout, but you’re not seeing a corresponding activity on the Activity page, that means the rates are coming from another source, either Shopify or another third-party service.

Go to your Shopify admin Shipping and delivery settings, then go into ‘Manage rates’ on your General profile. In your Shipping Zones, check to see if there are any other rate providers set up besides Intuitive Shipping. If so, you will need to troubleshoot those rates with the source providing them.

This situation can sometimes arise when the ‘Future Services’ box is unchecked in your Shopify Shipping and delivery settings. When this box is unchecked, rates will be calculated by Intuitive Shipping – and they’ll appear on the Activity page, but Shopify will not display them at checkout. Learn more about checking for ‘Future Services’ here.

If LTL (Less Than Load or ‘Truckload’) rates from your freight service shipping method 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. 

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, such as adding, removing or altering the columns or their headings, will result in an import error. You’ll receive this notification if an error occurred during the import.

To resolve this, re-export the CSV file, copy the dimension data over to the new file and save the file without altering the columns or their headings.

Errors may not always indicate the issue is 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 Sandbox mode).

Errors are not logged if there is an issue with conditions, condition groups or blended rates. That’s because our system cannot determine if there is an issue with the setup logic and either calculates or doesn’t based on the setup. Errors are also not logged if there are Shopify-related issues.

Your parcel service carrier may have a limit on the number of packages that can be shipped on one order, even if all of the packages are within their 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 in Activity details.

To resolve this, you may need to increase the maximum weight limit of packages in your main Packages settings. Or, if you’re using the total-based or quantity-based packing algorithms, you may need to increase the max capacity in the shipping method.

If it’s feasible to do so, add larger packages sizes to your Package settings and assign them to the shipping method. 

You can also use conditions in your Scenarios to limit customer order sizes. For example, you can add a weight condition that prevents shipping methods from activating when the order weight or product weight exceeds a certain amount.

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 (typically 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 order processing time to your parcel service shipping methods which is added to the carrier delivery times. For example, if the carrier estimates 3 business days, and you add 3 days for order processing, the customer will see ‘6 business days’ at checkout.

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 General section of the parcel service shipping method, click ‘Show additional display settings’. Ensure that ‘Show delivery time’ and ‘Carrier delivery time’ are both enabled.

If the settings are 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, such as 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 doesn’t always 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.

During the setup process for your Google API account, we show you how to set up a Distance and Geocoding API. 

When you set up a local delivery shipping method, which calculates rates using distance, both APIs are available for our system to use. When a customer checks out, we first attempt to use your Directions API, which uses your postal code and your customer’s postal code to measure distance by map directions. If that fails, our system attempts to use your Geocoding API, which converts your store’s address and your customer’s address to geo-coordinates, then measures distance point-to-point (or, ‘as the crow flies’).

In the Optional settings area of the shipping method (bottom of the page), you can opt to only use Geocoding instead of both, since Directions will always fail if there is no postal code. Using Geocoding does not guarantee the calculation will be completed. If Google is unable to convert the address into geo-coordinates, the calculation will fail.

Distance-based rates require a Google API account, which, by default, uses your Google Directions API. The Directions API uses postal codes or zip codes to measure the distance from your shipping origin location to the customer’s address. There may be situations where a customer’s actual address is closer or farther than the distance measured from postal code to postal code. 

To resolve this, Intuitive Shipping can configure your app settings to measure distance by the exact address. However, by doing this, the customer must enter their address correctly. For example, if the customer puts a typo in their street name, if they use ‘Road’ instead of ‘Street,’ or if they enter an alternate spelling for their city, such as ‘L.A.’ instead of ‘Los Angeles,’ Google may not recognize the address, causing the rate to fail.

Please contact us for assistance if you want to switch to the exact address.

Google Merchant Center terms require your shipping rates to be the same on both your store’s website and their service. When they’re different, rates on Google Merchant Center must be higher. If they’re lower, Google considers the product to be non-compliant. Learn more about how to resolve shipping rate issues with Google Merchant Center here.

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 changed your Shopify store settings, be sure to sync your changes with Intuitive Shipping. To sync your changes, go to the Shopify Connection page and click the Sync account settings button.

Customer tags and email addresses are not included in the information we receive from Shopify at checkout. To work around this, we perform auxiliary verifications to look for this data. Two factors that can affect reliability of these verifications are the time and accuracy.

The time it takes to receive information from these verification checks is beyond our control, and can result in long waits. Our system defaults to secondary checks when wait times are excessive.

Customer information that is input at checkout, including name and address, needs to match exactly with what is in the customer account, and only one (1) customer can have the same name. If there are any differences between what the customer enters and what is stored in their account, the verification will fail.

To improve reliability, there are steps we can take with your shop settings. Please contact us for more information.

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

Intuitive Shipping is intended to work only with ShipStation’s New Layout version. If you’re using their legacy version, the integration will not work, even if you were able to connect your account to Intuitive Shipping.

While you’re using ShipStation, look at the URL at the top of your browser. The New Layout version will contain ‘ship’ followed by a group of numbers (typically two digits), such as ‘ship11’.

To switch to the New Layout version, click the ‘Try new layout’ button at the top of the screen. For more information about the New Layout version, please contact ShipStation directly.

Regardless of which version of Intuitive Shipping you’re using, only the New Layout version of ShipStation is compatible with the integration. At this we are unable to support the Legacy version of ShipStation. For more information, please contact ShipStation directly.

When you first enable the integration, all of the carriers and carrier services connected to your ShipStation account should be visible in the Services section of the ShipStation shipping method. If carriers or services are missing:

Try updating your carrier services. If you’ve made changes to carrier services since enabling the integration, those changes may not be synced with Intuitive Shipping.

If you’re still unable to see all of your carriers or services, try disabling, then reenabling the integration.

If you continue to have issues, please contact us for assistance.

Some ShipStation carrier partners may not be compatible with Intuitive Shipping.

When a customer order is completed, Intuitive Shipping can send packing information, including package titles and dimensions, directly to your ShipStation account. If packing information isn’t being sent, check to see if the setting has been disabled. 

Go to the Partner integrations page, then click edit partner settingson the ShipStation card. Check to see if Enable delivery options is turned on. 

If delivery options is enabled, and you still aren’t receiving packing information from Intuitive Shipping, please contact us for assistance.

This is a known issue with the integration that we are working with ShipStation to resolve.

When Intuitive Shipping calls ShipStation for rates, it can sometimes generate incomplete ‘ghost’ orders from abandoned carts or shipping options your customer didn’t select. This results in an ‘Api Shipments’ store appearing in your Order and Shipments lists. These ghost orders can be ignored, and you can set up workarounds to filter them until a permanent fix is rolled out. Learn how set up workarounds here.

Yes. We can only access the Intuitive Shipping app directly. By default we do not have access to your eCommerce platform admin or any other apps connected to your store.

By default, no, we don’t.

If you’re on Shopify, we can only access your platform settings after an access request has been sent to the Shopify account holder or admin, and that request has been approved.

If you’re on BigCommerce, we can only access your platform settings if we have been set up with a user profile.

If we’re unable to diagnose an issue in the app settings, we may need to access your platform settings. If you’re using Shopify, we typically require access only to apps, settings, products and orders. 

Apps allows us to see if there are any conflicts between Intuitive Shipping and other third-party apps installed on your shop.

Product settings help us troubleshoot common issues, such as verifying product tags, collections, weights and other product settings that regularly interact with our system.

Shopify settings give us access to view your Shipping and delivery settings so we can check for conflicts with Shipping Profiles, Locations, Shipping Zones and other shipping settings.

Access to orders is required along with Settings because that’s how Shopify allows us to check rates assigned to zones. By Shopify’s definition, Intuitive Shipping is a rate provider and our app is directly impacted by rate settings. Additionally, we sometimes need to see a customer order so we can compare the final shipping rate selected by the customer with the rates calculated by Intuitive Shipping.

To diagnose issues with customer conditions, such as customer tags, we may periodically 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 don’t want Intuitive Shipping to have access to limited platform settings on an ongoing basis, you can remove our access or user profile once we have reviewed your setup or resolved an issue. 

Please note that should we require access in the future, we will need to send another request for access, which may affect how quickly we can resolve the issue.

For Shopify users, an automated notification is sent to the Shopify account holder. 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 Shopify permissions settings, you can manually provide Intuitive Shipping with limited collaborator access by checking the applicable boxes.

If your Shopify store requires a collaborator access code in order to request access, you will need to provide this code to us before we can actually submit the access request.

For BigCommerce users, we may ask you to create a user profile through our ticket response as needed. Please note that most technical issues can be resolved from within the app settings and we will only request this in rare situations.

We understand! If your store – or your clients’ store – has a ‘no external access’ policy, we may still be able to diagnose and resolve the issue you’re having. We can still access your app settings.

If we are unable to identify an issue in the app settings, or of we believe the issue may be related to your eCommerce platform settings, we may request that you provide detailed screenshots. Please note that screenshots provide a static and partial view. Our ability to diagnose the issue through screenshots is limited and may not allow us to resolve the issue in a timely fashion, or at all. 

Alternatively, you can book a tech support appointment with one of our team members, then share your screen with us. If you are an active user, tech support appointments can be book directly from the app’s Support page.

We can briefly review your setups for you. If your setup is complex or if you have a number of different Scenarios, shipping methods, blended rates, 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, and before selecting a billing plan to activate your free trial. Sandbox mode is free to use for an unlimited time. 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 describe something that isn’t behaving the way you want it to.

Tip: schedule a free, one-on-one Onboarding session with one of our team members who can quickly review your setup in real time. If you’re still in Sandbox mode, you can schedule onboarding calls directly through the app from the card at the top of the Get started page or on the app’s Support page.

If you’re in Sandbox mode and you’re not sure where to start, schedule a free, one-on-one Onboarding session with one of our support team members right from the app. We’ll ask you to share your screen with us so we can guide you through the initial setup step-by-step based on your shipping requirements. 

Or, if you’ve already set things up on your own, we can take a look at everything with you.

Onboarding sessions give you the peace of mind that your initial setup is done correctly, giving you the confidence to activate your free trial and go live.

Free onboarding sessions help you get set up faster and with greater peace of mind. We take a step-by-step approach, showing you how to complete your setup. Think of us as a GPS navigator. You do the driving and we show you where to go. If you’ve already taken the time to get set up, or you started to and aren’t sure what to do next, we can review what you have so far and help you cross the finish line.

If you’re not ready to get set up and go live, and you just need an introductory guided tour of the app, book a demo instead. We’ll cover some of the basics and answer your questions in real time.

In both cases, your experience is tailored to your shipping needs. Whether you book a demo or a free onboarding session, provide us with as many details as possible and we’ll focus on the features and settings that are most relevant to you.

Absolutely! Intuitive Shipping offers a configuration setup service. You tell us how you want Intuitive Shipping set up and we’ll do it for you! Learn more about it here.

Alternatively, you can schedule a free Onboarding session with one of our team members who can walk you through the initial setup process or quickly check your complete setup to ensure everything looks ok.

An Intuitive Shipping configuration specialist will configure the app to your specific needs based on information provided by you. We will:

– create Scenarios
– set up shipping methods (excluding carrier accounts)
– add zones, packages and custom locations (if needed)
– configure product shipping settings
– 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.

Configuration setup does not include:

– connecting carrier accounts, in either carrier settings or shipping methods
– adding physical attributes – dimensions or weights – to products and variants, either individually or in bulk
– connecting partner integrations
– editing any settings outside of Intuitive Shipping, such as your eCommerce platform settings or third-party app settings, including our integration partners. 

We are happy to explain how to optimize your eCommerce platform settings to work with Intuitive Shipping, and we encourage you to reach out to our integration partners for setup advice for their systems.

Yes! If you’re an active user and need help, speak to one of our helpful team members at a time that is convenient for you. Book your technical support appointment directly through the app’s Support page.

Technical support appointments are scheduled based on availability. If you need tech support assistance sooner than we can meet with you, please submit an email support request through the app’s Support page. We typically respond within 1 business day.

Due to how we troubleshoot technical issues, we do not use an outbound call system and our support team is unable to call you by phone.

Currently, we’re offering real-time demos and free onboarding sessions to new installers and one-on-one tech support to active users by appointment only through web conferencing software.

If you prefer not to – or are unable to – speak during your appointment, let us know when you book your appointment, so we can discuss alternatives ahead of time.

We typically respond to email support requests within one (1) business day.

Learn more about our support services here.

We use Microsoft Teams for our live support appointments. You do not need to install the Teams app to use Teams. Microsoft offers a web browser version if you prefer. At a minimum, you do need a stable internet connection and a compatible web browser to access the meeting link. 

Please note: Safari support for Teams is limited which may impact your appointment experience. Microsoft recommends using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browsers when using Teams through a browser.

Please join your Teams appointment through a desktop or laptop computer. We often use screen sharing, which is significantly limited through a mobile device.

Please ensure your computer has a working microphone. We may be unable to assist you without one. If you don’t have a mic or require special assistance, please contact us prior to your appointment.

Please test the meeting link and set up Teams in advance of the meeting in order to reduce the risk of technical problems during the meeting. Meetings are scheduled for 30 minutes and typically cannot be extended due to appointments for other users.

We may be unable to continue your appointment if you join from a computer that does not include a functioning 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 as well as your computer. That way, we can utilize screen sharing and we can communicate effectively during appointment.

If you are aware that your device does not have a mic, and you don’t have access to an external one or a mobile device with Teams access, please let us know when you book your appointment so we can discuss alternative arrangements with you.

At this time, Teams web conference software does not support a dial-in option.

Our team does not use an outbound call system. We are unable to provide phone appointments and we are unable to accept requests for call backs through support tickets.

We strongly encourage you to connect to your appointment from a desktop or laptop that supports audio input, such as a built-in or external microphone. If that is not possible, or you require special assistance, please let us know when you book your appointment so we can discuss alternatives.

At this time we are unable to offer phone support either by appointment or upon request. Due to the nature of most technical issues, we typically 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 we’ve diagnosed 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.

We understand that some issues can take longer than others to review and resolve. Our appointments are scheduled for 30 minutes, which, in most cases, is enough time to either resolve the issue or acquire enough information that we can continue to troubleshoot after the appointment has ended.

In order to ensure that all of our users have an opportunity to speak with us in a timely fashion, we may be unable to extend appointments beyond the scheduled time. If more information is required, we will follow up with you through email.

To ensure that all of our users have an opportunity to speak with us, especially during busy periods, we kindly ask that you limit bookings to once per day. For Onboarding calls that require additional setup assistance, we may extend the meeting, schedule permitting, or invite you to book a follow-up meeting to continue the process. Discuss options with your appointment host during your original appointment.

Appearing on camera during appointments is completely optional. When you book your appointment, we’ll ask for your preference so we can join the meeting accordingly. If you change your mind, simply inform your host at the start of your appointment.

No worries! Just let your host know when you join the meeting so they can accommodate you.

We often using screen sharing to troubleshoot issues or demonstrate the app. 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. We can also record a brief video after the appointment and share the link with you.

We typically do not record appointments unless it is specifically requested. If you would like your appointment recorded, please let us know when you book your appointment or let your host know at the start of the meeting.

Please note that we will email you a detailed summary of your appointment at the conclusion. We’ll include relevant information, such as links to our help center and other sources, screenshots, and even links to pre-recorded videos that recap specific features, settings or processes discussed during your appointment.

Yes, you can record your appointment if you want to refer back to it later. As a courtesy to our team, please let your host know at the start of your appointment that you intend to record the session.

If you know you’re going to be a bit late, please contact us by email to give us a heads up. If you anticipate being more than 10 minutes late, please cancel your appointment or reschedule for a more suitable time, as there may not be sufficient time remaining to complete the appointment.

Appointment links will be closed if you are unable to join the call within 10 minutes of the scheduled start time.

Yes! We understand things happen and you may not be able to join your appointment at the scheduled time. The 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 confirmation to help us keep our appointment schedule up to date.

If you had a technical issue while attempting to join your web conference, or 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 through a ticket if that is more convenient.

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

Yes! Whether we’re following up after a one-on-one appointment or responding to a complex issue through a ticket, our team can create a brief video recording to walk you through troubleshooting or demonstrate features. We’ll send you a link to the video so you can access it conveniently on your own time.

We sometimes do this proactively when it’s easier to show you than explain it in text form. You can also request that we include a video link as part of our response when you submit your ticket.

No worries! If you require special assistance, please let us know either through a support ticket or when you book an appointment. We will make every effort to accommodate your needs.

If you are an active user experiencing an urgent issue with rates not appearing at checkout, and you’re actively losing sales as a result, go to the Support page of the app, fill out the Email support form and select the ‘urgent‘ option from the support type drop-down. We’ll respond as soon as we can.

After-hours urgent, business-critical issues will be responded to as soon as possible. If we anticipate a longer than normal resolution time, we will notify you to let you know we’re working on the issue so you know it’s being looked at. All other after-hours requests will be responded to within approximately 1 business day.

Yes! To submit a ticket, click your store name at the far right of the app header, then select Support from the drop-down list. Complete the Email Support section.

Absolutely! To return to the Help Center, click your store name at the far right of the app header, then select Support from the drop-down list. Click the Visit our help center button near the top of the Support page.

We also have links throughout the app that bring you to articles specifically related to features and settings on those app pages.

We typically respond to support tickets within 1 business day.

Live technical support for active users is available by appointment and can typically be scheduled at a convenient time within one business day – sometimes within the same business day! Appointments can be scheduled up to 14 days in advance. After booking your appointment, we’ll send you a confirmation explaining how to access your live technical support meeting.

If you are an active user and you have an urgent, business-critical issue with Intuitive Shipping that is actively causing you to lose sales at checkout, please submit an urgent support request through the app. Go to the Support page of the app, fill out the Email support form and select the ‘urgent‘ option from the support type drop-down. Someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

If your urgent support request is submitted after hours, our response time may be delayed but rest assured we will respond as quickly as we can.

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 offer regular support from Monday to Friday. To see our current support hours, click your store name at the far right of the app header, then select Support from the drop-down list.

Our current support hours are displayed near the top right of the page.

We also publish our current support hours here. All support hours are listed in North American Eastern Time.

We periodically update support hours. Check the Support page from time to time to see if our hours have changed.

Click on your store name in the top right of the app header, then select Account from the drop-down list.

You can add, remove or change your secondary email contact address and your contact phone number.

Your primary email contact address is synced with your eCommerce platform account and cannot be changed within the app. To change your primary email contact address, go to your eCommerce platform settings and change it, then return to Intuitive Shipping and sync your shop settings on either the Shopify Connection page or BigCommerce Connection page.

If the primary email contact address – typically the eCommerce platform account holder’s email address – is different from the person who primarily manages Intuitive Shipping, you can add a secondary email contact to ensure that someone else receives alerts from the app. Both primary and secondary email contacts will receive notifications and other admin-related communications.

In extremely critical situations, we may need to reach you quickly and we don’t want to rely on email. We’ll only use the phone number provided in urgent, business-critical situations involving Intuitive Shipping.

If you don’t want us to have your phone number, no problem! Simply remove if from your account settings and click the Save button.

Click on your store name in the top right of the app header, then select Billing from the drop-down list.

If you’re still in Sandbox mode, select a plan when you’re ready to activate your account, and begin your free trial.

If you’ve activated an account already, you’ll see your current plan and the plan’s monthly cost, how much of your plan you’ve used month-to-date, your billing period end date and, if applicable, how many overage charges have accrued month-to-date.

During your free trial period, a banner will be displayed at the top of the Billing page indicating when your free trial ends.

You’ll also see all of our billing plans. You have the option to change your billing plan at any time. If you want to downgrade to a lower-tier plan, you’ll be able to do so if your current month-to-date usage hasn’t already exceeded the lower plan limit.

If you’re using Shopify, Intuitive Shipping app charges and any accrued overage charges will appear on your monthly Shopify invoice. Learn more about how Shopify bills you here.

If you’re using BigCommerce, Intuitive Shipping app charge will be invoiced directly.

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

While it’s likely that you’ll have more rate calculations than completed orders per month, when you factor in test calculations and abandoned checkouts after shipping is calculated, we believe successfully completed orders are a much more predictable way for you to select the right billing plan.

And, we don’t hide advanced features behind a pay wall.

You know your business better than we do. We shouldn’t be telling you what features you need for your business, and you shouldn’t be penalized for test calculations and abandoned carts after shipping has been calculated.

Absolutely! All merchants, regardless of order volume, have access to email ticket support and live support via scheduled appointments. If you’re on our Enterprise plan, you will receive priority ticket support and have a dedicated account manager.

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.

If you have local pickup set up in Intuitive Shipping, any order that uses our system to calculate a ‘rate’ – even free local pickup – counts towards your plan.

If you are using a third-party system to display local pickup options, that system goes through the eCommerce API connection. Since there is no way for the API connection to distinguish between shipping options and pickup options, pickup orders through the third-party system will 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.

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.

Annual billing is not not currently feasible because of how billing plans and overage charges are structured. If you’re on Shopify and you currently have annual billing set up, app charges and any accrued overage charges from Intuitive Shipping will still be invoiced monthly through Shopify.

If you’re on BigCommerce, app charges and any accrued overage charges from Intuitive Shipping will be invoiced directly each month.

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.

Enterprise is our highest plan. If your monthly orders exceed the Enterprise plan limit, any additional orders will accrue overage charges. Overage charges for the Enterprise plan have been established to scale with your business.

No! If you are on one of our older pricing plans, rest assured that price is locked in as long as you don’t change it. At this time we have no plans to migrate anyone on an older plan to one of our newer plans.

However, if you need to change your for any reason, you will need to choose from one of the newer plans. Once you have changed your plan, you will be unable to change back to the older pricing plan.

Our prices reflect current costs and enable us to continue providing leading-edge technology and the level of support our customers have come to expect. Pricing may be updated periodically.

For detailed information about pricing and terms, visit the Billing page within the app.

To cancel your account, simply uninstall the Intuitive Shipping app from your eCommerce platform apps list. That’s it! Monthly billing will stop.

Please note: your next invoice may include charges for the current month when billing was stopped plus any overage charges accrued up to the time 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 store data will be purged from our system.

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

If you’ve been using Intuitive Shipping with Shopify, and you closed your store, billing is temporarily paused by Shopify. If you reopen your store, billing resumes and you’ll be billed when your billing cycle renews.

You will not be double-charged if you close and reopen in the same billing cycle. Shopify only pauses billing when a store is closed, and resumes when the store is opened.

If your store has closed permanently with Intuitive Shipping installed and you are unable to access your admin settings, please contact Shopify for assistance. We are unable to uninstall the apps. As long as your store is closed, app charges should remain paused indefinitely.

If you turned off Intuitive Shipping through General Settings, by setting the status to ‘Off’, please note that this only prevents all of your Scenarios and shipping methods from activating at checkout. This is useful if you want pause all rates from Intuitive Shipping temporarily to troubleshoot without turning off each Scenario individually.

It does not suspend billing.

The only way to stop billing from occurring is to uninstall Intuitive Shipping from your eCommerce platform apps list. You do not need to contact us to stop billing as we do not have the ability to uninstall the app.

If you uninstalled Intuitive Shipping during a billing cycle, you may be invoiced for the current month, plus any accrued overage charges up to the uninstall date, at the end of the billing cycle. Uninstalling the app prevents future billing from occurring when your billing cycle renews.

If you believe you were invoiced incorrectly, please contact us for assistance.

When you first install Intuitive Shipping you’re in ‘Sandbox mode’ by default. While in Sandbox, Intuitive Shipping is free to use for an unlimited time. This allows you to test your setup worry-free for as long as needed. Once you’ve completed testing, go to the Billing page in the app, then select a plan to activate Intuitive Shipping and begin your free trial.

Once you have activated a plan, you cannot switch back to Sandbox mode from within the app. You can, however, uninstall Intuitive Shipping from your apps listing and immediately reinstall the app. See below in ‘Can I suspend billing and come back to Intuitive Shipping later without rebuilding my entire setup?” for details.

If you have already activated a billing plan, changing Status settings to ‘Test’ does not affect billing This includes the Status setting in General Settings, Scenarios, shipping methods, and any other feature with a Status setting.

‘Test’ status prevents rates from displaying to customers. It does not stop billing.

The only way to stop billing is to uninstall Intuitive Shipping from your eCommerce platform’s apps list.

Our EULA states that all fees paid are non-refundable.

Our EULA states that all fees paid are non-refundable.

When you install Intuitive Shipping, we are added as a ‘rate provider’ to your eCommerce platform. Once you activate an Intuitive Shipping billing plan, our system is actively being called by your eCommerce platform each time a checkout occurs on your store, even if you don’t have any Scenarios or shipping methods set up or turned on.

Our servers are called at every single checkout and still perform condition checks and shipping method lookups whether rates are being calculated by our system or not, and we actively look for updates to your product catalog. If you’re not using Intuitive Shipping, we strongly recommend that you uninstall the app immediately to stop future billing.

Intuitive Shipping cannot authorize app charges to start billing, nor can we remove the app from your store to stop billing.

Only the eCommerce platform account holder or a store Admin with access can activate, change or terminate a billing plan. Once a plan is selected, recurring app charges and any accrued overages charges must be approved by you or someone authorized by you.

Neither Intuitive Shipping nor your eCommerce platform can force billing to be activated, nor can we upgrade or downgrade billing plans.

Yes! If you need to stop using Intuitive Shipping temporarily, simply uninstall Intuitive Shipping from your eCommerce platform Apps list to suspend billing on your active account. Then, immediately re-install the app. You’ll be put back into Sandbox mode, which is free for an unlimited time.

All of your settings are preserved and you won’t have to rebuild your setup from scratch. You may be invoiced for the current month when you first uninstall, but you will not be billed after that until you activate a billing plan again.

We are unable to guarantee availability of your current billing plan pricing or features when you reactivate your account.

Yep! If you’ve activated your account and you’re still within the 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 had 10 days remaining on your free trial when you deleted the app, you’ll have 10 days left when you resume.

By deleting the app, your settings and setups may be lost, meaning you’ll have to begin the setup process again if you choose to resume your free trial.

If you plan to resume your free trial, and you don’t want to lose any of your current app settings, immediately re-install the app after you’ve deleted it. This will return you to Sandbox Mode with all of your app settings intact. You can remain in Sandbox mode indefinitely. When you want to resume your free trial, you can reactivate a billing plan to begin where you left off.

We are unable to guarantee availability of your current billing plan pricing or features when you resume your free trial.

Selecting a billing plan kicks off your free trial. When it ends, your first billing cycle will begin automatically. There are no additional steps required.

There is no interruption to your service. When your 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.

Nope! When you install Intuitive Shipping, you can use the app in Sandbox mode for free for an unlimited time. Your free trial period will not begin until you activate a billing plan. Take as much time as you need to set up and test Intuitive Shipping before making it live to customers.