Create a Basic Shipping Rate

A shipping rate in ShipMagic is a price the app calculates and returns to Shopify at checkout. You group rates inside a rule — the rule decides when the rates apply, and each rate decides how much to charge.

Shipping Rates change what customers pay. If you only want to hide, rename, or reorder rates you already have in Shopify, use Shipping Customizations instead.

Before you start

CCS must be enabled on your store

Carrier Calculated Shipping is required for any third-party app to return rates at checkout. See the Installation Guide if you’re not sure whether it’s on.

ShipMagic must be added as a rate provider

It’s added to the General profile automatically. For custom profiles, add it manually.

Your shipping zones must be synced

Open Settings in the app and sync zones. Until you do, the rule editor shows a warning instead of your zones and you won’t be able to add rates.

Create the rule

Open Shipping Rates and click Add Rule

From the left navigation panel in the app, open Shipping Rates, then click Add Rule.

Name the rule

Use something you’ll recognise later — for example Heavy products rule. This name is internal and is never shown to customers.

Set a priority

Rules are evaluated in ascending order of priority, so priority 1 is checked before priority 2.

No two rules can share the same priority. The app will not let you save a second rule with a priority that’s already taken, so give each rule its own number.

Leaving gaps (10, 20, 30) makes it easy to slot new rules in later without renumbering everything.

Add your conditions

Choose whether the rule must match All conditions or Any condition, then add one or more conditions. Each condition is an attribute, an operator, and a value:

Product Tag  <>  Equals  <>  bulky

You can build conditions from more than 25 attributes across four groups:

Group	Examples
Product	Title, Tag, SKU, Barcode, Vendor, Price, Compare-at Price, Quantity, Type, Weight, Metafield, Line item property, Length / Width / Height / Volume
Cart	Cart Quantity, Cart Subtotal, Cart Total after discount, Cart Weight, Cart Volume, Cart Contains, Cart Locale
Shipping	Zipcode / Postcode, Province / State Code, Address Line 1, Country Code, Time of Day, Day of the Week, Warehouse Zipcode
Customer	Customer Tag, First Name, Last Name

See Cart Conditions, Product Attributes, Customer Attributes, and Customer Location and Address for the full reference.

Several attributes accept multiple values in one condition. Tags are separated by commas, while titles, SKUs and types are separated by semicolons. Postcodes support wildcards (AB14*) and ranges (90209-90231). Specific details for every parameter is shown in the app after you choose the parameter.

Conditions on Product Tag, Product Type, Product Title, Product Barcode, or Product Compare-at Price need your products synced first. Shopify doesn’t send these to the app at checkout, so ShipMagic reads them from its own copy.

Add a rate to a shipping zone

Scroll to Shipping zones. Each synced zone is listed separately — click Add rate on the zone you want.A zone with no rates shows a warning, and customers in that zone will see no ShipMagic rates at all.The rate dialog is covered in the next section.

Set status and exclusivity, then save

Status controls whether the rule runs at all. Exclusivity controls what happens after it matches:

Inclusive (default) — lower-priority rules are still evaluated, and their rates are added too.
Exclusive — if this rule matches, every lower-priority rule is skipped. See Exclusive Rules.

Save stays disabled until the rule has a name, a priority, and at least one condition.

Adding a rate

Every rate starts with two fields:

Field	Notes
Rate name	Required. This is what the customer sees at checkout.
Description	Optional, shown under the rate name at checkout. Supports `{{today+3}}`, `{{today+3wd}}` (weekdays), and `{{today+3sd}}` (skipping Sundays) to insert delivery dates dynamically — see Rate Descriptions.

Then pick a Calculation parameter, which decides how the price is worked out.

Calculation parameters

Parameter	What it does
Fixed rate	One flat price, no calculation.
Number of items	Price based on how many items are in the cart.
Total price of items	Price based on cart value.
Total weight of items	Price based on cart weight.
Percentage of total price	Charge a percentage of the cart value. See Percentage of Cart Subtotal.
Product / Variant Metafield	Use a metafield value as the price itself. See Rates from Metafields.
Sum of Product / Variant Metafield	Total a metafield across the cart and price that total in bands.
Distance	Price based on distance between warehouse and destination.
Live carrier rate	Fetch a real rate from USPS, FedEx, Australia Post, ShipStation, Shiprocket, Stallion Express, or Direct Freight Express.

Not every parameter asks for a Rate Type. Three of them set the price directly:

Fixed rate just asks for a price.
Percentage of total price asks for a percentage, with an optional Round up to nearest integer checkbox.
Product Metafield and Variant Metafield take the price from the metafield, with a default rate for products that have no value.

Everything else — including the Sum of metafield parameters — asks for a Rate Type and a table of bands.

Rate types

Rate type	Fields	Use it for
Range	Range Start, Range End, Price	One price for a band of values. Leave Range End empty for “and above”.
Incremental	Base price, Incremental price, Per each, Start from	A base price plus a top-up for every N units. See Incremental / Per Item Rates.
Range + Incremental	Range Start / End, then base + incremental	An incremental rate that only applies inside a band.
Range + Range	Range Start / End, a second parameter, then its own range and price	Two parameters at once — for example weight and cart value.

To cover a whole scale, add several Range rates with the same rate name and adjoining bands — 0–100, 100.01–200, 200.01 and up. Shopify shows the customer whichever one matches their cart. See Ranged Rates.

A worked example

Charge $5 below $100 and free shipping at $100 or more:

Create the rule

Name: Regular products
Priority: 10
Rule must match: All conditions
Condition 1: Product Tag <> Does Not Equal <> bulky

Add the first rate

Rate name: Standard Shipping
Calculation parameter: Total price of items
Rate Type: Range
Range Start: 0
Range End: 100
Price: 5

Add the second rate

Rate name: Standard Shipping
Calculation parameter: Total price of items
Rate Type: Range
Range Start: 100.01
Range End: (leave empty)
Price: 0

Save the rule

Click Done on the rate dialog, then Save on the rule.

Test your rate

Rules take effect immediately, so test before you go live.

Open your storefront and add matching products to the cart
Proceed to checkout and enter a complete address
In test mode, enter shipmagic as the first name

Use a fresh, random address each time. Shopify caches shipping rates per address, so reusing one is the most common reason a change appears not to have worked.

Full details in Testing the App. When everything looks right, follow Going Live.

Next steps

Rate conditions

Every attribute and operator you can build conditions from.

Live carrier rates

Connect your own carrier account and show real-time rates.

Exclusive rules

Control how multiple matching rules combine.

Rate blending

Add, or take the highest or lowest of, several matching rates.

Need help?Our founders will personally help with the optimal setup for your brand. Book a free onboarding call if you’d like us to help.

Getting started

Core Concepts

Shipping Rates

Shipping Customizations

Advanced Features

Troubleshooting

Create a Basic Shipping Rate

Before you start

Create the rule

Adding a rate

Calculation parameters

Rate types

A worked example

Test your rate

Next steps

Rate conditions

Live carrier rates

Exclusive rules

Rate blending

​Before you start

​Create the rule

​Adding a rate

​Calculation parameters

​Rate types

​A worked example

​Test your rate

​Next steps

Rate conditions

Live carrier rates

Exclusive rules

Rate blending

Before you start

Create the rule

Adding a rate

Calculation parameters

Rate types

A worked example

Test your rate

Next steps