Regional Support: Shipping (UK)

[Victor]

Learn more about handling shipping and fulfilment while running your Shopify store in the UK.

This thread is part of the Regional Support threads offered for merchants in the United Kingdom. To see which other topics are available, you can visit the UK hub here.

Merchants based in the United Kingdom can offer both manual and third-party carrier calculated shipping rates to their customers at checkout. This second option allows UK merchants to link their FedEx and UPS accounts to Shopify and offer live rates from these providers at checkout.

Please note that the live rates can only be enabled if the merchant has the carrier calculated shipping feature enabled, which is a standard feature of our Advanced and Plus plans. However, this feature can also be added to a merchant's store for an additional cost of $20 USD per month if they are on the Shopify plan. Merchants on the Shopify plan can instead have this feature enabled at no additional cost if their subscrition is paid for on an annual basis. If you’d like to add this feature to your account, please contact our support team.

Outside of the integrated options of FedEx and UPS, there are a number of third-party applications that allow UK merchants to offer live rates from other shipping providers. Some apps will also allow you to buy shipping labels for different providers in the UK. These include:

• Royal Mail Shipping Extension (includes live rates from Royal Mail that appear at checkout).
• Starshipit Shipping & Tracking (includes live rates from the likes of DHL and DPD at checkout, as well as the ability to buy shipping labels from numerous carriers, including Royal Mail).
• Zenstores - UK Shipping App (includes the ability to buy shipping labels from numerous carriers, including DHL, DPD, Hermes, Royal Mail and Parcelforce).
• Multi Carrier Shipping Label (includes the ability to buy shipping labels from UK-based carriers including Royal Mail, Parcel Force & DHL)

Royal Mail also offer their Click & Drop app, which can be installed in the form of a sales channel in the Shopify admin. This app will allow you to easily buy and print Royal Mail shipping labels for your orders. You can refer to Royal Mail’s setup instructions to install the app in your store.

If you’re looking for more information or direct assistance with any of these apps, we recommend contacting the developers of the app directly. The developers build and support these apps and their contact information can be found on the app’s page on the Shopify App Store.

If you have a question or comment to make about shipping when based in the United Kingdom, please post it below.

[tadabburbooks]

Hey @linzal 

Under the 'Shipping and Delivery' section of Settings of the Shopify admin panel, we can define our shipping regions and shipping rates.  Last year Shopify rolled out an update which divided United Kingdom into 5 regions   So now separate shipping rates can be natively defined for UK mainland, Scotland & Northern Ireland without requiring to set up postal codes using a third-party app 

[Victor]

Hi @linzal,

As mentioned by @tadabburbooks above, Shopify split the United Kingdom shipping zone into smaller parts last year so merchants can now differentiate shipping rates for England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and British Forces. This means you can, for example, set cheaper rates for England and Wales than you would for Northern Ireland.

That said, you cannot differentiate between the Scottish Highlands and the rest of mainland Scotland through your shipping settings alone. There are apps on the Shopify App Store that allow you to specific shipping rates by postcode, including the following:

• Postcode Shipping
• Better Shipping
• Advanced Shipping Rules

These apps allow for greater control of your shipping rates and can be used to set shipping rates based on post codes. As a note, please be aware that these apps do require our carrier-calculated shipping feature to be active on your store, which comes as standard with our Advanced plan but can be added on to other plans for $20 USD per month (or activated for free if you pay for your subscription on an annual basis).

I hope this helps but please let me know if you have further questions.

[linzal]

Hey Victor,

Thanks for replying so quickly. Unfortunately, it doesn't go far enough for
the UK.
For example, we use DPD for our shipping. Our rate for the UK mainland
(England, Wales and Scotland) is £5.25. However, if you use DPD for certain
areas of northern Scotland (the Highlands and other remote areas of
mainland Scotland) - DPD charges an offshore fee for £35.00. Therefore, the
merchant needs to have further postcode clarification to counter this
otherwise as you can see it would be a costly error.

Maybe worth thinking about for the UK merchants.
Linzi

[Victor]

Hi @linzal,

Thank you for your feedback on this; I know that this is the case for many merchants who ship to places such as the Scottish Highlands and that being able to set more specific regional rates would be a big help for them. For the meantime, the apps I suggested in my last post should be able to help with this, but I will be sure to pass your comments onto our development team for their consideration moving forward.

[Tenpinshop]

@Linzi It's been a problem for years unfortunately. When you see how Spanish provinces are broken down on Shopify, it makes you wonder why this is so problematic for them.

If they could have broken the UK down as per transglobalexpress, and added Isle of Man this would have hopefully solved things

Whilst I've no knowledge of the entire code base,

looking at the code, they need only add 2 or 3 values when country = UK

data-provinces = Scottish Highlands & Offshore Isles (& Isle of Man) and this would be fixed for most cases.

Isle of Man - I think Hermes and RM ship there for the same price as UK, unlike some other remote isles.

[Tiff2]

Hi, 

I understand that if my business was in the US, I could enjoy shipping discount from international courier companies like DHL FedEx and UPS. How about from the UK? I don't seem to be able to find any discounted shipping rates from DHL/FedEx/UPS... One of the reasons I joined Shopify was really to enjoy the international shipping discount rates but now I'm worried this benefit is only for US customers... 

[Tenpinshop]

Cheap shipping isn't a key reason to use Shopify. Just use ups small business, parcel2go, transglobalexpress. They've just introduced cheap domestic shipping on DPD and Hermes, maybe more will follow.

[Tiff2]

While I understand this wasn't everyone's reason, this was one of my considerations. Thanks for the suggestions, I will look into them. 

[Victor]

Hi @Tiff2,

Shopify Shipping is available in the United Kingdom, although the shipping suppliers we have agreements with do vary by region. At this time, merchants based in the UK can purchase labels from Hermes and DPD directly through the Shopify admin:

As mentioned by @Tenpinshop, there are alternative third-party shipping services available that allow you to purchase shipping labels from a wider variety of couriers. Many of these integrate directly with Shopify which keeps the process of buying labels very straightforward. You can often receive discounts on labels through these services as well.

Along with the services previously mentioned, you can also check out Zenstores, which a dedicated UK shipping app that allows for label purchases from a number of couriers (including DHL and FedEx). Another option is PH MultiCarrier Shipping Label through which you can buy labels from Parcelforce and Royal Mail.

I hope this helps, but please let me know if you've any further questions.

[Tiff2]

Thank you - they are very helpful! 

[Victor]

Hi @Tiff2,

You're welcome! Please let me know if you've any further questions.

[Tenpinshop]

@Victor - Royal Mail integration would be a big help to a lot of us if you are able to feed that in.

Also regarding the shipping labels, when printing on A4, it would be great to have the ability to add some left and top padding on labels as (at least on my printer) they don't have that, so I have to print to PDF and adjust from there. On EVRI, p2go, royal mail, they print to a4 with sufficient padding for my labels.

Thx in advance if you can feed this in.

[Victor]

Hi @Tenpinshop,

Thank you for your feedback. I'll be sure to pass your comments onto our development team.

[jmitch2006]

Hi Victor, I have discovered on my account that I can buy direct as it is integrated into my admin shipping labels for Evri and DPD, is it that straight forward,  I just need to set up a preset and buy a label and drop at my nearest drop off point, I have been trying to get a DPD account for ages at a rate I can afford to ship, but this seems too be good be true.  I am a but weary proceeding as all my items are one offs.

Have tried to call the helpline but gentleman in Canada very nice but not able to give me the UK specfics and reassurance I need.  Do I need a DPD account, do I need to download the app?

Ta Jen, Liverpool.  Overdress Vintage

[Tenpinshop]

hi Jen, I've used the DPD service a few times and it is legit, price
is very good, as is the price on evri next day.... options to increase
the insurance cover on both would be welcome.

[Victor]

Hi @jmitch2006,

Yes, absolutely. Our Shopify Shipping feature allows merchants in the UK to purchase shipping labels from DPD and Evri directly from the Shopify admin, which can then be printed out at home and affixed to your packages. You'll then just need to take them to the appropriate drop-off point so that they can be accepted by the courier and shipped out to your customers.

If you buy shipping labels directly from Shopify, you do not need your own indiviual account with either DPD or Evri. The rates you'll pay are negotiated by Shopify directly with the couriers and are available to all eligible merchants in the UK who wish to use them.

I'd recommend reading the Shopify Help Center articles for both DPD and Evri to understand the considerations and limitations for each service. For both couriers, you can only purchase labels for orders being shipped domestically in the UK.

I hope this helps but please do not hesitate to reach out again if you have any further questions.

[linzal]

Hey Victor, the DPD shipping labels are fab and cheaper than our rate with them. However, when generating the label today, the printing was really poor quality on my DPD thermal label printer. I compared it to a label we print from the native MyDPD app and there is a big difference in quality. DPD is very picky with labels, is there anything I can do to help with this? It is one of the reasons we haven't gone forward with the Zenstores app, we have had labels rejected three times by DPD head office. They are picky! Thanks in advance.

[Victor]

Hi @linzal,

I'm glad to hear that the DPD labels you purchased were cheaper than what you were paying before. In terms of the quality, did you notice that the labels looked different and/ or of lower quality when viewing the digital version on your computer? Or was it only when printed did the labels seem of insufficient quality?

[Det742021]

AVOID THIS FEATURE, AS SOON AS YOU HAVE MISSING PARCELS NOBODY HELPS, WE LOST OVER A 1000 DOLLARS ON SHIPPING AND PRODUCTS ONLY IN TWO WEEKS TIME

NO SUPPORT

NO CLAIM

NOBODY CARES