Hello all,
I am wanting to create a discount that offers free shipping on orders over $75, but exclude certain products in my store from the offer.
What is the best way to achieve this?
Thank you!
Topic summary
Users are requesting the ability to exclude specific products from free shipping discount codes and promotions—a feature Shopify has not implemented despite requests dating back to 2018.
Core Issue:
- Free shipping discounts apply to entire orders with no option to exclude certain products (heavy items, low-margin products, clearance items, MAP-priced products, hazmat items, or non-shippable products)
- This causes margin erosion when customers combine sale items with free shipping thresholds
Shopify’s Response:
- Staff acknowledged the limitation multiple times (2018-2020) and promised to pass feedback to development teams
- No native solution has been implemented after 6+ years
- Support typically suggests third-party apps (often $70+/month) or workarounds
Available Workarounds:
- Create separate shipping profiles for excluded products, which removes them from the “General” profile that offers free shipping
- Limitations: This approach works for standard shipping rates but doesn’t solve discount code scenarios, may cause double-shipping charges when multiple excluded items are ordered, and creates complexity for stores with existing multi-region/weight-based profiles
Current Status:
- The discussion remains unresolved with ongoing frustration
- Users continue requesting this basic e-commerce functionality available on competing platforms
- Many express disappointment with Shopify’s reliance on paid apps rather than native features
6 Likes
Hey, Joe,
I’m Ann, from the team here at Shopify 
When it comes to our free shipping discount code, there currently isn’t an option to specify that you don’t want to apply it to certain products. When you create a discount code for free shipping, it can only be applied to an entire order. That said, I can pass this as feedback along to our team for you, can you tell me a bit more about why you want to create a discount code like this?
Alternatively, you can try creating a free shipping rate in your shipping settings, you can use price or weight to make it specific to certain products only. Check out the steps on how to do that on this page in our Shopify Manual.
I hope this helps! If you have any more questions or concerns feel free to reach out to us on this thread
Have a great one,
Ann
Hi Joe,
I see that you have the concern on free shipping discount. After you set up a free shipping code successfully, you may need an app to show shipping notifications on your store. If you want to use an app to display the free shipping notifications, you can install Shipping Bar Master. This app will help you make full use of free shipping codes to expand the order value.
Have a good time!
@Ann456 I think it makes a lot of sense to exclude certain items from free shipping, for example because they simply can’t be shipped at all. I was wondering if you ended up passing on some feedback to your team and what happened to the feedback. Thanks a lot.
2 Likes
Hi @Bram1987 ,
Nick here from Shopify just following up from Ann’s reply above.
I can see exactly what you mean by it making sense to be able to exclude certain items from free shipping. This is still something that isn’t available as Ann mentioned. What I will do however is send another feature request on your behalf. The more store owners who discuss a feature like this help its cause for future development. Thank you for your feedback and letting us know why it would be beneficial for you and your store.
Hi @Nick that is great, as expected though nothing happened with the request. Just this week again someone ordered a chair with free shipping despite us being unable to do that for free. Of course, the fact that this was mentioned in the product description does not stop customers from ordering the item and select free shipping. Why would they?
I just can’t understand what’s so difficult about this. It’s the simplest of rules. Just exclude one group of products from the free shipping rule.
5 Likes
Hey @Bram1987 ,
One workaround may be to move products that do not qualify for free shipping into a separate shipping profile. You can then create a separate set of rates for these items that will then blend with the shipping rate for the rest of your products that may qualify for free shipping.
The only drawback would be if these items typically ship together, having them split into separate profiles could double up the shipping cost for the customer when it may not be the actual case.
If you’re open to using a third-party app, Intuitive Shipping can certainly handle this type of setup. You can hide your free shipping behind a set of conditions such as Collection > Does Not Equal > Chairs which will prevent free shipping from appearing if a certain type of product is in the cart.
https://apps.shopify.com/intuitive-shipping
Let me know if you have any questions about either approach.
Cheers,
Joel.
For GOODNESS SAKE!
Can you PLEASE HEAR YOUR CUSTOMERS ASKING FOR REQUESTS AND UPDATES TO FUNCTIONALITY
and then…
Implement???
The ability to apply Free Shipping to specific products is a no-brainer.
Site Wide Free shipping is common.
BUT not having the ability to exclude products (ie: discounted ones, new ones, lower priced items) MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.
What are we waiting for exactly?
(I can help program it, if the dev team is too busy?)
Sincerely,
TIRED OF HAVING TO SEARCH AND PAY FOR APPS - When our partner and platform Shopify Should Handle for us!
PS:
Same Goes for BOGO.
If Customer Purchases X, they get X Free - AUTOMATICALLY!!! Bam! in the cart it goes!
Not require them to select their Get Free item!
25 Likes
Hire this man! @Steve_Coulton Having conditions on your discount codes is a a no brainer! What do we need to do to get this fixed??
7 Likes
Hi Shopify Team,
Your customers are still waiting for this feature… it seems for a year now …
There has been an update of Shopify recently and this feature still does not exist!
Thank you.
Audrey C.
5 Likes
Joel, Does your application apply to Shopify’s Local Delivery app?
I’ve been back and forth with Shopify about being unable to exclude a certain collection of products from applying towards the minimum that I set for free local delivery (not shipping).
They are unable to do this and never actually apply any of the feedback/function requests. I’ve been asking for features like this since 2017 - no luck at all. These are simply functions for our small business; yet, Shopify doesn’t seem to care at all.
Anyway, I want to exclude a certain collection from the free local delivery condition we set ($45 for free LOCAL DELIVERY). The products in this collection are items we sell for other small business, and the margins are MUCH lower, so we cannot have these product apply towards the minimum for FREE LOCAL DELIVERY.
3 Likes
I couldn’t agree more! I’ve been waiting for simple functionality upgrades since 2017…it simply doesn’t happen.
8 Likes
Ugh, this entire thread is extremely frustrating and depressing. I might have to switch back to my old system, after all of the problems we are having just to get the simplest of functionalities to work without being nickle and dimed to death.
1 Like
I would also like this feature. Our products have different margins, some are very heavy and have lower margins, so we do not want to offer free shipping on those products.
I switched over from woocommerce a few months ago, and I have to say woocommerce’s coupon management was head and shoulders above shopify’s. I could choose whether coupons could be applied with other coupons, use coupons with automatic discounts, and just click which products weren’t available for free shipping.
3 Likes
Shopify, is there a suggested feature form and corresponding development calendar? I’m trying to implement this today and it still doesn’t look like it’s possible to create a free shipping coupon that excludes (or only includes) certain collections.
Here’s the use case: I want to offer free shipping over a certain cart value, but if that cart includes a sale item, free shipping coupon isn’t valid (because we’re already taking a margin hit on the sale item). Same thought process would apply on a % discount coupon. I may offer free shipping normally, but if you enter a coupon for a discount, I don’t want free shipping to be available. Shipping costs are adding up these days, and we need to stop allowing customers to make a margin hit on both fronts.
6 Likes
Shopify really needs to step up their game and allow items to be excluded from free shipping and sitewide discounts. Many of our manufacturers have MAP pricing and we are not allowed to put the items on sale or have them discounted via promotional codes. So this makes using any promotion on Shopify impossible.
This is still not available in Shopify. Why? this is a common feature in nearly every other shopping cart out there and is a MUCH needed feature for any ecommerce store. Shopify basically ties our hands and make it so we cannot even offer discounts to our customers AT ALL because of this.
1 Like
we have the same issue and have only recently come to shopify as a new customer. Had we known the discounts were so limiting we would have gone with a different solution.
3 Likes
It has been four years since this thread was started. Shopify will not listen to the customers. We are stuck with what they give us.
3 Likes
Another customer needing this feature here. Have any of you found an app that will allow us to do this in the meantime? If so, which one?
~Holly
2 Likes