Discount offer of free shipping EXCLUDING certain products

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
Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

Hi there, I too was looking for this feature and believe what I’ve set up will help some people who want to do this, no need for third party apps. This only solves the issue of wanting certain products/brands not available for free shipping. On our store I have the “Free Shipping Over $100” rule set on the “General” shipping profile. The General Shipping profile from Shopify by default includes all products NOT IN ANOTHER PROFILE, that’s the key wording there. So all new products we create will automatically go here, however we had other larger items that we did not want to offer free shipping on since they cost us more to ship. I created a new shipping profile and typed a brand name into the search bar after selecting “Add Products”. This specific brand contains many larger items that I didn’t want to ship for free, so once the entire brand was on the screen, i scrolled through and selected all of the items I wanted to include. Then I used the default shipping rate from UPS for that profile and added a handling fee since these are larger items. This AUTOMATICALLY removed everything in this profile from our “General” profile, and since this new profile didn’t offer free shipping, the specific items I added no longer qualified for free shipping. Here’s a step by step for the buttons:
On Shopify Admin → Settings → Shipping and delivery → New profile (Name it whatever you want) → Add products → Select the products you want in your new profile → Add shipping Zone (I just did the United States) → Add rate → Select the rate you want, I normally do automated calculated rates from the carriers (you can also add a flat fee here).

And that should do it! You should now have a custom set list of products that are available online just like all of your other items, but not available for free shipping. And you didn’t have to edit your free shipping rules that apply to all of the other products. Hope this was helpful to some!

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