Hi im newbie here..May i know as a dropshipper do we have to cover the shipping cost when customer places order? Under shipping settings how do i ensure that i will not be charged for shipping fees?
Thank you in advance for ur answer
Hey @Humblicious
Welcome to Shopify! Thanks for reaching out here on the Shopify Community, I’d be happy to lend some advice. I can see that there is some confusion around who covers the shipping cost when dropshipping.
When you are dropshipping, you generally don’t need to handle any stock yourself. This means that when a customer places an order on your store, you essentially act as the middle man and arrange for the products to get shipped directly to them from the suppliers (which are commonly in China).
The customer pays you up-front, including the shipping costs that you have set up on your store. After they pay you for the order, you then pay the supplier for the products, including any relevant shipping costs.
When setting up the shipping rates on your store, you can choose to charge the customer more for shipping than your dropshipping supplier charges you, or you can charge them less. You could even offer free shipping to the customer and cover the shipping costs yourself as a way to increase your conversion rate and customer retention.
You mentioned that you want to ensure you will not be charged for the shipping fees. In that case, you need to ensure that your shipping rates are set up in a way that the customer pays the same amount or more than what your suppliers would charge you to ship the products to them.
We actually have a help document which explains various shipping strategies when dropshipping here, I would highly recommend checking it out! We also have some information on setting up free shipping here that you could consider. Offering free shipping has many benefits, and can often encourage sales.
I would also recommend checking out our ultimate guide to dropshipping here. It’s full of helpful information that you can use to learn more about dropshipping on Shopify! Is this your first Shopify store? What kind of products will you be dropshipping?
So, im new as well and the whole shopify experience is pretty complex tbh. Even with help of AI.
So i am at point of shipping costs. But as every country, and every product size has different shipping costs…how can i even know which rates to put into it for all those countries ?
Would mean i need over 100 rates in there to cover everything just in case one product shipts to … cyprus or whatever country.
How do i set it up easily with not too much different rates to keep eye on? 
Shipping setup in Shopify can be overwehlming at first, but you don’t need to create hundreds of rates for every country. Here’s how you can simplify things.
Use Shipping Zones
-
Go to Settings >> Shipping and delivery > Manage rates.
-
Create Zones instead of individual countries like Europe, Asia or North America.
-
Add Multiple countries to one zone, andassign a flat rate for that region.
Use Carrier-calculated Shipping [if possible] -
If you want real time shipping costs like DHL, UPS, Fedex, shopify can fetch the cost automatically.
By following these steps you can ensure to add shipping for different countries.
If this was helpful mark as solution and like it.
For sure helpfull! Thanks
But if i use flat rate for lets say EU, the real ship costs vary (for package of 20kg) from 27 to 41 euros…imagine heavier packages.
So how can i take care of that ? I have shop with coffee, but also brewing stuff and grill tools etc. So a flat package seems unlogical?
Tips are always welcome 