I know Shopify combines shipping profiles as a standard. Up until now, we didn’t charge any shipping at checkout and shipping was charged prior to shipping of an order and for free shipping items, we were able to use an app to hide shipping methods. However, recently we went to a flat rate shipping cost up to a free shipping amount and free shipping amount up to $150 and free shipping over $150. We have items that ship for free regardless of the amount though and Shopify is counting those towards our flat rate/free shipping over $150. Is there a way to exclude these from factoring into the flat rate/free shipping over $150 calculation? From our previous methods, we have all items that automatically ship for free setup with a “free shipping” tag and items that shipping applies to in a “shipping applied” collection. We have tried some different things from apps to shipping profiles but none have been successful. Hopefully a workaround or app to solve this issue, that is free or inexpensive.
Hey @HTX-Fluid-Power
You’ve run into one of those Shopify quirks that drives merchants a little nuts. Out of the box, Shopify calculates shipping at the order level, so it doesn’t let you exclude specific products (like your always-free shipping ones) from the subtotal when applying flat-rate/free-shipping rules. That’s why your free-ship items are still being counted toward the $150 threshold.
A couple of workarounds I’ve seen:
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Separate shipping profiles: You can put your always-free-ship items into their own profile and disable rates, but the catch is Shopify still tries to combine everything at checkout, which doesn’t fully solve it
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Third-party apps: This is usually where you get more control. Some apps let you create conditional rules, like “exclude tagged products from shipping calculation” or “apply free shipping only if tagged ‘shipping applied’ collection reaches $X”
Unfortunately, for the exclusion logic itself, Shopify doesn’t give you a native fix, you’ll need an app that specializes in conditional shipping rates. Some of them are inexpensive (a few even have free tiers), so it’s worth trialling.
Hope this helps a bit! If it does, feel free to mark it as a solution so others can find it too!
Hi @HTX-Fluid-Power ,
The issue you’re facing is likely caused by items belonging to different shipping profiles. In Shopify, shipping is calculated separately per profile, so even if the total cart value is $150, the subtotal per profile might be lower and not qualify for free shipping.
Our ShipEZ - Shipping Rates & Rules app can solve this problem. With our Growth plan ($17.99), you can combine rates from multiple profiles and apply free shipping based on the total order value.
Please note, this feature requires Shopify’s Carrier Calculated Shipping (CCS), which is only available on the Shopify Grow plan with annual billing or higher.
Let us know if you’d like help setting it up.