Exluding items from free shipping

I’m planning on connecting to a few vendors through Shopify Connect. Those merchants have their own shipping rates. I have a discount code for Free Shipping on purchases over X amount. I don’t want the amount of anything purchased through a Shopify Connect merchant to count towards the “Free Shipping” threshold. But, it does. Is there a way to address this?

Hello @subculturegolf

That happens because Shopify’s built-in free-shipping discounts always look at your entire cart total—they don’t natively exclude line items by vendor. Here’s what I would suggest:

1. Group vendor products into their own collection

  • In your admin, create a collection like “Connect Vendor Items” and assign all those products to it.
  • This gives you an easy way to reference or exclude them in discount settings.

2. Use a discount code instead of an automatic free-shipping rule

  • Go to Discounts → Create discount → Free shipping and choose “Discount code” (e.g. FREESHIP).
  • Under “Applies to”, select “Collections” and choose all collections except “Connect Vendor Items”.
  • Set the minimum purchase amount to your X threshold.
  • Now only non-vendor products count toward and trigger the free-shipping code.

3. Consider Shopify Plus Scripts or Functions (if you upgrade)

  • On Plus, you can write a Checkout Script (Ruby) or Function (JS/TS) to inspect each line item’s product.vendor.
  • Your script can sum only eligible items for the threshold and apply free shipping accordingly—no manual collections required.

4. Explore a third-party discount app

  • Apps like Discount Ninja or Advanced Discounts & Free Shipping let you build more granular rules (e.g., “exclude products by vendor” or “only count items in specific tags”).
  • Install one, then set up a free-shipping rule that ignores any item tagged connect_vendor.

5. Test thoroughly

  • Add mixed carts (some vendor items + some non-vendor items) and verify that the free-shipping code only activates when non-vendor subtotal ≥ X.
  • Make sure the code can’t be applied if only vendor products are in the cart.
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I found a very economical solution. 95% of my products ship from Printify providers. I wanted those to be eligible for Free Shipping. My steps:

  1. Create Smart Collection (Free Shipping Eligible) where Vendor = Printify
  2. Used Octolize Shipping Discounts to create following Discount

Confirmed Free Shipping eligible products.

Very reasonably priced solution at $50/yr.

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