How can I charge customers per item shipping on a large product site?

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Goal: charge shipping per item on a 200+ product catalog, with flat rates that vary by country, and have the total shipping sum per quantity (e.g., 2 shirts at $10 each → $20).

Constraints and issues:

  • Exceeds Shopify’s maximum number of shipping profiles, so a profile per product isn’t feasible.
  • Shopify Flat Rate does not support quantity-based shipping; multiple units only trigger a single flat rate (e.g., 2 items still charge once).
  • Grouping products into one profile results in shipping being applied once, not per item.

Suggested approaches:

  • Group products (e.g., Heavy vs. Light) and use weight-based or order value-based tiers to approximate per-item charges (e.g., 0.5–1 kg: $10; 1–1.5 kg: $20). This implies assigning weights such that added quantity increases the total weight and thus the shipping tier.
  • Use a third‑party app (e.g., ShipMagic) to create per‑item shipping rules; the requester is hesitant to pay for an app.

Status: no resolution. Open questions include the practicality of assigning unique or tiered weights across 200+ products to achieve quantity-based charges without an app.

Summarized with AI on January 15. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hi Guys I wonder if anyone can help me?

I have a site that will have 200+ products on, each costs a flat rate to each different country around the world.
I wish to charge the customer shipping per item added into the basket for example:

Item 1 costs £10 shipping
Item 2 costs £40 shipping.

If the customer orders both it will cost £50.00.

Because I have over 200+ i exceed the maximum shipping profiles i can create ( as I was going to have a shipping profile for each product ).

What is the best way to go about achieving this? I don’t really want to use an app as I don’t want to pay for something like this.

Thank you in advance!

2

Hello, @HarryGwinnell ,

Managing shipping rates for 200 different products, each with varying rates for different countries, can be quite challenging.

To simplify the process, I recommend grouping similar types of products together and defining shipping rates based on weight or order values. For instance, you can categorize products as Heavy or Light and create corresponding shipping rate slabs.

3

You can do so using our app ShipMagic.
You can create as many rules (shipping rates per item) as you want with our app.

4

The problem I am finding is that say the customer buys 2 of the same product it is not charging twice the shipping? Just one?

For example if a shirt costs $10 to ship and they order 2 shirts, its just $10 shipping, I need it to be $20.00

5

Hello, @HarryGwinnell ,

Shopify’s Flat Rate shipping does not support quantity-based shipping rates.

To set up shipping rates, you’ll need to use either weight-based or order value-based tiers.

For instance, you can configure it like this:

  • 0.5 - 1 kg: $10
  • 1 - 1.5 kg: $20
    and so on.
6

So every 200+ products have a unique weight to them?

7

The issue I am finding is that multiple products CAN be grouped together, but if i put them but in the basket it only gives me shipping for one and not both, Seems this should be simple feature in shopify…