I was actually asking the same question. It’s disappointing that Shopify doesn’t offer this to us. Hopefully that will change this 2023.
I would hope they would do the right thing and add that functionality but don’t expect them to. It’s my understanding that Shopify gets a percentage of the fee for each additional app used. By forcing you to use an additional shipping app that does this, it effectively Shopify raises the cost to users of its site while still allowing them to advertise low monthly fees. Kind of like selling a car and making a steering wheel and brakes extra. Simply put, it’s not in their interest to fix this.
Agreed, we use Boxify and it helps solve this for us to give us correct rates for customers, but now as of September 2022 Google requires shipping information for Google Shopping and tries to post shipping costs for customers to see in Google Shopping, we’re left out in the cold because we don’t have dimensions to be able to provide accurate shipping rates. Google US will use carrier calculated rates, but not in Canada. This is really hurting us as we no longer appear in search results. Google’s solution to this so far is “make up a number”.
Throwing my name onto this thread to request “PRODUCT-SIZE-BASED SHIPPING.”
It just makes sense.
And I should NOT have to upgrade and pay thousands of dollars for the “mid-tier plan” on Shopify in order to implement this.
This is not new either: My old Quick Shopping Cart from GoDaddy had sized based shipping since at least 2006, when I started my first ecommerce website. Their program would even tell you HOW it packed the boxes so you can see HOW it calculated the shipping. No complaints. No lost sales. No unhappy customers. Maybe I shouldn’t have switched to Shopify after all. Ugh.
This is incredible important and it boggles the mind that a product that is supposed to support online businesses doesn’t have. We just lost our entre profit on the sale of an item because I thought by adding the item to a shipping profile I called Large Packages, it would charge approximately the correct amount. The system charged the customer about 1/2 the correct amount. The profit margin we had on that product was slim and so this wiped out any profit. Even the most basic marketplace platform provides the ability to enter shipping dimensions!
We have lost so much money because of this very situation, If we ship something large but not heavy, we generally are stuck paying an additional $10-$15. It’s maddening. I’ve moved several of my items over to ebay which calculates within the item description, it would be nice to have a fully functional platform that can see the process through.
We are fighting the exact same issue and have moved several of our items over to ebay and off of Shopify for that reason. It’s frustrating.
It is unfortunate that product dimensions are not taken into account for Shopify shipping. One possible work around is to define a cubic weight, Cubic weight = H x W x L x 250 (where the dimensions are in meters) and compare it to the actual weight of the item in kilograms, and save the larger of the two for Shopify shipping calculation. This is how carriers use the dimension information to calculate rates. For example, if the cubic weight of the item is: (H) 0.8m x (W) 0.5m x (L) 0.15m x 250 = 15kg, and the actual weight is: 5kg, you will take the larger (which is 15 kg) and save it as your product weight. This way you have more accurate rates from Shopify.
Alternatively, if you have CCS activated on your store, our app JsRates can easily utilize the dimension information saved on metafields. Knowledge of JavaScript is essential to effectively utilize JsRates. If you are not familiar with JsRates, we can assist you in setting up your rates.
I know it’s not always ideal to bring on another solution, but Starshipit supports this through the Product Catalogue feature. You can add dimensions (as well as other details like HS codes, etc). Just a suggestion in any case!
Since posting this many months ago, I have implemented Boxify. It took a
little getting used to but has provided customers with fairly accurate
shipping quotes. Also, it’s another step to have to go through to manually
add the dimensions for any new listing through the Boxify app. It isn’t that
much more work than to have to remember to manually add a new product to a
Shopify custom shipping rate.
Good to hear you’ve found a solution. Do you find they cover all the carriers you need?
Yes it does. We don’t use any unusual shippers though.
We agree. For a professional online store service provider with its own contracted volumetric shipping rates, there can be little doubt Shopify should have closed this feature-gap years ago with Shopify native capabilities.
It appears clear that to close this feature-gap Shopify needs to
- Add Shopify Product Dimension fields to Shopify Products.
- Employ user setup options for calculating the shipping dimensions for an entire Shopify Order based on the Shopify Product Dimensions of the products in the Shopify Order.
- Employ their new Shopify Product Dimensions fields to determine the cost of Shopify Shipping in Shopify Checkout where Shopify contracted shipping services (UPS, USPS, DHL, etc), use product Dimensions for volumetric shipping rates based on the calculation.
- Finally, Shopify should also include options to bypass steps 1, 2, and 3 (above) if a Shopify customer wants to use a third party application features instead.
Shopify Team, any response on this?
This is such an important feature. With this high views number, sadly still not happening…
As of February 25, 2024, this still appears NOT to be fixed. If anyone has found a solution that is not in the form of an additional app, please share. Thank you!
Ready for my Hack ?
Shopify sends each unique product to the 3rd party gateway with a SKU code .. my SKU is not formatted as such - {unique identifier}-{LLWWHHWW} see below and what I can in my nodejs gateway is pickup the SKU and split the string on the “-” delimiter and subsequently split the resulting string into 2 digit Length width height and weight values …
Items: [ {“name”:“Pot Still Irish Vodka - 1”,“sku”:“123467-08083102”,“quantity”:1,“grams”:2000,“price”…
Boom
Can you explain this further?
Yes, can you explain this further?
Followup: I’ve been using Shippo.com
No monthly fee which is helpful as my sales are few but large i.e. I don’t ship often enough to justify paying an additional monthly fee. On Shippo I get great discounts on shipping and only pay as I use it.
We’ve been using the Bespoke Shipping App. Excellent support, appears to
handle every shipping service in existence and works very well with many
options to get the pricing just right. And it adds metafields to Shopify
to handle volumetric shipping.
Fields which, of course, Shopify needed to add years ago and standardize
for all customers and shopify app as they all currently do “it” differently
and if you move from one app to another, you’ll need to get all you
dimensions re-added to work with any other app.