How to set up a Free Shipping Promotion to only apply to Standard Shipping (not Expedited Shipping)

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment

Topic summary

Merchants want to offer free shipping promotions that apply only to standard/ground shipping rates, not expedited options. Currently, Shopify’s native free shipping discount codes make all shipping methods free when applied.

Shopify’s suggested workaround:

  • Set an exclusion for “shipping rates over a certain amount” to prevent expensive expedited options from becoming free
  • This approach fails for many merchants because:
    • Shipping rates vary by product weight, size, and destination
    • Standard shipping for large orders can exceed expedited rates for small orders
    • Error messages confuse customers (“discount not available for your address” instead of explaining rate restrictions)

Why merchants need this feature:

  • Prevents customers from exploiting free shipping codes by selecting expensive expedited options
  • Avoids manual order review to downgrade shipping methods
  • Calculated shipping rates make dollar-amount exclusions impractical
  • Multiple shipping profiles with different rate structures complicate workarounds

Current status:

  • Feature remains unavailable in native Shopify (only Shopify Plus can use scripts)
  • Support has added multiple merchants to feature requests over several years
  • No ETA provided for implementation

Available solutions:

  • Third-party apps like Advanced Free Shipping, Single Code Discount by Swiftbee, Customer Shipping Rules, or Bespoke Shipping
  • Merchants express frustration at paying monthly fees ($10+) for what they consider basic functionality
Summarized with AI on October 27. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
4

Hey, @shannonanderson .

Thank you for reaching out and joining the thread!

I understand that the free shipping exception does not work with your current setup, since you have different customer tiers (regular, wholesale, and trade customers). As previously mentioned, I wasn’t able to find any workarounds for applying free shipping in this scenario. However, I’d be happy to put forth a feature request on your behalf.

With that being said, there are a couple of third-party shipping apps that can create shipping rates based on different customer profiles, such as retail and wholesale. Did you get a chance to try out Customer Shipping Rules or Bespoke Shipping?