Shipping flexibility /specilized needs

Ask Me Anything Q&A Peak Season Prep Q&A

Topic summary

A merchant asks whether Shopify’s native shipping can handle three specialized scenarios: multi-box shipments for single items, drop-shipping from vendor locations, and FedEx Freight API integration.

Current Capabilities:

  • Multi-box shipments: Shopify supports split fulfillments (dividing orders across multiple shipments), but struggles with single SKUs requiring multiple boxes
  • Drop-ship locations: Can be configured using Shopify’s location system, though implementation depends on vendor setup
  • Freight shipping: Not currently supported

Workarounds & Future Plans:

  • The merchant currently uses a third-party app for these needs
  • Shopify acknowledges the single-SKU/multi-box limitation as a known blocker and plans to explore solutions, though no timeline is provided
  • No freight support is planned at this time

The discussion remains open with partial solutions available but key functionality gaps requiring either third-party apps or future platform development.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Can Shopify’s built in shipping handle items that are multi-box shipments? What about setting up a separate ship from location (not another store location, just a drop ship from a vendor situation)? Can Shopify handle calculating freight via FedEx Freight’s APIs?

currenly using a 3rd party app to handle things like this, but wondering how this is solved natively

2

Lots of great questions here!

Can Shopify’s built-in shipping handle items that are multi-box shipments? Yes and no. We don’t have native functionality to handle this super well. But if your order has multiple shipments, you can actually do a split shipment and then buy two or three or however many labels you need for that particular shipment. Here’s more info on split shipments: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/fulfillment/fulfilling-orders/single-fulfillment#split-fulfillment

What about setting up a separate ship from location? Not another store location, just a drop ship from a vendor situation. You can do this within Shopify by setting up a location and controlling what inventory is there. Again, it would depend on how your vendor is actually set up in order for them to receive those orders.

Can Shopify handle calculating freight via FedEx freight’s APIs? Not at the moment. There is no freight support on Shopify today.

1 Like
3

I do know how to do a split box shipment, but i have a few products that are a single item but ship in multiple boxes. Support for that would be cool. Freight support would be even better….Just for future development. :slight_smile:

4

Ah got it! Yes, we are very aware of the blocker when you only have a single SKU and it needs multiple boxes. It will take us some time, but we do plan on exploring how we could solve this.