Configuring basic shipping settings for the Recharge Checkout on Shopify

The Recharge Checkout on Shopify uses the shipping rates you have set in Shopify to apply shipping costs, both at checkout and for recurring orders.

There are recommended configurations for your shipping settings in Shopify to optimize the available shipping rates for your subscription customers. Additionally, Recharge has settings within the Recharge app that you can leverage for your recurring orders.

This guide highlights the basics of shipping for the Recharge Checkout on Shopify and how to configure your shipping rates.

Before you start

• If you are using the Recharge Checkout on BigCommerce, refer to Recharge Shipping Zones and Rates.
• If you are using the Shopify Checkout Integration, refer to setting up shipping for subscription products.
• If you migrated to the Shopify Checkout Integration with existing subscribers, learn more about setting up your tax and shipping settings.

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Understand shipping settings

• Shipping rates will be calculated based on the rates you've configured within Shopify. 
• You can also offer free shipping on all items in the cart. However, please note that this will apply to both one-time and subscription items.
• Price-based shipping rates do not work well with Recharge Checkout on Shopify, due to the Shopify API limitations. Their API only takes the variant and address of the order as input and relies on the price of the product as set in Shopify. In other words, any price reductions that impact the order (for example, an applied discount code) will not be taken into consideration when presenting the available shipping rates.
• If you need to configure your taxes as well, please take a look at Setting up taxes in Recharge.

Enable shipping settings

1. In the Recharge Dashboard, click the wrench icon.
2. Select Shipping from the dropdown.
3. Under Charge shipping, select the Charge Shipping radio button.

Shipping rates 

The shipping rates for recurring orders can either be set to Dynamic or Retain.

Dynamic – Shipping rates will be recalculated every time a new recurring order is created. For example, if the shipping rate was originally $10 but you recently lowered your shipping rate to $5, the recurring order will have the updated $5 rate.

Retain – The shipping rate of the recurring order will be the same as the rate the customer received at checkout. The shipping rate can be adjusted at any time by the Store Owner. For more information on editing shipping lines, refer to our Editing shipping rates article.

Advanced settings

Handle shipping errors

Under Advanced Settings, you can also choose how Recharge handles orders when there are no available shipping rates.

Display an error if no matching shipping rate is found – Orders will not be processed if there is not an available shipping rate or the product in the order does not meet the requirements of the available shipping rate.

Process orders if no matching shipping rate is found – Recharge will still process the order, but without an applied shipping rate.

Shipping rate product type

You can choose whether Recharge uses the settings of the Original product or the Duplicate product when determining the shipping rate. For example, if you had a weight-based shipping rate and chose Original product, Recharge will use the weight of the Original product to determine which shipping rates are available.

Ship to specific countries

If you do not ship to all countries, you will need to identify the countries you ship to in the Recharge app. 

1. Select Ship to specific countries under the Ship to specific countries section.
2. Use the search box in the Countries section to search for the specific country you wish to ship to. You can add multiple countries at one time. 
3. Select Save to save your selection. 

Create shipping zones in Shopify

You can use shipping zones to choose the regions that you ship to and their corresponding shipping rates for each zone. These rates will show up on the next page of the checkout after the user enters their shipping address.

The following example is how one store has configured its shipping zones in Canada. These are set to charge more as the weight of the box increases.

In the same example, the store is based in the US, so their rates reflect the domestic shipping options.

For the remaining countries, they have set up an International Zone representing 18 countries and provided available international shipping rates.

For more information about creating shipping zones and shipping rates, reach out to the Shopify support team.

Additional information

Shipping by weight
Shipping by state