You may want to provide free shipping to your customers, especially if they sign up for a subscription. This guide provides advice on setting up shipping in Shopify and ReCharge depending on the specific free shipping scenario.
Free shipping on subscription and one-time products
If you offer free shipping on your products, regardless of the type of product or where the customer is located, you can simply set your ReCharge Shipping settings to Do not charge shipping.
Free shipping on subscription products
If you just want to offer free shipping on subscription products and not on one-time products in the cart, we recommend setting up a weight-based shipping rate:
- Set up a weight-based shipping rate in Shopify that specifies 0lb/kg products receive free shipping.
- For your subscription products, adjust the weight of the hidden, auto-renew product to be 0.
- In Settings > Shipping, under Advanced Settings select Duplicate product from the Shipping rate product type dropdown.
- For the original product, make sure it has a weight that is not 0 and that you have a shipping rate available for products over 0lbs/kgs. In the case of a mixed cart, the one-time item will register a positive shipping rate.
Free shipping on the first charge only
When you add a product to a subscription ruleset, ReCharge creates a duplicate hidden product called the auto-renew product. ReCharge uses this auto-renew product to process the first order. Any recurring orders use the original product.
- Change the weight of the duplicate auto renew product to 0lbs/kg and the weight of the original product to a weight above 0lbs/kg.
- Set two shipping rates: one that will apply to the weight of the auto-renew product and one that will apply to the weight of the original product.
- In the first order, ReCharge will process the rate of the auto-renew product. The recurring orders afterward will be processed with the rate of the original product.
Check package weights
Shopify places a default weight on packages in their Shipping settings. This can lead to the free shipping rate not working if you use weight-based rates. For example, ig you have a product that is 1lb and a shipping rate from 0-1lb that is $4.99, then the shipping rate will not work.
To fix:
- In Shopify, click Settings and select Shipping.
- Scroll down to the Packages section and click Edit next to the default package.
- Set the weight to 0.
- Click Save.