Shopify Shipping for Subscription Products
In a nutshell, 99% of the time you DO NOT need to create a separate delivery profile for subscription products. Shopify will display your normal shipping rates and use your shipping rules for subscription products. See below for more details.
Shopify calculates your shipping rates for subscription products.
Shopify uses your Shipping Rates settings.
This means if you have set up a delivery profile for your products, Shopify will be using these rules to calculate shipping costs for your subscription products.
These settings can be found on Shopify --> Settings --> Shipping and Delivery
This allows you to set delivery profiles for specific products, regions, etc.
Note: Shopify defaults to the cheapest option for subscription shipping. Shopify only shows one shipping option for subscription products.
We recommend getting in touch with Shopify support for help with shipping rates. https://www.shopify.com/contact
What if I offer free shipping to customers if they spend a certain dollar amount?
Let's say you offer free shipping over $50.
We do not recommend creating an Ongoing delivery profile. Actually the good news is you don't have to do anything, Shopify will automatically apply this logic to your subscription products.
This is great especially for a "mixed cart" situation where a customer might be purchasing both subscription products and one time purchases.
Shopify will use the combined total of one-time purchase products and subscription products to see if meets the minimum dollar amount to get free shipping, and if it does, it will apply free shipping at checkout for the first order.
Since it's free shipping on the first order only with this type of set up, Shopify will auto-recalculate the shipping price for the subscription product on the next recurring shipments to make sure the customer is charged for future shipments.
So for the subscription product, you might see shipping is $0 on the first shipment and then for future recurring orders $5 shipping (just an example. )
This is ideal for merchants who want to offer free shipping only on the first shipment, but on future recurring shipments, they want to charge for shipping. |
Ongoing Subscription Shipping Feature
Do I need to create shipping and delivery profile? |
Nope, unless you want to offer Free shipping only on subscription products or a special flat rate Shipping Fee only for subscription products.
Otherwise , by default Shopify will use your normal shipping settings for your subscription products which is just fine. See below for more details.
ONLY USE THIS FEATURE IF YOU WANT TO OFFER DIFFERENT SHIPPING RATES FOR SUBSCRIPTION PRODUCTS THAN YOU OFFER FOR ONE TIME PURCHASES. EXAMPLE: YOU WANT TO OFFER FREE SHIPPING OR A SPECIAL FLAT RATE FOR SUBSCRIPTION PRODUCTS. OTHERWISE, NO ACTION NEEDED. SHOPIFY WILL USE YOUR REGULAR SHIPPING RATES FOR SUBSCRIPTION PRODUCTS, SO YOU'RE ALL SET! |
For more control over subscription product shipping, you can use our advanced Ongoing Subscriptions shipping controls.
They can be found on Ongoing app --> Settings --> Shipping and Delivery
Here you can create a delivery profile for a subscription group and it applies that delivery profile to all products in that subscription group.
You can have more than one subscription group in a delivery profile.
If you have any questions about how to create delivery profiles using Ongoing, get in touch with us here.
Read our full guide here:
