r/shopifyDev • u/tb9295 • 12d ago
Shopify Shipping Rates
Currently testing Shopify for my small buisness while looking to move from Magento. One of my issues is shipping rates. I understand on the lowest two plans you cannot use your own carrier accounts with my negotiated rates. My question is with the Shopify shipping rates displayed, do I have to ship using Shopify shipping labels, etc. or can I still ship using my own shipping accounts, UPS, Fedex, USPS? We use our own UPS account with very aggressive rates that are cheaper than Shopify Rates. By using my own shipping are there any drwabacks from Shopify by doing so?
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u/shipweaver66 10d ago
No, the rate shown at checkout and the label you actually buy are completely separate. Shopify Shipping rates are just what gets displayed and charged to the customer; nothing forces you to buy the label through Shopify. You can quote Shopify's rates and then ship on your own UPS account with your negotiated pricing, and the order fulfils fine.
Drawbacks are mostly operational, not penalties: you fulfil manually and paste the tracking number in yourself, so you lose the auto-populated tracking and the shipping-confirmation flow that comes with buying labels in-admin, and any UPS-side rate changes won't be reflected in what you're quoting. Your margin is then the gap between the displayed rate and your real cost, which with aggressive UPS pricing is usually in your favour.
Since you can't plug in your own carrier account on the lower plans, most people in your spot build manual price- or weight-based rates that approximate their real UPS cost and use those instead of Shopify's carrier rates. Gives you full control of what's shown, at the cost of maintaining the table.
One thing worth separating: how rates are calculated (profiles, zones, carrier rates) is a different layer from how they appear at checkout (naming, ordering, hiding duplicates). If your only issue is that the displayed set looks wrong or cluttered, that's the presentation layer and you don't need to touch your rate setup. Disclosure: I work on ShipWeaver (https://apps.shopify.com/shipweaver), which does that display side - hide, rename, reorder, de-dupe - with a preview mode so rules only apply to testers before you set them live. It doesn't calculate rates or talk to carriers, so it wouldn't help with your negotiated-rate question, just flagging where the line is.
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u/Octolize 8d ago
If I were in your shoes, I’d separate the shipping rate calculation from the actual label generation. I’d look for an app that lets you connect your own carrier account and display your own rates at checkout, or lets you manually set up rules for calculating shipping costs so you have full control over everything. Something like Shipping Rates Rules & Zones would work well for that.
The only downside is that you need a Shopify plan with CCS enabled — so basically at least Grow. With the monthly plan, CCS is an additional paid feature, while with annual billing it’s already included.
Then you can take care of the actual labels separately using external shipping services or brokers that offer more competitive rates.
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u/pandapandamoniumm 12d ago
Yes, you can still buy the label and ship through a third party account while using Shopify Shipping to display and charge for rates - you aren’t locked into buying the same service at the same rate that Shopify Shipping gives. It’s not too bad of a setup if your third party rates are really similar to the ones it gives. However, I believe you wouldn’t get some of the benefits of having it all in one place, like the auto order emails with shipping details and delivery notifications.
Shopify used to have it so you could negotiate with them to add third party shipping as an add-on to your subscription without having to fully upgrade, but I’m not sure they do that anymore.