How to Set Up Differentiated Shipping Rates Rules for Product Categories

If you have a specific product category for which you need to apply an additional shipping cost, while maintaining standard live shipping rates for other categories, the following guide will help you configure your settings accordingly.

For instance, let’s assume your shop offers three distinct categories: clothing, toys, and furniture, and you only ship within the USA.

For the clothing and toys categories, you will charge the standard live shipping rates. However, for furniture, which includes higher-value items, an additional fee of $35 will be added on top of the regular shipping costs.

First, create a shipping zone for the USA.

Add the shipping method by selecting the shipping plugin you use. For this example, we are using Shippo Shipping Pro.

click on “Add shipping method” and select Shippo Shipping.

For the initial entry configuration: clothes and toys

Set up a single entry for both categories. This configuration will display the standard live shipping rates. Click on “edit” – to configure shipping services

Add the shipping services you wish to offer your customers. For instance, we will use USPS Priority Mail as our example. 

Next, select the product categories to apply this service to, such as clothes and toys.

Click “Save changes”

Next, we’ll create a second entry configuration for furniture products. 

While we’ll continue to offer USPS Priority Mail as the shipping service, an additional fee of $35 will be added to the shipping costs for the furniture category products. We will simply repeat the above steps again. 

click on “Add shipping method” and select Shippo Shipping.

Click on “Edit”

Select “USPS priority mail” for shipping services – select the product category “Furniture” Input “35” in the “Add to Rate” column, which is the additional rate that we want to add to the original shipping cost.

Click “Save changes”

You now have two Shippo shipping configurations set up. The first applies to the regular product categories and will display the standard shipping costs in the cart. 

The second configuration is for the furniture category, which will add an additional $35 on top of the regular shipping costs and display in the cart.

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