WooCommerce Cart Based Shipping – How to set up

Author

Updated:
2017-01-16

Reading time:
2 minutes read

Category:
Blog, Customizable Rates

WooCommerce is a great tool for selling all kind of stuff. However, it falls short on some features. One of them, in my opinion, is advanced cart based shipping. In this tutorial, I will show you how to configure cart based shipping for WooCommerce with our 5-star rated Flexible Shipping plugin.

Cart Based Shipping – the basics

Out of the box in WooCommerce you can configure some simple shipping methods including: flat rate, free or local shipping. They are very basic and allow you to set up a fixed fee for shipping and that’s it.

However, most shops need more options based on cart contents, for example:

weight based shipping,
totals based shipping,
items based shipping (number of products or cart line items),
and finally location based shipping.

This is not possible with the shipping methods built in WooCommerce.

How to configure shipping costs based on cart contents

When you need any of the above shipping rules, our Flexible Shipping plugin comes in handy. First of all in the free version you will be able to configure shipping costs based on weight and totals.

Furthermore, in the PRO version you will also get rules based on number of items or cart line items. And finally, when you extend it with Flexible Shipping Locations you will be able to set advanced rules based on locations, including zip codes.

Flexible Shipping Locations WooCommerce €29.00

Extend Flexible Shipping with custom locations and create shipping costs based on weight, order totals or item count.

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Last Updated: 2024-03-25

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As a result, you get a complete tool for creating advanced shipping in WooCommerce. Let me show you on the screenshot below:

What Flexible Shipping rules can be based on

Shipping rules can be based on (When):

Always – select for a fixed fee.
Price – based on cart total. If a shipping class is assigned to this rule cart total will apply only to products from this class.
Weight – based on total weight of the cart contents.
PRO Item – based on number of items in the cart,
PRO Cart line item – based on number of cart line items.
PRO Shipping Class – based on the shipping class assigned to the product.

Examples:

Product A: 10 items, weight 1 kg, price $1
Product B: 2 items, weight 2 kg, price $2

Check out our video about one of the main feature of Flexible Shipping – Weight Based Shipping.

Conclusion

WooCommerce shipping is very basic out of the box therefore you can use a plugin to extend its options. You will find a complete configuration guide of Flexible Shipping plugin in our docs. You will be able to create shipping rules based on weight, price (free) and number of products, cart line items or shipping classes (PRO).