Turn off free shipping or PO Box delivery for certain products
Rules that remove shipping options at checkout when the cart holds certain products, ships to a PO Box, or falls inside an order value range.
5 rule types
from turning off free shipping to limiting carriers
4 carriers
USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL
Live rates
from ShipStation, trimmed to the services you choose
The problem
BigCommerce’s built-in shipping settings work per zone and per method. They cannot easily say "if this cart contains anything from these categories, don’t offer free shipping" or "if this goes to a PO Box, only offer carriers that deliver there."
Without that, a store either loses money on free shipping for heavy or restricted items, or sells a service the carrier cannot deliver and then fixes the order by hand. Some products also come with carrier restrictions.
What we built
A private BigCommerce app that decides which shipping options a shopper sees at checkout and what each one costs.
- Product groups, built from BigCommerce categories or from a product custom field.
- Shipping rules linked to those groups. A rule can turn off free shipping, block PO Box delivery, apply only to PO Box addresses, limit the cart to certain carriers (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL), or apply only between a minimum and maximum order value.
- A store-wide free shipping threshold that rules can override.
- Clear checkout messages, such as "Some items in your cart cannot be shipped to PO Box addresses."
- Live carrier rates from ShipStation, trimmed to the services the merchant wants to sell, with their own names and markups.
How it works
- The app is registered with BigCommerce as a shipping provider, so it replaces the store’s built-in quotes instead of sitting on top of them.
- At checkout, BigCommerce sends the cart and address to the app. The app matches each product to its groups, finds the rules that apply, and combines them so the strictest set wins.
- It asks ShipStation for rates only from the carriers that are still allowed, then returns the options to checkout.
- PO Box detection catches the common ways people type it: "P.O. Box", "POBOX", "Post Office Box".
- Carrier rules match both carrier codes and display names. ShipStation reports some USPS accounts under a reseller’s name, and a plain "USPS" check would miss them.
- The residential or commercial flag is passed through, so residential surcharges are quoted correctly.
Results
- In production on the retailer’s stores.
- Each store keeps its own rules and settings, and a full setup can be copied from one store to another.
- When a carrier account was closed and replaced, the rate settings moved to the new account in one action instead of being rebuilt service by service.
Could this work for your store?
Product groups, rule types, PO Box handling and the free shipping threshold are general and driven by settings.
What changes per store: the carrier list and the US-only ZIP check. The app relies on ShipStation as the source of rates.
Shipping rules like these sit next to location rules. If some of your products cannot ship to certain states at all, start with the checkout compliance build.
See the checkout compliance offerRelated work
Block checkout by state or ZIP on BigCommerce
Stops a shopper before payment when something in the cart cannot ship to their address, and cancels and refunds anything that gets through anyway.
Read the caseAn owned loyalty program for BigCommerce
Points, VIP tiers, rewards and referrals in a program the retailer owns, with redemptions that become working BigCommerce coupons.
Read the caseSee where your own checkout stands
The first step is the same for every store: a free check of your shipping policy and checkout, sent back as a short video.
BuildPath is run by Ian Mason, a developer with 20 years in ecommerce and search.
- The check is free
- A short video of what we find
- If we find nothing, we tell you that