Free Shipping on Certain Items

Hello, I am wondering if anyone has managed to work around Squarespace's reluctance (refusal?) to add item-specific shipping rates. Specifically, we want to offer free shipping in the continental US on only one category of our products. 

We are currently categorizing those products as "services" so Squarespace doesn't charge shipping for them. However this is not a good solution because:

1) we can't send those customers tracking numbers when we ship their item,

2) the only way to get their shipping address is to have them enter it when adding items to their cart, meaning if they order more than one of these items they have to enter their shipping address multiple times, and

3) there's no way to prevent someone from outside our free shipping area from placing an order, or to charge them shipping, leading us to lose money on the processing fees when we refund their order. Recently someone ordered one from another country, and the only options would've been to ask him to pay extra for shipping or cancel his order.

We use weight-dependent shipping on all the other items. Is there another way to work with the available shipping options so that certain items don't get charged shipping? I feel like there must be but I'm not smart enough to figure it out.

Squarespace, if you're reading this: please give the people what they want (item-specific shipping)!!

On 2/3/2021 at 7:34 PM, Aqua-Resin said:

I am wondering if anyone has managed to work around Squarespace's reluctance to add item-specific shipping rates. Specifically, we want to offer free shipping in the continental US on only one category of our products. 

Shipping is managed in a part of the platform that no-one - other than Squarespace's own engineers - can change. It simply isn't possible to modify the way shipping works.

Yes, we know. We'd love to change it too!

Squarespace don't routinely monitor this forum for feature requests. The only way to submit a feature request is by opening a ticket with Customer Care. 

UPDATE: Squarespace added Fulfilment Profiles. You can now limit shipping options to specific products or groups of products by creating Fulfilment Profiles. This is a good option if some of your products require special shipping arrangements. To learn more, visit Setting up shipping rates.

Thank you @paul2009! I have submitted a few feature requests to Squarespace. I understand this is something the developers would have to change; I'm just surprised they haven't yet.

In the meantime, I am looking for clever ways to use the options they have given us. 

Yes @Aqua-Resin I have ben wondering the exact same thing. Our eccommerce has a variety of products ranging from a lightweight item that takes a huge box (dimensional shipping costs) and little flat  items like lighters and candles, since we use the carrier calculated costs.

I would love to be able to charge one shipping price (bulk) because at this point, it would charge the customer 3 times for three boxes when in fact I could ship them in one box, and also add a free shipping if added to, etc.

@paul2009do you think would this ever be a feature that could be included or addressed by squarespace in an effort to enhance their ecommerce U.I. ?

On 2/3/2021 at 1:34 PM, Aqua-Resin said:

Hello, I am wondering if anyone has managed to work around Squarespace's reluctance (refusal?) to add item-specific shipping rates. Specifically, we want to offer free shipping in the continental US on only one category of our products. 

We are currently categorizing those products as "services" so Squarespace doesn't charge shipping for them. However this is not a good solution because:

1) we can't send those customers tracking numbers when we ship their item,

2) the only way to get their shipping address is to have them enter it when adding items to their cart, meaning if they order more than one of these items they have to enter their shipping address multiple times, and

3) there's no way to prevent someone from outside our free shipping area from placing an order, or to charge them shipping, leading us to lose money on the processing fees when we refund their order. Recently someone ordered one from another country, and the only options would've been to ask him to pay extra for shipping or cancel his order.

We use weight-dependent shipping on all the other items. Is there another way to work with the available shipping options so that certain items don't get charged shipping? I feel like there must be but I'm not smart enough to figure it out.

Squarespace, if you're reading this: please give the people what they want (item-specific shipping)!!

Not sure if this helps, but I did find a work around that worked for my company. The only downside is you can only give the customer either UPS or USPS for shipping, but they can't choose between both. I was playing around with the "Discounts" section and noticed that you can create a discount for free shipping on all orders, but they let you narrow it down to specific shipping options (UPS Ground, UPS 3 Day Select, USPS Ground, etc.) So I set up two fulfillment profiles; one for UPS and in-store pickup, and one for USPS and in-store pickup. I then created a discount for free shipping and applied it to all orders that ship via USPS. Then I changed all the free shipping product's fulfillment profile to USPS and in-store pickup, and everything else I set to UPS and in-store pickup. Then when the customer selects something we offer free shipping on, the only option they have at checkout will be USPS, which will automatically trigger the free shipping discount. What's nice about this method is that if a customer selects a free shipping item and a non-free shipping item, SS separates those two at checkout, so you'll see the free shipping discount applied to the free shipping item, but will still charge them for the UPS item. Hope this helps!