WP eStore’s main strength is selling of digital product so we do not offer complex shipping options in the eStore plugin in an effort to keep the plugin easy to use and lightweight. Please feel free to read the available shipping options in eStore from this page so you can determine if it will meet your shipping needs.
1. Simple Shipping Option
If you just want to use flat shipping cost for each item then just enter “0” in the Base Shipping Cost option in the settings menu and add the individual shipping cost in the “Item Shipping Cost” field when you configure the product.
If you just want to use a fixed shipping cost for the cart no matter how many items are in the cart then you can achieve this by specifying this fixed amount in the base shipping cost. Remember, the base shipping cost is only added to the cart if a product in the cart has individual shipping value specified (this way if a customer buys digital product he doesn’t get charged any shipping). Use an individual shipping value of “0.001” for your physical items which won’t increase the shipping cost but will trigger the base shipping cost to be added as a fixed shipping rate.
2. Using PayPal’s Profile Based Shipping
You can have PayPal calculate shipping charges automatically. PayPal calculates shipping charges based on rates that you specify in your account profile. You can set up shipping rates as follows:
- Domestic (U.S.-only) shipping rates for regions defined by state or zip code
- International shipping rates for regions define by country or jurisdiction
You can specify shipping rate based on the weight of the items too. Within shipping regions, you can specify rates for different shipping methods, such as standard and express delivery.
We have a tutorial on how to setup paypal profile based shipping that you can look at if you have never configured profile based shipping before.
To use PayPal’s profile based shipping simply check the “Use PayPal Profile Based Shipping” checkbox in the settings menu of eStore and the shopping cart will use the shipping options you have specified in your PayPal account profile:

PayPal’s profile based shipping
If you use PayPal’s profile based shipping, your customers will be prompted to enter the shipping destination when they go to checkout via PayPal.

Choose destination for shipping calculation
After the customer enter the destination it will automatically add the shipping amount based on what you have specified in your profile (eg. based on the weight of item and or delivery location).

Shipping is calculated based on the specified criteria in your profile
3. How to Give Shipping Discount when Someone Buys Multiple Products
What if you want to use the simple shipping option but be a little more intelligent with the shipping cost calculation and want to use Base Shipping Cost in conjunction with the individual product shipping cost to offer your customers a better shipping price? You can do that too.
The base shipping cost is added to the total of the individual products shipping cost (The base shipping cost is only applied to the cart if any of the cart item has an individual shipping amount specified for it). So for example if you had two products that costs $50 each and you want to charge $10 shipping for each item then someone buying both the products would have to pay $100(product cost) + $20(shipping cost) = $120(total). That is not a very realistic shipping price since you are shipping both the products to the same address in one package so it will probably cost you $15 instead of $20.
How do you handle this situation?
You use a base shipping cost of $5 and individual product shipping cost of $5.
Now when someone buys both the products the shipping cost will be calculated as following:
$5(shipping for product1) + $5(shipping for product2) = $10(total individual products shipping cost)
Total shipping cost = $10(total individual products shipping cost) + $5(base shipping cost) = $15!
When someone buys one product the shipping cost will be calculated as following:
$5(shipping for product1) = $5(total individual products shipping cost)
Total shipping cost = $5(total individual products shipping cost) + $5(base shipping cost) = $10! (this is the shipping you wanted to charge for one product)
So, hopefully you can see that using the base shipping cost in conjunction with the individual product shipping cost you can be very dynamic in determining the total shipping cost for a purchase.
4. Using A Shipping Variation Option
You can use the shipping variation option field to add more shipping options for your need. For example, you can add a variation called Shipping with the values “Domestic” and “International” that adds different amount to the cart based on the user selection.
Please refer to the WP eStore Shipping Variation documentation to learn how to use variations.
5. Using Bulk Quantity Shipping Discount
Check the bulk quantity shipping discount addon for details.
6. Using Amount Based Shipping
The Amount Based Shipping addon allows you to automatically apply a shipping amount to the cart based on a price range.
Note: We provide technical support for our premium plugins via our customer only support forum
@Anna You can do a flat rate shipping fee. This means no matter how many items they but they will pay the same amount.
You can also set it up so there is a base fee (Example $3.00) and each item they add to the cart adds a small amount to the shipping cost (Example: 1.00 per item).
Is it possible that only one shipping amount is charged if you buy several products?
Hi, Yes but you will need an update if you do not have this option in the coupon/discount section of your plugin:
The following post will explain how updates work: http://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/update-request
so its now possible to set up shipping discounts
like free shipping for purchases above 40€ or something..
am i right?
Nice system! Shipping can be complicated as is adding tax.
Hi, PayPal profile shipping is only available in the US at this time.
Is PayPal profile based shipping working for those of us in the UK? I don’t seem to have all the settings in paypal mentioned here (just settings for each currency) and when everything is enabled there is no destination request from the customer and no shipping is added….
Hi Lynn, Unfortunately PayPal is lacks a bit of feature for this. The only option they allow you to do is specify “Let transaction based shipping override profile based shipping” then for a digital product you can specify “0.0” as the shipping and it won’t charge shipping. The only issue is that this method works fine for “Buy Now” type button as you check out each item individually so this can be specified correctly.
For an “Add to Cart” button whereby you can checkout multiple items there is no way to specify which product is digital.
We want to be able to charge shipping differently for international orders and since the plugin does not currently support this, we are considering using PayPal’s shipping cost calculator. Since we are selling both digital and non-digital products, if we were to use PayPal’s shipping calculator, would shipping also be applied to the digital products (which we wouldn’t want to charge any shipping for)? That is, is there a way to ensure that the shipping charges calculated by PayPal only apply to the non-digital products?
Hi Brent, By change do you have Paypal profile shipping turned on? Can you post the short code you are using for your product with the shipping?
Cheers,
The shopping cart is not trasnfering the shipping to Paypal. shipping is calculated correclty, when the plugin transfers the transaction to Paypal the shipping charge is not included. If you visit my site, the cart is located at http://vitahound.com/dog-nutrition-products/
Hi HB, Yes you can use the WP Affiliate with the WP eStore manual payment option. The following forum post will explain how to do this:
http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forum/topic/how-to-handle-affiliate-commission-for-manual-checkout-in-wp-estore
Cheers,
Ivy
Hi HB, Yes you can do this but you will have to use the manual payment option. This means you will have to send out the email manually once you have received the payment. With the manual payment option the plugin will not use the automated features (e.g. send out the emails, adding the sales count, and so on).
Cheers,
Ivy
Thanx for your quick reply …
If I use the manual payment, can i still use your affiliate plugin ?
It’s fine with me if i have to write email manually , as long as i can still use your affiliate plugin … 🙂
HB
Hi,
Can I disable the shipping cost and write a note that a shipping cost + product cost will be emailed to customer? I have a quite complex shipping.
HB
Hi Lynn, The plugin will only charge shipping cost that is displayed in the cart. Can you please post a link to the page where you have this product so I can check it out?
Hi – we are having several problems with the plugin. First, it is not calculating shipping properly. The last few times someone has purchased two books on the site, they have been charged $12.50 for shipping. I had it set so that the base shipping price is $2.50 and each additional book is priced at $2.50 so if someone bought two books they should have been charged $7.50. Instead they are charged $5 more than that — $12.50. Any idea why this is happening? The second issue is that we’ve had about 5-6 sales recently, none of which show up in the stats or in the customer list in the app. I have the debug box checked and I saw that you mentioned to check the ipn_handle_debug.log file. How and where do I access that file? I am not that technical savvy so you need to explain this to me in very basic laymen’s terms. If it’s easier I can give you access to my back-end panel so you can see for yourself. Thanks.
I do not know when this feature will be added. =)
Ivy
Ivy, any idea how long into the future? 🙂
Dan, The WP eStore does not have Paypal Pro Payment processing. We do intend to add Paypal Pro payment gateway in the future.
Ivy
This may not be affiliated with this section but can I use Paypal Website Payments Pro with WP eStore? I ask because we don’t want the user to be “redirected” to Paypal.com and then back to our site.
Thanks for any input!
Hi Nix, I will add this feature in the plugin.. please give me a few days and I should have something ready.
Hi Nix, eStore doesn’t have free shipping based on quantity but this can be added easily.
hi thanks for your reply, May I know how to do so based on 4 items and above can get free shipping ? thanks
Hi, I have been stuck at the shipping cost for few hours. I’m wondering whether I can set the shipping cost to be something like this (base on quantity):
I’m selling carious kind of items.
Let say a customer purchase 1-3 items have to pay for the shipping USD10. If they purchase up to 4 items there will be free shipping, may I know how to set that?
Thanks!
Hi Chris, We are always adding new features to our plugins. We are planing on adding a more advanced shipping feature in the future. You can suggest any features you would like to see added to our plugins on the eStore wish list page.
Ivy
Hi.. Further to the comment I left above. I’d be happy to pay the same as I paid originally for a ‘Pro’ version of the store with more advanced shipping options and calculation based on weight/destination etc and also deal with addressing.
Again, this is a fantastic store but I’d happily pay for these advanced features. It looks like, based on the comments above, that there might well be plenty of others as well, especially as stores based on eStore grow.
Hi Chris, The WP eStore doesn’t have complex shipping options. Did you try the 3rd shipping option from this page? If you have what values are you using? Just want to see why it is scaling too high.
Hi,
We’ve found the plug-in fantastic so far but the shipping options have me stumped. I’m shipping from the UK and need to offer shipping to the UK, Europe and rest of World. Paypal inexplicably doesn’t offer this in the UK. ]
I’ve tried using the Product variations and base postage and still can’t get it to work if someone orders multiple items as the shipping rate scales too expensively.
Hi Lynn, the base shipping is only added to the cart if a product in the cart has individual shipping value specified. So if someone simply buys the digital version they won’t get any shipping charge. All you gotta do is make two products (one for the digital version and one for the physical version). The digital version won’t have any shipping but will have a download. The Physical version will have a shipping value of $2.50.
We are selling both digital and non-digital products. For our digital products it is an eCoaching program that is delivered to buyers over several weeks via email autoresponders we have set up in AWeber. We decided to go this route vs. delivering all MP3s at once via a link or download. So when we set these eCoaching products up, they are not identified as digital products by the plugin since we left that area blank and just subscribed the buyer to the appropriate AWeber list that subscribes them to receive the weekly MP3s.
Now we want to implement “smarter” shipping by using a $2.50 base shipping cost that would be applied to the “real” products only, not the eCoaching digital products. Then apply a $2.50 per product shipping cost so that if someone buys one real product (e.g. book), it ships for $5 and two would ship for $7.50. The problem is that since our digital products are not identified as digital by the plugin, if we use the base shipping, the buyer would be charged the base $2.50 shipping as well. Is there any way around this? Do we have to do a “coupon” for free shipping to reverse out the base shipping that was applied and have it apply only for those few digital products that are delivered via AWeber? Is that even possible?
Any help or advice is appreciated.
Hi Mayu, what you did is perfectly fine and should work. I will take a look and let you know what the issue could be.
Hi,
Amazing plugin!!
You probably have answered this question many times but I am still confused about the shipping options. We are offering online CD sale and the shipping cost is $2.99. What changes should I make if I want to keep the shipping cost same irrespective of the quantity? Your documentation mentions it but I just do not get it. I tried a one thing. Under settings, I put the base shipping cost to $2.99 and under manage products, I put the shipping cost to 0.0000001 that way the shipping will remain same for more than 1 item. The shopping cart then shows the shipping amount but when I click on ‘check out with paypal’, the paypal amount does not show any shipping cost. Only the price of the cd. Would you Please check out the site and let me know whats the problem.
Thanks a lot!
Mayu
@Mark, by the word “box”, do you mean a border around the shopping cart? if you do then modify the “shopping_cart” CSS from the “wp_eStore_style.css” file to add the border info:
.shopping_cart {
font-size:12px;
border:1px #ccc;
}
Additionally you can search for CSS borders on the net and find some cool examples and implement them too.
Hey:
Love your plugin and having fun working it into my wp site that currently sits on my PC at home. Can you tell me how to create a box around the Shopping Cart so that the cart is always displayed on my product page and is always in a box, preferably with some fancy decoration as you have for your products in the eStore?
Thanx
MAF
@Chris, yeah I am definitely going to extend the functionality of the coupon code so you can allow free shipping in a future update.
Something I’d love to see integrated is a “free shipping” coupon ability added. What are the possibilities of doing that? Thanks for the tips on this page. Very helpful.
The “Use PayPal Profile Based Shipping” checkbox is in the “Payment Gateway Settings” tab under the “Settings” Menu of the eStore plugin. Once you check this field the shipping will be charged according to the rates you have specified in your PayPal profile.
Aloha,
Could you send me the instructions (again?) for how to use the paypal profile based shipping.
I have been up and down and all through the settings and still can not find the check box mentioned.
I could really use to resolve this today if possible.
thanks.
Hi Jas, Yes, you can use paypal shipping calculation system. I will email you with the modification you will need to achieve this.
Can I use the paypal shipping calculations system? otherwise how do I adjust for internationals shipping rates when needed?
Well, I read the section on variations and that did the trick for me, since I can now have them choose US, Canada or World-Wide shipping.
This continues to be the best plug-in! 🙂
Fantastic plug-in! Best $20 I’ve spent in a long time! 🙂
Like Ron above, I need to be able to set 3 simple, flat rate shipping rates for each of my products: 1. US (domestic) 2.Canada and 3. World-Wide.
Is this something I can do through paypal?
Thanks.
Hi Michael, Glad to hear that you like the plugin 🙂
It will be a little tricky but doable… I am putting it in my features to implement list.
Very cool plug in, simple and works great. Love love love the integration with next gen gallery. To throw my voice into the hat with hopeful feature requests, do you suppose it would be terribly difficult to add a way to have different shipping costs based on variations? I’m currently selling the same prints at different sizes, which means they end up costing different amounts to ship. Images changing on changing variations would be sweet too, but, you know!
Hi and I second Ari’s request for at least an option for local and international shipping. The other shipping options would be nice, but I understand needing/wanting to keep the options and choices at a minimum.
Also, Thank you so very much for creating this plug-in…it’s a really nice addition to my business.
Hi Ari, I agree that this shipping calculation is not perfect but it’s just that I have been trying to avoid the extra page (for shipping address and stuff) in between the shopping cart and payment page that customers have to fill out because many people including myself like a speedy one click checkout system (No need to fill out pages of forms before you make a payment). This is why I try to utilize PayPal’s shipping address.
I can probably introduce it and make it optional though. Shipping calculation can be very confusing and complex cause some people want it to be tied with USPS, some want it to be dynamic based on the weight or based on location etc. I have been trying to keep the plugin simple and a low cost solution cause there are some heavyweight shopping cart out there already.
Would it be possible to implement a number of different shipping options (eg regular & express) and to leave them for checkout, so say the customer buys 5 products but they’re all pictures, they can all be sent under the say shipping cost?
It’s just a bit complicated to work out the shipping according to the method above.
I second that last suggestion! 🙂
Ah I would like to suggest one more feature =P, provide the customer with an option to self collect, thus no shipping fee will be added if the customer choose to self collect.
@Silverelf, yeah… you can configure this from the “Coupons/Discounts” menu of eStore.
Is it possible to make shipping free upon purchase of a certain value (e.g. free delivery for purchases above $150)
@Stephen, Just put 2.50 in the “Base Shipping Cost” and that should only get applied once per shopping cart checkout if there are non-digital products in the cart. The “Base Shipping Cost” doesn’t get applied to the shopping cart when customers purchase digital product.
Hi, Can you help me get my head around the shipping cost options please? We need to charge 2.50 GBP for any non-digital item (flat rate no matter how many units) and nothing for digital ones.
Thanks.
Hi Ari, You can try using the “Shipping Variation Option” in eStore.
Hi
Is there a way to set up different shipping costs for local or different international destinations? Otherwise how do I know which cost to set?
@Ron, Yes it is possible to use PayPal’s shipping mechanism. simply check the “Use PayPal Profile Based Shipping” checkbox in the settings menu of eStore.
Is it possible to use paypal’s shipping mechanism?
Please note that the base shipping price is only added to the shopping cart total if any of the product in the cart has an individual shipping included.
Base shipping cost doesn’t seem to be working. I charge a flat shipping rate, but it’s not being added.