Shipping profiles, zones, and market shipping options

Shipping is a Shopify feature, configured entirely in Shopify Admin, not in STOQ. Use this guide to understand how your shipping setup interacts with market-scoped preorder offers, so customers in every market you sell to actually see a shipping rate at checkout, not just the preorder button.

Shopify is moving stores from shipping profiles and zones to shipping options by market. To see which one your store uses, go to Settings > Shipping and delivery in Shopify Admin:

• Shipping profiles listed: your store uses profiles and zones. Read How shipping profiles and zones work.
• Shipping options listed: your store uses shipping options by market. Read Newer stores: shipping options by market.

Note

STOQ does not create, read, or modify shipping profiles, zones, or rates. STOQ’s market controls decide whether the preorder button is shown to a market; Shopify’s shipping profiles and zones separately decide whether a shipping rate exists there at checkout. Both need to line up for a smooth preorder purchase.

Before you begin

Requirement	Detail
Shopify Markets set up	Only relevant if you sell internationally. Single-market stores use one shipping profile with zones for domestic/international regions and don’t need to think about this.
Access to Shopify Admin shipping settings	Shipping profiles and zones are configured in Settings > Shipping and delivery in Shopify Admin. STOQ has no UI for this.
A market-scoped preorder offer (optional)	If you’re restricting a preorder offer to specific markets, read this article to confirm those markets also have shipping coverage.

How shipping profiles and zones work

Shipping profiles

A shipping profile is a group of products and variants that share the same shipping rates and zones. Every Shopify store has a General profile that applies by default to all products not explicitly assigned elsewhere. You can create custom shipping profiles in Shopify Admin and move specific products into them when those products need different rates, carriers, or origin locations than the rest of your catalog.

A product can only be in one shipping profile at a time, so you can’t split the same preorder products across separate profiles per market. To ship them to several markets, keep them in one profile and add a zone for each market (for example an Australia zone and an Indonesia zone), with the right origin location serving each zone, rather than making a profile per market.

Each profile contains:

• Origin locations: which of your fulfillment locations can ship the products in this profile.
• Zones: geographic regions (countries, or groups of countries/markets) you ship to from those locations.
• Rates: the shipping methods and prices offered within each zone (flat rate, carrier-calculated, free shipping, and so on).

Shipping zones

A shipping zone is the set of countries or regions inside a profile that share the same rates. For example, a “Domestic” zone might cover your home country with a flat $5 rate, while an “International” zone covers everywhere else with a carrier-calculated rate. When Shopify Markets is active, zones are commonly organized to align with your markets, for example a zone per market, or a zone covering several markets that ship the same way.

At checkout, Shopify determines the customer’s shipping rate by matching:

1. The product’s shipping profile (General, or a custom profile it’s assigned to).
2. The customer’s shipping address / market, matched against that profile’s zones.
3. The rates configured for the matching zone.

Newer stores: shipping options by market

On newer stores, shipping is set per market instead of per shipping profile. Each market has its own shipping options, and a catalog that controls which products are sold there and at what price. For a preorder to check out in a market, that market needs a shipping option that covers the preorder product, and the product has to be in the market’s catalog.

Within one shipping option, if a cart matches more than one rate, the customer pays only the highest rate. If a cart matches more than one shipping option, the customer pays for each option, added together.

Open a market’s shipping settings

1. Open the market

   1. In Shopify Admin, go to Settings > Shipping and delivery and open the market from the shipping section. Or go to Markets and select the market, for example Canada.
   2. Open the market’s Shipping section to review its existing shipping options.

Some stores also see an option to switch back to the older shipping profiles view for a while after the upgrade.

Add a shipping option

1. Name the option

   1. In the market’s Shipping section, click Add shipping option.
   2. Enter an option name, for example “Standard shipping”, and set it to Active.

2. Choose the rate type and currency

   1. Choose the rate type: flat, carrier or app calculated, based on order amount, or based on package weight.
   2. Select the currency for the shipping price. Add delivery details or notes if you need them.

3. Set the rate

   1. Under Rate, enter a price and select a transit time, for example $10 and 1 to 2 business days.
   2. Under Applies to, choose All products or select specific collections. If you pick collections, make sure your preorder products are in one of them.
   3. Under Ships from, select the fulfillment locations for this rate. Choose a location where your preorder variants are stocked, or customers can’t check out.

4. Add more rates or free shipping (optional)

   1. To charge differently for other products, transit times, or locations, add another rate.
   2. To offer free shipping, turn on Offer free shipping and set the minimum order amount.

5. Save

   Click Done, then save the market’s changes.

To change an option later, use its controls in the market’s Shipping section to edit, deactivate, or delete it.

Create a catalog for a market

A catalog sets which products a market sells and at what price. A product excluded from a market’s catalog isn’t sold there, so customers in that market can’t preorder it either.

1. Start a catalog

   1. In the market’s Customize area, select Catalog, then choose an existing catalog or create a new one.
   2. Give the new catalog a name, for example “Canada”.
   3. Select the market it’s for. You can also assign a catalog to a company location or a retail channel.

2. Set pricing

   1. Under Pricing, select the catalog currency, for example Canadian dollars.
   2. To change prices for this market, apply a percentage adjustment and choose Increase or Decrease. You can also choose whether the adjustment applies to compare-at prices.

3. Choose the products

   1. Review the product list. To remove a product, select it and click Exclude. Excluded products move to the excluded section.
   2. Decide whether to turn on Automatically include new products.

4. Save the catalog

   Set the catalog to Active, or Draft if it isn’t ready, then save.

Assign the catalog to the market

1. Select the catalog

   1. Go to Markets and open the market.
   2. In its catalog settings, select the catalog you want to use. Remove the previous selection if there is one.
   3. Click Done, then save the market’s changes.

2. Review it

   Open Catalogs in Shopify Admin to review the catalog’s products, assignments, and price adjustment.

How this interacts with STOQ market-scoped preorders

STOQ’s market scoping (in the offer editor’s Markets section) is a separate, app-level control from Shopify’s shipping profiles and zones:

Control	Owned by	What it decides
Preorder offer market scoping	STOQ	Whether the preorder button and offer are shown to a customer browsing from a given Shopify market
Shipping profiles and zones	Shopify	Whether a shipping rate exists at checkout for a customer’s address/market, for the products in that profile

These two systems don’t talk to each other. STOQ reads your Shopify markets to populate its market picker, see Sell preorders in multiple markets, but STOQ has no visibility into which shipping profile a product belongs to or which zones are configured. It’s possible to enable a preorder offer for a market that has no shipping coverage for that product’s profile: Shopify will show the preorder button (STOQ’s part is satisfied), but the customer will hit a checkout blocker with no shipping rate available (Shopify’s part is not satisfied).

Caution

Enabling a market in STOQ does not guarantee a shipping rate exists for it. Before restricting or expanding a preorder offer to a market, confirm in Shopify Admin under Settings > Shipping and delivery that the product’s shipping profile has a zone covering it. Otherwise customers there can see the preorder button but fail to check out.

What customers will see

• Market has shipping coverage: the customer sees the preorder button, adds the product to cart, and checks out normally, choosing from the shipping rates configured for their zone.
• Market has no shipping coverage: the customer still sees the preorder button and product page, since STOQ doesn’t check shipping before showing it, but checkout has no shipping option, so they can’t complete the order.

Check your setup

• Stores on shipping profiles: in Shopify Admin, go to Settings > Shipping and delivery and open the shipping profile that contains your preorder product. Confirm a zone exists that covers every market where the offer is enabled.
• Stores on shipping options by market: for each market where the offer is enabled, confirm the market has an active shipping option whose price, currency, and transit time are right, whose Applies to covers the preorder product, and whose Ships from includes a location where the preorder variants are stocked. Check any free shipping minimum, and confirm the market’s catalog includes the preorder product with the price adjustment you intended.
• Use Shopify’s storefront preview, or an incognito checkout test, from an address in each target market and confirm a shipping rate appears at the cart/checkout step for the preordered product.
• Cross-check against the offer’s Markets section in STOQ: the set of markets the preorder button is shown in should be a subset of the markets with shipping coverage.

Troubleshooting

Customers can see the preorder button for a market but can't complete checkout

The product’s shipping profile probably doesn’t have a zone covering that market. Go to Shopify Admin’s Settings > Shipping and delivery, open the profile, and add a zone and rate for that country.

On a store that uses shipping options by market, open the market’s Shipping section instead and check that a shipping option covers the product (Applies to) and ships from a location where it’s stocked (Ships from). Also check that the product isn’t excluded from the market’s catalog. See Newer stores: shipping options by market.

A market has no shipping zone in Shopify at all

STOQ still shows the preorder button there, since it doesn’t check shipping coverage before displaying it. Either:

1. Add coverage for that market in Shopify.
2. Remove the market from the offer’s Markets section so the button doesn’t show there.

You want preorder products to ship at different rates than the rest of your catalog

That’s controlled by Shopify, not STOQ. Create a custom shipping profile in Shopify Admin and move the preorder product’s variants into it. On a store that uses shipping options by market, put the preorder products in a collection and add a rate whose Applies to is that collection.

FAQ

Do I need to do anything in STOQ to set up shipping profiles or zones?

No. Shipping profiles, zones, shipping options, and rates are configured entirely in Shopify Admin. STOQ has no settings for this and doesn’t read or write shipping data.

Does STOQ's shipping timeline or message setting affect shipping rates or zones?

No. STOQ’s Shipping section (in the offer editor) covers the delivery timeline, the customer-facing shipping message, fulfillment status, and hold/split behavior. It only affects messaging and fulfillment timing, not the shipping rate a customer pays or which zones exist. See Set up fulfillment and shipping options for that section.

I sell in multiple markets. Do I need a shipping zone for each one?

You need at least one zone, in some shipping profile, that covers each country you want to sell and ship to. Whether that’s one zone per market or a single zone spanning several markets depends on whether those markets share the same shipping rates and carriers, a Shopify shipping-profile design decision, unrelated to how you’ve scoped the preorder offer in STOQ.

Does this affect Shopify Managed Markets differently?

The shipping-profile-and-zone mechanism is the same regardless of whether you manage markets yourself or use Shopify Managed Markets. Shopify still needs a shipping profile/zone match to offer a rate. See Preorders and Shopify Managed Markets for what Managed Markets specifically changes (duties, taxes, and localized pricing) versus what stays the same.

Related guides

Sell preorders in multiple marketsRestrict which Shopify markets see a preorder offer's button.

Preorder locations, markets, and shippingMap fulfillment locations to markets so the preorder button shows correctly on non-product pages.

Set up fulfillment and shipping optionsConfigure STOQ's shipping timeline, display message, and fulfillment status.

Preorders and Shopify Managed MarketsHow Managed Markets duties, taxes, and localized pricing apply to preorders.

Preorder double shipping fixTroubleshoot orders charged shipping twice on mixed preorder/in-stock orders.