How do shipping zones work?

A zone is a group of countries you ship to at the same price. Each parcel is priced by the zone of the country it goes to. You set the price on your shipping rate card, one row per zone.

A new store starts with five zones: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Rest of EU and Rest of world. They are only a start. You can rename them, change their countries and add your own. To add or change one, click its name in the price grid on the Shipping page. You can delete any zone except the catch-all zone.

A country can sit in one zone only. Put it in a new zone, and it leaves the old one. Every country that no zone lists falls into the catch-all. That zone always exists, so no parcel is ever left without a zone. Orders that land there are flagged, because a country that shows up often deserves its own price: the Shipping row says which countries are in no zone. Under Special cases, an order that arrives without any country is listed as No country known and priced by the first zone in your list, and an order collected in your store is listed as Store pickup and carries no shipping cost.

Each zone is a row on the rate card. A card prices by weight or by box size, which you choose next to Prices by. By weight, a parcel takes the first column its weight fits into. By box size, it takes the first column its products' packaging sizes, added up, fit into. A parcel with an unknown weight pays its zone's heaviest price, and one with an unknown size its largest. Special cases lists them as No weight known or No size known.

An empty cell is skipped, and 0,00 means shipping there really costs you nothing. A zone with no price on any active card is not free. Its parcels carry no shipping cost and are flagged on the Overview until you add a price. Pick & pack, Packaging, Returns and Packaging EPR are costs of their own beside the rate card. Every order runs through all of them.