Free Shipping Over $50 on Shopify: Setup

Shopify gives you two native ways to offer free shipping over $50, or over any amount you choose. One is a shipping rate that costs nothing above a minimum order value. The other is a free shipping discount, created in the Discounts area. They look the same to the shopper in the best case and behave differently in three situations: when another discount is applied to the cart, when you want to cap the shipping cost you absorb, and when you want a code or an end date instead of a standing policy. This guide sets the two side by side, walks through each setup, and ends with how to show shoppers how far they are from the line. Use your own threshold in place of 50; the number is only the example.

If you are still deciding what the threshold should be, start with Free Shipping Threshold: The Formula, which derives it from your carrier costs and margin. This page assumes you have a number.

Two ways to do it, and when each is right

Choose the rate when free shipping is a standing policy: it is always on, it lives with your other shipping rates and it needs no discount slot. Choose the discount when free shipping is a promotion: it has dates, you may want a code for an email list, you want it to stop on a date without editing your rate table, or you want to limit it to one use per customer.

Setup 1: a price-based rate

Shopify's Help Center describes order-amount rates this way. In your shipping profile, add or edit a rate and set the rate type to order amount. Enter a Minimum, a Maximum and a Price. For the free tier, the page says to leave the Price field empty or enter 0. There is also an "Offer free shipping" option, where you enter the minimum amount an order must reach to qualify.

Build it as tiers:

1. Tier one: minimum 0, maximum just below your threshold, price set to what you charge below it.
2. Tier two: minimum at your threshold, maximum left empty, price 0.

The detail that trips people up is on the same page: leave the Maximum empty on your highest tier so it covers larger orders. Otherwise an order above the highest tier gets a shipping error at checkout. Also note that a country or region can exist in only one shipping zone within a shipping profile, and that when an order contains products from several shipping profiles, Shopify combines the applicable price-based rates. A heavy product in its own profile does not disappear because the rest of the cart qualifies.

The Help Center page also says shipping profiles and rates are gradually moving to shipping options by market, so the labels in your admin may differ slightly from the steps above.

Setup 2: a free shipping discount

For a discount, go to Discounts, create a discount, and choose Free shipping. Then:

1. Choose Discount code or Automatic discount. A code is typed at checkout; an automatic discount applies when the conditions are met, and its title is shown to customers in the cart and at checkout, so name it in words the shopper will recognize.
2. Pick countries: all, or specific ones.
3. Add the minimum purchase requirement. Shopify says this counts product prices only, and that taxes and other costs are never included.
4. Set usage limits and active dates. Usage is unlimited by default; you can cap total uses or limit each customer to one, which Shopify tracks by email address or phone number.
5. Set combinations and save.

Excluding zones and heavy products

The discount has the exclusion the rate does not. Shopify lets you check "exclude shipping rates over an amount", which means free shipping does not apply to rates above the value you set. The page is careful to say this applies to shipping rates only and is unrelated to order amounts. In practice that is your cap on exposure: set the maximum rate you will absorb, and an expedited or remote-zone rate above it stays paid by the shopper.

For the rate approach, exclusion is a structure choice. Create the free tier only in the zones where you want it, or leave heavy products in a shipping profile with its own rates, since Shopify combines rates across profiles. Check the cart with an item from each profile before you launch.

Before or after discounts: what counts toward the minimum

This is where a small difference becomes a support ticket. A shopper has a 54 dollar cart, applies a 10 percent code and now has a 48.60 dollar cart. Is it still over 50?

• Free shipping discount. Shopify's page says products count at their discounted price only if the other discount can be combined with free shipping. If it cannot, the product counts at full price. So the answer depends on the other discount's combination setting, and you should set it on purpose. The combinations page adds that shipping discounts are applied last, after product and order discounts, and that a customer can use up to one shipping discount code per order.
• Price-based rate. The Help Center page on shipping rates does not say whether order value is measured before or after discounts. Do not assume. Place a test order with a discount code on a cart just above the threshold and see which rate checkout offers.

Whichever you choose, put the rule in the banner: "free shipping on orders over 50 dollars before discounts" is a promise you can keep, and it is less confusing than leaving the shopper to find out at checkout.

Telling shoppers how far they are

Free shipping only changes behavior if the shopper sees it. Show it early, as a line in your announcement bar, and show it in the cart as a progress bar that updates with the cart value ("You are 12 dollars away from free shipping"). Freebies Engine by Log Studio Lab also has a Progress bar template, described as "Show how close the cart is to a reward."

Tiered shipping with the template

When one line is not enough, for example a discounted shipping rate above one cart value and free shipping above a higher one, the Shipping discount tiers template in Freebies Engine by Log Studio Lab is described as "Discounted or free shipping above a cart value." Set the tiers, the dates and the countries there, then run the checks from the sections above: a cart just under the line, a cart just over it, a discounted cart and a mixed-profile cart.

A word on honesty: if free shipping depends on a minimum, say so wherever you say "free". Under the FTC's guide on the word "free" (16 CFR 251.1), conditions should be set forth clearly and conspicuously at the outset. This is not legal advice. Plan requirements are on the pricing page, and the effect of a higher spend line on order value is part of Free Gift Threshold: Pick a Spend Level.