Live Shipping Rates Overview

Overview

Live shipping rates pull real time pricing from USPS, UPS, and/or FedEx based on the shipment's weight, origin, and destination. Carriers are configured at the store level on the Shipping settings page, and then enabled per category by setting a category's delivery type to "Shipped using live shipping rates."

Setting up a carrier is a two step process. First, you activate the carrier on the Shipping page. Then you enable the specific services (rate types) you want to offer customers, such as Priority Mail, Ground, 2 Day, and so on. Only enabled services will be requested from the carrier and shown at checkout.

Activating a carrier

Navigate to your store's Shipping page in the Foxy admin. Under "Shipping methods" you'll see entries for USPS, FedEx, and UPS. Click the carrier you want to activate to open its configuration panel, where you can set:

• Container type — the packaging type sent to the carrier for rate calculation. If not specified, dimensions default to 5"×5"×5".

• Drop type — how you hand off packages to the carrier (affects rate tiers; see UPS notes below).

• Destinations — whether to request rates for domestic shipments, international shipments, or both.

• Account — optionally use your own carrier account for negotiated or account based rates. Foxy recommends using your own account so returned rates more accurately reflect what you'll actually pay.

• Additional services — the specific rate types you want to enable. They will appear after the carrier has been activated (e.g., Priority Mail, Ground, Express). Only checked services are shown to customers.

Carrier specific notes

USPS

USPS Retail Ground (formerly Standard Post) is generally only available for shipping zones 5 through 9 within the US. If you need a full domestic rate option, look at First Class, Priority Mail, or Ground Advantage instead.

UPS

UPS Standard in the US is only available for shipments originating in the US with a destination in Canada or Mexico. For domestic US shipments, UPS Ground is typically what you want. Note that UPS Ground will not be returned if you've selected an express container type.

The drop type you select affects the rate tier UPS returns. Daily Pickup returns wholesale rates; Customer Counter and Suggested Retail Rates return retail rates; One Time Pickup, On Call Air, Letter Center, and Air Service Center return what UPS calls "occasional" rates.

If you want negotiated (account based) rates, go to our legacy admin to the Integrations page and connect your UPS account to Foxy directly.

FedEx

FedEx Ground is only available for commercial/business shipments or packages over 70 lbs. FedEx Home Delivery is the residential counterpart for packages up to 70 lbs. Which one appears depends on the residential/commercial setting (see below) and whether the customer enters a company name.

Residential vs commercial

On the Shipping page, the "Rate calculation" dropdown controls how addresses are classified for carrier rate requests:

• Rate as Residential — all rate requests are sent as residential.

• Rate as Commercial — all rate requests are sent as commercial.

• Rate based on Company field — if the customer enters a company name in the checkout form, the address is rated as commercial; otherwise it's rated as residential.

You can also override this per transaction using the h:shipto_residential custom session attribute. Set it to true or false as part of an add to cart or JSONP request to force a specific classification for that session.

Multiple packages (max package weight)

The Shipping page includes an optional "max package weight" setting. When set, Foxy calculates how many packages are needed by dividing the total cart weight by the max package weight (rounded up), then divides the total weight evenly across those packages and sends the per package weight to the carriers.

This means the max package weight is the most any single package will weigh, but not necessarily its exact weight. The package count and individual weight are saved as transaction attributes and visible in the admin's transaction reports and via the API.

In some cases, splitting into smaller packages may actually produce cheaper rates (for example, two 25 lb packages can be cheaper than one 50 lb package).

Each carrier has a maximum number of packages it supports per rate request: USPS supports 25, UPS supports 50, and FedEx supports 999. If the computed package count exceeds a carrier's limit, no rate request is made to that carrier. If it exceeds the limits for all selected carriers, customers will see a generic "no shipping results found" error.

Custom shipping code and endpoint

The Custom Shipping Code and Custom Shipping Endpoint features also require categories to be set to "Shipped using live shipping rates" as their delivery type. This is because both features work with dynamic, real time rate calculation. Custom code runs after carrier rates are returned and can modify, add, or remove rates.