Learn how to configure shipping specifically for wholesale orders—choose wholesale-only rates like free, flat, or percentage-based shipping, add handling fees, apply rate labels, and exclude retail shipping options as needed.
Wholesale shipping is offered in the Advanced and Premium subscription packages.
Learn more about shipping and other Advanced and Premium features here!
Overview
Wholesale shipping features are available on the Advanced and Premium plans. Before setting up wholesale rates, ensure your Shopify account has at least one retail shipping profile and shipping zone in place.
Retail vs. wholesale shipping rates
- Retail (Shopify) rates apply to all customers unless specifically excluded.
- Wholesale rates must be set up in the app and rely on having valid retail shipping zones for specific countries.
In order to ship wholesale to a certain country, you must have a shipping zone with at least one rate set up for that country in your Shopify admin.
Rate selection settings for wholesale shipping 
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Choose Rate Selection Method:
- Automatically Apply Lowest Rate: Select this option to automatically apply the lowest applicable shipping rate to orders.
- Customer Chooses from All Applicable Rates: Select this option to allow customers to choose from a list of all applicable shipping rates at checkout.
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Enable/disable Custom Shipping
- Click the “Disable custom shipping” button to turn off all custom shipping settings
Wholesale shipping rates
Set exclusive shipping rules for wholesale orders:
Free Shipping
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- Minimum Order Subtotal: Specify the minimum purchase amount that a wholesale customer must reach in their order to qualify for free shipping. This setting encourages larger orders by offering free shipping as an incentive once a certain order value is met.
- Ignore all Shopify Free Rates: Enable this option if you want to exclude all existing free shipping rates set up in Shopify from being available to wholesale customers. This can be useful if you have special shipping conditions or rates specifically for wholesale orders that you don’t want mixed with general retail shipping rates.
Flat Rate Shipping
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- Amount: Input a fixed shipping cost that will be uniformly applied to all wholesale orders, regardless of the order size or destination. This is a straightforward way to manage shipping fees, providing predictability for both the seller and the customer.
Percentage Rate Shipping
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- Percent of Order Subtotal: Enter a percentage that will be used to calculate the shipping fee based on the subtotal of the order. This rate adjusts the shipping cost proportionally to the value of the order, making it flexible and scalable.
Custom Shipping Rate Label:
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- Custom Label: Provide a custom name for the shipping rates that will be visible to wholesale customers at checkout. If left blank, the default label ‘Shipping’ will be used. This feature is useful for branding or to better describe the shipping method offered.
Handling Fee
Merchants can add a handling fee to cover additional costs such as packaging, processing, or special order preparation. This fee is applied as a separate line item on the order and can be configured as either a flat rate or a percentage of the order subtotal.
Flat Rate:
Select this option to charge a fixed handling fee on every wholesale order, regardless of the order size or value. This approach provides consistency and is ideal when handling costs remain constant per order.
Percentage:
Choose this option to calculate the handling fee as a percentage of the order subtotal. This makes the fee scale with the size of the order, offering flexibility when larger orders require more handling.
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Percent of Order Subtotal: Enter the percentage you want to apply to the order subtotal.
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Minimum Handling Fee (Optional): Set a minimum amount to ensure the fee never drops below a specific threshold, even for smaller orders.
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Maximum Handling Fee (Optional): Set a maximum amount to prevent the handling fee from exceeding a certain limit on large orders.
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Label (Optional): You can enter a custom label for the handling fee to be displayed on the order. If no custom label is provided, the system will use the default label “Handling Fee.” This allows for clearer communication to the customer regarding the purpose of the charge.
Excluding retail shipping rates for wholesale customers
By default, all shipping rates set in Shopify are available to wholesale checkouts. You can optionally ignore certain rate categories to exclude them from wholesale checkouts.
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Ignore Price and Weight Based Rates
- Check this box to hide all Shopify price and weight-based rates from wholesale customers.
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Ignore All Carrier and App Rates:
- Check this box to hide all carrier and app rates from wholesale customers.
If you choose to ignore all price, weight-based, and carrier-calculated rates in Shopify, your wholesale customers will only see wholesale rates set up in Wholesale Gorilla. If no wholesale rates are set up, there won’t be any valid shipping rates to apply to a wholesale order. This will cause Shopify to default your normal retail shipping rates, even if you explicitly tell Wholesale Gorilla to ignore them.