Two different things are called shipping rates: what your customer pays at checkout on your storefront, and what you pay a carrier for a label. They are set up in different places.
What your customers pay at checkout
Go to Storefront → Shipping. The page has four tabs:
| Tab | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Zones | Where you ship: countries, states and postal-code patterns |
| Methods | The shipping options customers pick from, and how each one is priced |
| Rules | Conditional changes to a rate: surcharges, discounts, overrides, blocks and free shipping |
| Handling | How fast you ship, and the ship-by date website orders get |
Zones say where, methods say how you charge. A method with no zone applies everywhere. At checkout ILLUMA offers the methods that match the customer’s address and cart, then applies your rules.
ℹ️ Note: Checkout shows the rates you set here. ILLUMA does not fetch live quotes from carriers for your storefront. The Carrier field on a method is a label for you and your customers.
Add a method
- Open Methods and click Add Method.
- Name it. Give it a Name (what customers see), a lowercase Code, an optional Carrier label, an optional Description and a Zone. Leave Zone on “Everywhere” to apply it to every address.
- Pick a rate type. Flat Rate charges a fixed price. Weight Based charges a Rate per lb times the cart weight, or the base rate if you leave the per-lb rate blank. Free is always $0.
- Add extras. A Handling Fee is added on top of the rate. A Free Shipping Threshold makes orders at or above that amount ship free. Min and Max Business Days become the delivery estimate.
- Set the flags. Freight only shows the method when the cart has freight-required products. Requires quote shows it at checkout but blocks payment, so the customer has to contact you. Default pre-selects it. You can also limit a method to certain customer groups.
- Save with Create Method. Set Status to Inactive to hide a method without deleting it.
📸 Screenshot placeholder: The Add Shipping Method window on Storefront → Shipping → Methods with a Flat Rate method filled in with test values: the Basic Info, Rate Type and Rate Configuration sections visible.
Shipping classes
Each product has a shipping class: Standard, Free Shipping, Freight Required, Oversized or Local Pickup Only. On the Zones tab, Shipping Class Notes lets you write the default blurb shown on the storefront for each class. A note on an individual product overrides it.
Rules
A rule adjusts the rate when its conditions match. Types: Surcharge (add to the rate), Discount (subtract), Override (replace the rate), Block (no online checkout, shows your message) and Free Shipping. Conditions are all optional: order amount range, weight range, states, shipping classes, method codes and customer groups (with an exempt list). Lower Priority numbers run first. An amount can be a flat dollar value or a percentage entered in basis points, where 1000 is 10%.
Handling
On the Handling tab you can turn on ship-by dates for website orders. Set the handling time in days (0 means the same business day), the order cutoff time, the days you ship and your holidays. The Ship By column on the Orders page and ShipStation then receive that date, the way marketplace orders arrive with one.
What you pay for a label
When you ship, the carrier and service you pick set what the label costs you. Connect your carrier accounts (USPS, UPS, FedEx and others) in ShipStation, and those carriers and your negotiated rates become available when you buy a label. You can buy in ShipStation, or from the order page in ILLUMA if you turned on Create labels in ILLUMA. See Labels & tracking.
💡 Tip: Keep accurate product weights and dimensions in your catalog. Weight-based checkout rates, label quotes in ILLUMA and the weight ShipStation uses all depend on them. If a product has no weight, ILLUMA asks you for the parcel weight when you quote a label.
To standardize which carrier and service you use, set up ShipStation’s own automation rules (by weight, destination or order value).