Simple Shipping FAQ

These are common questions related to the EDD Simple Shipping extension.

Does Simple Shipping integrate with my preferred shipping company?

No, Simple Shipping doesn’t integrate with any shipping company. It simply collects the shipping location address and then the store owner is responsible for all shipping details.

Can I have variable shipping costs by weight?

No, Simple Shipping is flat rate only.

Can I have variable shipping costs by size?

No, Simple Shipping has no mechanism for dealing with product size.

Can I have variable shipping costs by distance?

No, Simple Shipping is flat rate only (other than a separate rate for “Domestic” or “International”).

Can I charge a different rate for domestic and international shipping?

Yes, a single flat rate for domestic and a single flat rate for international.

Can Vendors set Shipping rates through Front End Submissions?

Yes. Read more in the Frontend Submissions Integration Guide.

Are shipping fees included in tax?

No.

Can products be “combined” so they are shipped in the same package?

No. This is something that has been discussed but decided it won’t be a feature that ever gets added to the Simple Shipping extension. That feature is what would take it from being a “Simple” shipping plugin to being a “Complicated” shipping plugin – and we want it to remain “Simple” to set up and use. The amount of scenarios that would need to be considered are absolutely enormous.

For a hypothetical example, you could have a car and a microwave being shipped in the same purchase. While they could fit into a very large box together, you wouldn’t necessarily just throw them into the same box. You’d need to make sure both were secure – and shipping a microwave with a car is very different from shipping one on its own. Additionally, the plugin wouldn’t know that a car is very heavy unless we also added a “weight” setting (one more level of complication for the user). We would then need to give you options to say that “if an object is heavier than X, it can’t be shipped with other items”.

Now instead, say the person was buying a microwave and a pair of headphones. They might fit into the same box and probably not increase the cost of shipping (over the cost of shipping the microwave). But say instead of buying headphones they bought a heavy brick (maybe they are collectors of bricks) the same size and shape as the headphone box. This would cost more to ship because it is heavier. The system would now need to add up the weight of the brick and the microwave to do a proper estimate of the cost of shipping the items together.

Now consider the size and shape of items as well. Say the user was buying headphones and a 2x4x8 piece of wood. These would not make sense to ship together since one is very long and the other is not. They would not simply fit into the same box easily – unless you defined the size and shape of boxes that you have “on-hand” as the shipper. This would then add more complication as you would need to enter all of your box-size possibilities.

Then there are also items that don’t have a solid width or height – like tshirts. You could fit 1 shirt into an envelope. You might even be able to fit 4 shirts into an envelope. But how do you know when you can’t fit any more shirts into an envelope? The system isn’t able to guess this and would require you to define “flexible” packaging (like envelopes that can “flex” in size) – but then let it know when to “max out”. You’d have to say “the envelope can only hold 4 shirts but not 5”. How you would say that would require a plethora of new options that would be difficult to understand.

Now imagine the person is buying 5 t-shirts and 16 pieces of paper. How many of those things combined could fit into a single envelope? Defining the way those combine becomes doubly as complex. As you add more and more different types of products, the complications increase exponentially.