Shipping settings

Shipping settings let you fine-tune how subscription orders calculate shipping costs and handle shipping addresses. These controls help you align Skio’s logic with your Shopify Shipping Profiles and policies.

You’ll find these settings in Settings > Shipping in the Skio admin.

Selecting your shipping profile

You can select your shipping profile for a selling plan in two places:

From the selling plan page

This option is helpful if you've already created a custom shipping profile and want to assign it during selling plan setup.

From your Shipping settings

When creating a shipping profile, you can select which selling plans to assign to it. This is helpful if you've already created your selling plans and want to group them under a specific shipping configuration.

Selecting the selling plans that belong to a Shipping profile from the Shipping settings page.

The shipping profile you select when creating a selling plan is linked to your Shipping settings. These are two places to modify the same setting, so making a change in one place will reflect in the other.

Configuring shipping settings

Update shipping if subscription changes

Toggle: Update shipping (default: on)
What it does: Automatically recalculates shipping using Shopify’s latest rules if a subscription is changed—like if a customer swaps products.
When to use it: Keep this on if you want updated shipping rates to reflect changes in the subscription's contents.

Recurring free shipping override

Toggle: Enable free shipping override
What it does: Forces free shipping on all subscription orders after checkout, unless a subscription-level override exists.
When to use it: Use this to guarantee free shipping across all subscriptions, often for promotional or loyalty use cases.

You must click Resync shipping for changes to take effect immediately.

Exclude lines from shipping price calculation

Dropdown: Lines to exclude
What it does: Lets you exclude specific subscription items—like Surprise and Delight products—from affecting shipping costs.
When to use it: If you offer bonus or gift items that shouldn't raise shipping charges.

Ignore out of stock items for shipping price calculation

Toggle: Ignore OOS items for shipping price (default: on)
What it does: Only includes in-stock items when calculating shipping. Out-of-stock items won’t affect shipping costs unless you turn this off.
When to use it: Keep this enabled to prevent OOS items from inflating shipping charges unnecessarily.

Restrict shipping address changes

Toggle: Enable address restriction
What it does: Prevents customers from changing their shipping address to a region not supported by your Shopify shipping profiles.
When to use it: If you want to ensure customers can only ship subscriptions to eligible areas. Skio will block unsupported changes at the address level.

How to create a custom shipping profile in Skio

To create a new shipping profile specifically for subscriptions:

Click + Create new profile in the top right corner.
Select a source shipping profile from Shopify to duplicate shipping zones and rates from.
Choose which Selling Plans to add to this profile.
(Optional) Toggle on Create profile as a free subscription shipping profile to copy all zones from the selected profile but set rates to free.
Save your profile.

You can make additional edits to your shipping profile after creation.

Important notes about selling plans and shipping profiles
A selling plan can only belong to one shipping profile at a time.
If you select a selling plan that's already assigned to another shipping profile (including Managed by Shopify), it will be removed from the current profile and moved to
the new one you're creating.

How shipping works for subscriptions

Subscription-only carts

When a cart contains only subscription items, Shopify pulls shipping rates from your Skio/Subscription shipping profile. The rates available at checkout will be used to calculate the initial shipment.

For recurring orders after the first shipment, Shopify defaults to the cheapest available shipping rate from your configured options. The shipping method a customer selects at checkout is not automatically retained for future recurring orders.

Mixed carts (one-time + subscription items)

When a cart contains both one-time and subscription items, Shopify evaluates shipping for each group separately:

Two shipping lines appear: You'll see one shipping line for the initial checkout shipment and a second "recurring" preview line on the checkout and order. Shopify cannot merge these into a single combined rate.
Rate source priority: Shopify pulls rates from its own shipping profile logic (not exclusively from the Skio/Subscription profile). This is why you may see Shopify's standard shipping rates appear in mixed carts rather than subscription-specific rates.
Auto-generated Shipping label: When both one-time and subscription items qualify for the same rate, Shopify may surface a generic Shipping label instead of showing separate carrier-specific lines.

Recurring shipments

After the first order, recurring shipments follow Shopify's default behavior:

Cheapest rate selected: Recurring orders default to the cheapest available shipping rate from your configured options
No method retention: You cannot force recurring orders to retain a higher-cost or faster shipping method selected at initial checkout
Per selling plan calculation: Shipping is calculated separately for each selling plan/frequency. Mixed selling plans in the same subscription can result in separate recurring shipping charges unless you override with discounts or free-shipping logic.

Advanced options

Recurring Free Shipping Override

Skio includes a Recurring Free Shipping Override tool that lets you apply free-shipping logic to recurring orders regardless of Shopify's default behavior. Access this in your Skio Dashboard under shipping settings.

Resync shipping tool

Use the Resync shipping tool to push updated shipping rate changes to existing subscriptions. This is particularly useful after modifying shipping profiles, adding new zones, or updating third-party rate app configurations.

Manual overrides

For edge cases or specific customer requests, you can manually override shipping rates on individual subscriptions from the subscription card in your Skio Dashboard > Subscription Management.

Limitations

Split-shipping in mixed carts

Shopify does not support merging shipping rates across one-time and subscription items in a single checkout. These are computed separately and cannot be combined into a single shipping charge.

Carrier selection for recurring orders

Skio does not "pick" carriers for recurring shipments—this is controlled by Shopify (or your third-party shipping rate app). If your rate app doesn't automatically recalculate rates when a subscription changes, you may need to trigger a new rate request in Shopify or use Skio's Resync shipping tool. Otherwise, the previous rate may persist.

Retaining shipping methods

There is no native way to force recurring orders to retain the shipping method selected at initial checkout. Recurring orders will always default to the cheapest available rate unless manually overridden.

See a list of frequently asked questions in our Shipping FAQ here.