Hiding a shipping method when one item is too heavy

Shopify has no setting that hides a shipping method because one item is too heavy. Every weight setting it has looks at the whole order: a weight-based rate is priced on "the combined weight of items shipping from the same location with the same shipping option", and the fields you fill in ask for the "minimum order weight" and the maximum. Two 20 kg boxes and one 40 kg box look identical to it.

What works natively is to sort by product rather than by weight — and it works well, as long as you know where its edges are.

The native route: a profile for heavy items

Put every product over your carrier's limit into its own shipping profile — call it Heavy — and give that profile only the methods that can carry it: your freight service, or local delivery. Shopify uses exactly this example in its own troubleshooting: "if you have two custom shipping profiles called Heavy and Fragile, then make sure that heavy products are in the Heavy profile and fragile products are in the Fragile profile."

Ordered on their own, those products are never offered the post. Setting it up costs nothing beyond what you already pay Shopify. What a basket that mixes them with ordinary stock is offered is the next section, and it is the part to check rather than assume.

The catch is the mixed basket. When a basket holds a heavy item and an ordinary one, Shopify combines the two profiles' rates by name:

• "Shipping rates with the same name are added together and displayed to your customer at checkout, even those in different shipping profiles."
• "If all of your rates have different names, then the cheapest options are added together and displayed to your customer at checkout with the name Shipping."
• "Rates are added together only if there is no option to have a single rate from one shipping profile or location."

So a freight rate called Freight next to your usual Standard and Express gives the customer a single line called Shipping. If you want a named choice to survive, give the heavy profile's rates the same names as your general ones.

Two things here are not documented, and both are worth one test order rather than an assumption: what happens when only some of the names match, and whether leaving a method out of the heavy profile altogether reliably keeps it off a basket that mixes the two. Put a heavy item and a light one in a basket and read your own checkout before you rely on either.

The price side of this — charging more for an awkward item — is its own subject, covered in charging extra postage for one awkward product. If an item cannot be shipped at all, see making one product collection-only.

The cap that looks like a block

The obvious idea is to give your postal rate a maximum of 30 kg. It is less reliable than it looks. Shopify's own troubleshooting page says: "If no weight-based rate matches the cart, and no other rate applies, then the next highest weight-based rate is used so that the customer can still check out."

A cap therefore only removes the postal rate dependably when another rate — freight, say — covers the heavier range. What happens to a basket heavier than every tier you have set is not documented. And even when the cap does its job, it caps the order: four 8 kg items lose the post just as surely as one 32 kg item does.

Carrier limits and the fallback

If you use carrier-calculated rates, the carrier's own limits do some of this for you: "The default package being used to generate rates must be within the minimum and maximum requirements for the carrier services you're offering." A package outside a service's limits gets no rate for that service. Note that it is the package that is checked, not each item — and that when every calculated rate fails, Shopify shows your backup rates instead, so check what yours are before you rely on this.

Some of your products are too heavy for the post? Describe your shipping →

Keeping the sorting right without doing it yourself

The Heavy profile works. The part that decays is who puts products into it — a new 28 kg item added on a Tuesday sits in your general profile until somebody notices.

An app does that sorting for you. Auto Shipping Profile: Shipr assigns products to shipping profiles in bulk and by rule, and its listing says the rules can be built on weight among other things, and that "whenever a new product is created Shipr will automatically assign the product to the correct shipping profile according to the rules you have created." Read together, that is the job: set the rule once by weight, and new products land in the right profile without being tagged.

Three things to weigh before you subscribe. Its $4.99 plan covers up to 3,000 variants, and the price climbs with the catalogue — $9.99 to 10,000, $19.99 to 40,000, $39.99 above that. It is thinly reviewed: nine ratings, the most recent from March 2025. And the two halves above are two separate claims on its listing rather than one — it says new products are assigned by the rules you built, and it says weight can be one of those rules, but it never puts them in the same sentence. Set it up on one collection, add a test product over your limit, and check which profile it lands in before you let it near the rest of the catalogue.

What can read each item's weight

Sorting products into profiles decides what each product is eligible for. It does not decide what a mixed basket is offered — that is the combining rule above, and what it does with a method you left out of the heavy profile is the thing Shopify has not written down. If your test order shows the post still on offer beside a 35 kg item, profiles are not where the answer is.

One tool reads the weight of every line: a delivery customization. It is a small program that runs at checkout and can hide, move or rename delivery options, and what it receives includes each item's weight and unit. Hide every postal option if any single item weighs over 30 kg is a rule it can state directly — the one rule nothing else here can. It cannot change a price; changing prices is simply not among the things it is allowed to do. Shopify allows "a maximum of 25 delivery customization functions on each store."

Two things decide whether you can use one. It comes inside an app, and "Stores on any plan can use public apps that are distributed through the Shopify App Store and contain functions" — while "Only stores on a Shopify Plus plan can use custom apps that contain Shopify Function APIs." And Shopify's own point-and-click version, Checkout Blocks, is Plus only and offers weight only as Product weight (total in cart) — the total again.

Old advice to do this with Shopify Scripts no longer works: editing ended on 15 April 2026 and Scripts stopped running on 30 June 2026.

The hide-rates apps. HideShip ($3.99 a month, rising to $7.99 for its larger plans) hides methods on many conditions, but its own guide says it "reads the cart weight that Shopify calculates" — the total again. Where it helps is its product condition: tag your heavy products and hide the post when a tagged product is in the basket. Parcelify ($19.99 a month) works around product tags in the same spirit. We have not run either of them, so read those as what the listings offer rather than as a recommendation.

And check the plan question before you subscribe. An app that works out its own rates at checkout needs something Shopify only switches on for some plans — third-party carrier-calculated shipping, included on Advanced and Plus, an extra on Grow, and not available below that. An app that only hides rates Shopify has already worked out is doing a different job and may not need it. No listing tells you which of the two you are looking at, and the free-shipping exclusion page sets out what the difference costs. Ask the vendor before you subscribe: it decides whether a $4 app is a $4 answer or a plan upgrade with an app on top.

Which route is yours

What Shopivibe does

If your heavy products are a fixed list, the Heavy profile is the answer — it is Shopify's own and costs nothing. If the list keeps moving, Shipr says it keeps the sorting up to date for you, from $4.99 a month at three thousand variants and more above that; test that claim on one collection, as above. Both of those answers are somebody else's, and they are the right ones for most stores.

What neither of them settles is the basket. A profile decides what a product is eligible for; what the customer is actually offered comes out of the combining rule, and whether a method you left out of the heavy profile stays out of a mixed basket is the undocumented part above — the one you were told to put a test order through. Reading each line's own weight at the moment the options are drawn does not depend on finding out: "no post if any single item is over 30 kg, and no express over 20, whatever else is in the basket" is a rule that states the outcome you want rather than arranging profiles until it happens.

Three things about how it reaches you. It is built for your store by a person rather than switched on — a delivery rule that hides a method because one line is too heavy is yours and not a template, and it is the same piece of work the free-shipping exclusion page describes.

It runs as a checkout customization, and Shopify's rule there is about how the rule reaches your store, not about your plan. Shopify says "stores on any plan can use public apps that are distributed through the Shopify App Store and contain functions", and reserves Plus for custom apps containing them. Shopivibe is the first kind — an app distributed through the App Store — so it is the first sentence that applies to you, whatever plan you are on. It needs no carrier-calculated shipping either: that gate is for apps working out their own rates, and hiding a rate Shopify has already worked out is a different job.

And the rule is only as good as your weights: a product entered at 0 kg is light to every tool, ours included, and putting your weights right is your side of it rather than ours.

Describe the rule you want in your own words and a person here takes it on straight away and has it working in your store within 24 hours.

Shopivibe solves the problem in your store and keeps what it adds maintained, including when Shopify changes something underneath. Shopivibe is free during early access, with 3,500 credits included. Credits beyond the included 3,500 cost $0.06 each.

Know which of your products the post won't take? Describe it in your own words →