Profiles, zones and rates
Shopify's shipping settings live under Settings, then Shipping and delivery. A shipping profile groups products that ship the same way; the general profile covers everything by default. Inside a profile you create zones, which for most Indian stores means one zone for India and optionally a second for the North-East, Jammu and Kashmir and the islands, where couriers charge more and deliver slower.
Each zone has one or more rates the customer sees at checkout. You can offer a flat rate, a rate that varies by order weight or order value, or a free rate above a threshold. Shopify only applies weight-based rates if every product has a weight, so fill those in before you switch.
Flat, weight-based or free
Flat rates are the easiest to run and the easiest for customers to understand. Weight-based rates track your real costs more closely and matter if you sell both 200 g accessories and 3 kg kits. A free-shipping threshold set a little above your average order value lifts basket size, and the free rate can sit alongside a paid express option.
Whatever you charge, the courier bills you on the higher of dead weight and volumetric weight, by zone, plus COD fees. Use the volumetric weight calculator on a few typical parcels before setting rates, and the lane pages to see which zone each destination falls into.
- Flat rate: simplest, predictable
- Weight-based: needs product weights, matches cost
- Free above a threshold: raises average order value
Where RouteOneX fits
Checkout rates are a pricing decision; courier rates are a procurement decision. RouteOneX works on the second one. Every synced Shopify order shows live rates from eight couriers for its exact pincode and weight, so you pay the cheapest reliable option on each order rather than one courier's flat contract. Over a month that gap is usually bigger than anything you can recover by tweaking the checkout rate.