There may be times when you wish to offer free shipping to new customers, but continue to charge shipping to new customers. For example, you may want to offer a temporary promotion where new customers qualify for free shipping.

This guide will explain how to configure your shipping settings to offer free shipping to new customers.

Step 1 - Configure shipping settings for recurring orders

Before you change your Shopify shipping settings, confirm that your Recharge shipping settings are configured successfully to charge existing customers. To ensure that existing customers still are charged their original shipping rates, set your recurring shipping rates to retain original shipping rates for future orders.

1. In the merchant portal, click Settings and select Shipping. 
2. Under Recurring shipping rates, select Retain original shipping rate for future orders.
   
   
3. Press Save. You will be prompted to confirm that you are okay with changing the shipping rates.
4. Click Yes, proceed.

By changing your shipping rates to retain the original shipping rate your customers will be charged the amount they paid for shipping on all recurring orders. You can also manually override the shipping rate at any time for a customer.

Step 2 - Configure free shipping rates

Recharge Shipping Zones

Merchants using Recharge Shipping Zones can create or update any zone to reflect a free shipping rate. 

Once you have configured your settings to retain the shipping rate, update the rates for any applicable zones to $0.00. You can also use the Add conditions option to offer free shipping only after a certain order threshold is met.

Basic shipping rates

Once your Recharge shipping settings are complete, you will need to configure your Shopify shipping settings so that customers have the option to select a free shipping rate at the checkout.

1. In the Shopify admin, select Settings and then Shipping and Delivery.
2. Click Manage rates on the profile to be edited. 
3. If you would like to add the free shipping zone as the only option, select Add rate. Alternatively, you can select … and then edit rate to change a pre-existing shipping rate.
4. Set up your own rate for the free shipping option, with the price set as $0.00. If you would like this rate to be available for all orders, you do not need to set conditions. If this rate should only apply to specific orders, select Add conditions. We recommend setting up weight-based shipping when using shipping conditions for recurring orders.
   
   
5. Press Done.
6. Select Save.

Once this rate is created, customers creating new subscriptions can check out at the Recharge checkout with the free shipping rate. This rate will only apply to new customers going forward.

Tips

• Shopify merchants using the Recharge Checkout can create a workflow to automatically apply free shipping to the first charge only, and then charge customers a standard rate on recurring orders.
• You could also perform a bulk update to change the shipping rate for multiple subscriptions at any point in the subscription lifecycle.