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Plugin Description
Determine shipping costs according to general conditions (bounds on the order properties). Shipping costs can depend on e.g.:
- Total amount of the order
- Total weight of the order
- Number of articles or different products in the order
- Volume or minimal and maximal extensions of the products
- Postal code of the delivery address (the Advanced version also supports alphanumeric postal codes from the UK, Canana and Netherlands)
- Coupon Code (Advanced version only)
The plugin exists in two different versions, this free version, which supports fixed bounds for all properties, and a paid version, which allows all conditions and shipping rules to contain arbitrary mathematical expressions (like an OR operator, multiplication, addition, subtraction, functions like rounding etc.). See the documentation for all the differences.
Each rule is described as one line of text with an easy structure (semicolons separate the parts of the rule). For example:
Name=Free Shipping; 100<=Amount; 0
Name=Domestic Small; Articles<5; Amount<100; Shipping=1.50
Name=Domestic Standard; Amount<100; Shipping=3.50
This set of rules describes three shipping costs: Orders of 100€ and more are free, otherwise orders with less than five articles have shipping costs of 1.5€, all others 3.50€.
Limitations and common misconceptions
- The plugin is not designed to calculte shipping costs on a per-product level (e.g. it is not possible that Article A has shipping costs of 3€, Article B 5€ and if you order both you pay 8€ shipping)
- The plugin allows only limited support for category-based shipping. You can only find out if an article from a particular category is in the order, but NOT how many articles from a given category (e.g. it is not possible to have all articles from Category X ship for 3€ and all articles from Category Y ship for 5€)
- The plugin does NOT sum the results of all rules, but uses the FIRST matching rule it finds.
- The plugin does NOT use the lowest result of all rules, but it uses the FIRST matching rule it finds. (In particular, if you want to provide free shipping under certain conditions, you usually need to place the rule for free shipping FIRST rather than last, because the last rule will only be used if none of the other rules matches).
For the full documentation of the Shipping by Rules plugin for WooCommerce see:
http://open-tools.net/documentation/advanced-shipping-by-rules-for-woocommerce.html
Screenshots
The shipping method configuration page. Here you can set up multiple shipping methods (think carriers) using the Shipping by Rules plugin. Each method can have an arbitrary number of rulesets and rules. Each method can independently offer a shipping rate.
The shipping method edit page. Give the shipping method a title that will be shown in the cart and the invoice. You can add an arbitrary number of rulesets, each applying to different countries. Each ruleset can have an arbitrary number of rules of the form ‘Name=”Name to be displayed to the user”; Amount<14; Weight>5; Shipping=9.9’. Do not forget to press “Update” to save your changes. The rulesets can be reordered by simply dragging them.
An example of two shipping methods offered in the cart. Notice that the displayed shipping name has the form “Shipping Method name (Optional Rule name)”.
If a matching rule has NoShipping set as shipping costs, its name will be displayed as a warning message to the user and the method will not offer any shipping.
The plugin’s entry in WordPress’ plugin management page contains direct links to the configuration page, to the documentation and to the support forum.
