Can You Ship Dangerous Goods Through ShipStation?
Published
Yes, on your own carrier accounts where that carrier permits it, and ShipStation holds a full classification record against the product. The constraints that matter are the carrier’s rather than ShipStation’s, and there is a two-second test that settles it for your setup.
Worth checking whether this applies to you before reading on. If you sell anything with a lithium battery in it, an aerosol, a nail polish, a perfume, a hand sanitiser or a bottle of essential oil, you are shipping dangerous goods. Most people selling those things do not think of themselves as hazmat shippers, and the classification does not care.
How to tell, in two seconds
Configure a shipment with the carrier and service you intend to use, then look in Other Shipping Options for This shipment contains dangerous goods. If the option is there, that carrier and service support the marking. If it is absent, they do not.
That is ShipStation’s own recommended method, and it beats any table because it reflects your account, your contract and the current state of the integration rather than a general answer.
USPS is the path that works for most consumer hazmat, on your own account. ShipStation states that when shipping dangerous goods with USPS you must select Ground Advantage as the service. For limited-quantity, ground-only consumer goods — which is what most sellers in this position are shipping — that is a real and straightforward answer.
One thing to get right, because it is easy to read past. USPS from ShipStation is itself a ShipStation Carrier, and the exclusion below applies to all of them. The US carriers ShipStation lists for dangerous goods are Endicia and Stamps.com — the standalone USPS postage providers you connect as your own account — alongside DAI Post, DHL eCommerce, FirstMile and Purolator. USPS from ShipStation is not among them.
So the USPS route means a directly connected Stamps.com or Endicia account, not the USPS offering bundled with ShipStation Carriers. ShipStation does not spell that out in one sentence; it follows from the carrier list and the ShipStation Carriers exclusion read together. Confirm it with the two-second test above on your own account rather than taking it from here.
What ShipStation stores against the product
There is a proper data model here, and it is more thorough than most people expect. A product marked as dangerous goods carries a UN number, shipping name, technical name, product hazard class and sub hazard, packaging group, quantity, amount and unit, packaging type, transport category, a reportable quantity flag under 40 CFR, and a radioactive indicator.
It bulk-imports. ShipStation provides a dedicated Import Product Dangerous Goods CSV type with a sample file attached to its documentation, field mapping on upload, and reusable import templates. Once a product is classified, adding it to a manual order by SKU brings the dangerous goods information onto the order automatically.
As of August 2026 these product fields are documented as available to Australia and New Zealand accounts only, with US merchants able to ship dangerous goods through Fulfilled by ShipStation with prior approval. ShipStation flags it as a watch-this-space rather than a settled position, so it is worth re-checking your own account rather than taking the date from here.
Dry ice and alcohol, which rules do handle
Three automation actions in the criteria and actions reference cover the special-handling cases that come up most:
- Set the Order as Containing Dry Ice (UPS / FedEx) — marks the shipment, without setting a weight
- Set the Dry Ice Weight (UPS / FedEx) — sets the dry ice weight, and ShipStation notes it does not alter the order’s weight
- Set the Order as Containing Alcohol (FedEx) — selects the alcohol option in Other Shipping Options
Those run at import on any criteria you like, so a product tag on your frozen SKUs is enough to have every affected order marked before anyone sees it. That is the same pattern as the rest of temperature-controlled shipping.
Which carriers will accept them through ShipStation
Three statements from ShipStation’s own documentation, and they are the important part of this article.
You cannot ship dangerous goods with any services from ShipStation Carriers. The Dangerous Goods option is limited to your own connected accounts and your account contract with that carrier.
On UPS:
Shipping dangerous goods is not allowed when creating UPS labels in ShipStation. If you are shipping dangerous goods, you must go through UPS directly.
On FedEx:
Dangerous Goods shipping is not available for the ShipStation integration with FedEx. To ship dangerous goods with FedEx, you must log in to your FedEx account directly.
ShipStation repeats the UPS and FedEx exclusions in every country table it publishes — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia.
So for most operations the two carriers that would otherwise handle this are both out, in ShipStation. Not out entirely — your own UPS or FedEx contract may well permit dangerous goods, and ShipStation says so explicitly:
Some carriers may not support marking shipments as dangerous goods in ShipStation but will still permit you to ship dangerous goods if your account contract allows it. For example, you may have a UPS account contract that allows shipping items on their dangerous goods list. You will not mark these shipments in ShipStation as containing dangerous goods (the option will not be present for you to select), but UPS does have specific contractual and packaging requirements you must adhere to.
Read that carefully, because it describes a genuinely awkward operational state: a shipment that is dangerous goods, that your contract allows, that you may create in ShipStation, and that ShipStation has no way to mark as such. The compliance obligation is entirely yours and there is no field recording that you met it.
The nine classes, briefly
The classification matters because it determines everything downstream — which carrier, which service, which packaging, which markings. ShipStation publishes the nine classes with consumer examples, and the examples are the useful part, because they are the things ordinary sellers do not expect:
- Class 2, gases — aerosols, gas canisters
- Class 3, flammable liquids — perfumes and colognes, nail polish, hand sanitiser, essential oils, some cleaners
- Class 4, flammable solids — matches, charcoal, some powders, permanent markers, wet wipes
- Class 5, oxidisers — hair dye, pool chemicals, some over-the-counter products
- Class 6, toxic and infectious — pesticides, flea collars, medical waste
- Class 8, corrosives — drain and toilet cleaners, some hair dyes
- Class 9, miscellaneous — lithium batteries, dry ice, airbags
Class 9 is the one that catches ecommerce. ShipStation’s phrasing is worth quoting: “Products in this class include any product that includes a lithium battery.” That is a wide net, and it covers a lot of catalogues that have never thought about it.
Dry ice sits in the same class, and it is the case ShipStation’s automation handles directly, as above.
Markings, and one that expired
ShipStation notes that the US Department of Transportation phased out the ORM-D Consumer Commodity marking at the end of 2020, and that packages must now carry the Limited Quantity marking in accordance with 49 CFR 173.156.
That is confirmed by the regulation itself. The marking section that authorised ORM-D, 49 CFR 172.316, is now [Reserved] — the provision has been removed rather than amended. The live marking requirement for limited quantities is § 172.315, referenced throughout § 173.156, which sets out the exceptions for limited quantity materials.
If you have pre-printed cartons or a labelling process still producing ORM-D marks, that is a stock problem to fix rather than a software one.
What marking a shipment does not do
This is the part worth being blunt about.
Marking a shipment as dangerous goods in ShipStation relays information to the carrier. It does not make the shipment compliant. ShipStation says so:
…can relay information to the carrier like the class of hazardous material, carriers may specify that you follow specific packaging requirements for particular shipments.
Carriers may also require specific services, particular paperwork, and physical stickers on the outside of the parcel that ShipStation does not generate. Packaging has closure instructions from the manufacturer that were tested with the specific materials listed, and following them is not optional. Incompatible materials must not be packed together.
None of that is visible in a shipping platform. The failure mode for getting it wrong is fines, delays, denied shipments, and in the worst case injury to somebody handling the parcel.
If dangerous goods are a meaningful share of your volume, the person who owns this should be trained in it and it should not be a configuration decision made at a pack bench.
What to do
Work out whether you have any. Go through your catalogue against the nine classes above, paying attention to Class 9. Anything with a lithium battery, anything flammable, anything pressurised. Most operations discover they have more than they thought.
Test the option, per carrier. Configure a shipment on each carrier and service you use and check whether the dangerous goods option appears. That tells you what is available to you specifically.
Confirm your carrier contract separately. ShipStation showing no option is not the same as your carrier refusing. Those are two different questions and only the carrier can answer the second.
Decide where the labels get created. If the answer is the carrier’s own portal for a subset of your volume, that is a workflow to design deliberately rather than a thing that happens ad hoc. Splitting label creation across two systems is a real operational cost and it should be a decision.
What this does not fix
Nothing in this article makes you compliant. Dangerous goods regulation is a legal obligation on the shipper, it varies by mode, destination and material, and a shipping platform is not the authority on it.
What ShipStation gives you is a way to communicate a classification you have already established to a carrier that has already agreed to accept it. The classification, the packaging, the markings and the training are yours, and the carrier and the regulator are the sources for all four.
Deciding it on every order
When the decision depends on the contents of each order, the packaging on hand and live rates, it has to be worked out per order before anyone opens it.
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