Question 1

Can ShipStation rate shop across carriers automatically?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Rate Shopper pulls live rates from your connected carriers and applies the winner, using a Cheapest, Fastest, or Best Value strategy — or a custom configuration, where the account's plan includes it. ShipStation documents three ways to apply it: from an automation rule using the Set Rate Shopper action, from the Service drop-down on a single order, or in bulk across a selection of orders. It's more thoughtful than people expect. Service Preferences let a preferred carrier win when it's within a cost threshold of the cheapest. Delivery time constraints restrict eligible services by carrier transit estimate, counted in business days from the day after ship date. Available for US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand accounts; plan-gated.

Question 2

Can ShipStation pick a service based on weight and zone?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it's the most common rule people build. Total Weight, Country, State, City, USPS Zone, order value and residential-versus-commercial are all available as criteria, and none of them carry the single-line-item restriction that trips up SKU-based rules. The limitation is in the data. The only zone criterion is USPS's, so a rule using it to choose a UPS or FedEx service is substituting one carrier's distance model for another's, and the thresholds you set encode the rate card as it stood on the day you priced it. Worth asking what a large weight-and-zone matrix is actually for before building one. It exists to find the cheapest service that still arrives on time, which is what Rate Shopper does — using the real weight, the real dimensions and the real address rather than an approximation of each. Unless Rate Shopper is unavailable on your account or region, the better use of the effort is configuring it against what the customer was sold at checkout. Weight and destination criteria keep their place either way — routing an order to the right Rate Shopper configuration, and driving the actions that were never service selection: insurance thresholds, confirmation, tagging for customs.

Question 3

Can rules react to which products are in an order?

Accepted Answer

Yes, via tags — and this is the most underused capability in the product. Tag a product record and ShipStation applies that tag to any order containing it at import, before any automation runs. Same for customer tags. Rules keyed to tags work on orders of any size. Tags also chain: a rule can apply a tag that later rules use as criteria, which gives you a workable classification pass followed by an action pass. Combined with order-level criteria like total weight, this covers most of what people initially reach for SKU criteria to do.

Question 4

Can ShipStation split orders into separate shipments automatically?

Accepted Answer

Yes, when the rule is a property of the product. Auto-Split creates separate shipments based on settings you configure per product: Exclusive Bulk Shipping, Ships Individually, or Ship on Custom Quantity. Exactly right for an oversized item that always ships alone, or products that ship a fixed number to a box. Plan-gated (High Volume for US/Canada/ANZ, Enterprise for UK/EU, or an add-on) and doesn't apply to manual orders.

Question 5

Can ShipStation choose which warehouse fulfills an order?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Auto-Routing determines fulfillment based on which warehouses stock the items and which is closest to the recipient. Available for US and Canada accounts on the High Volume plan. You can also set Ship From Location per store with a basic rule, if your routing logic is simply 'Shopify orders ship from the main warehouse.'

Question 6

Can ShipStation hold orders and flag exceptions?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Hold Until moves an order out of the queue until a date you set — the standard pre-order pattern. In accounts I work in the action also takes a number of days rather than a date, and offers an indefinite hold, though neither is documented. The relative option matters inside a rule: a fixed date holds every matching order until the same day, and once that day passes it holds nothing, silently. Rules can also create alerts, add internal notes, set custom fields, assign users, add insurance, and flag dry ice with a declared weight. The tag-and-alert pattern is genuinely useful for anything the engine can't decide: identify the order, flag it, let a person handle it. That's a legitimate automation strategy, not a failure.

Question 7

Can ShipStation add insurance to orders automatically?

Accepted Answer

Yes. An automation rule can add ShipStation's insurance partner to any order that meets criteria you define — order value, contents, destination, ship-from location, or anything else the rules engine can read. The rule runs at import like every other rule. Insure the Package is a standard action in the criteria and actions reference, and ShipStation ships a rule template for it on the Automation Overview page. The amount is the one thing the rule does not choose: it always takes the order's Amount Paid, which you can adjust by hand before buying the label. So the decision to insure is automatable and the sum insured is a default you accept or override.

Question 8

Can a packing slip carry the information a picker actually needs?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it goes further than most accounts use. Packing slips are edited through a template editor, so the SKU, the product name, a variant description, a product image and the warehouse location can all print on the slip the picker carries. What it depends on is the product records being complete — the warehouse location in particular has to be populated before it can print. If your team batch-picks rather than working order by order, Pick Lists are the companion feature.

Question 9

Can ShipStation fill in customs declarations automatically?

Accepted Answer

Yes. ShipStation builds a declaration for every international order from the order's items, and fills it from three layers: account-wide defaults and tax identifiers in International Settings, category-level values on a Preset Group, and per-product values on each product's Customs tab. The rules engine adds six customs actions on top, including content type, non-delivery instruction, tax identifiers and who is billed for duties. Set it up once and international orders arrive with the form already filled. Two defaults are worth checking rather than inheriting: country of origin defaults to your account's home country, which is wrong for anything you import and resell, and discounted items keep the price the channel sent, which ShipStation states you must change by hand.

Question 10

Can ShipStation check that the right items went in the box?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Scan to Verify has the packer scan a UPC or SKU barcode for each item, gives audio and visual feedback, and marks the order Verified once every item and quantity has been accounted for. Combined with Scan to Verify and Print it runs straight through to buying the label. Set the matching preference under Settings, Shipping, Workflow Settings, and populate UPCs or Fulfillment SKUs on your product records — the CSV import does this in bulk. One identifier per product: ShipStation states Scan to Verify does not support multiple UPC codes or Fulfillment SKUs on a single product, so check that one code covers each item before you roll it out.

Question 11

Can I change the service or address after a label has been printed?

Accepted Answer

Not by editing it — ShipStation states that once a label is created it cannot be changed, so the route is to void it and create a new one. Voiding preserves the shipment record, returns the order to Awaiting Shipment, and sends a refund request to whichever postage provider sold the label. Two things decide whether it costs you anything. Refunds follow the provider's own policy and window — UPS from ShipStation will not refund a label unused for 30 days, and a USPS label already scanned will not be refunded at all. And ShipStation does not update the marketplace when you void, so the channel keeps the old tracking number unless you change it there yourself.

Question 12

Is ShipStation's address validation good enough to rely on?

Accepted Answer

For US domestic parcels, yes. ShipStation runs validation on every order shipping to or within a supported country and auto-corrects domestic and international addresses for those countries, and as of September 2026 it documents eleven such countries. US addresses are checked against the USPS database and the other ten against the Melissa database. It also improves the address rather than only grading it — a postal code comes back enriched to ZIP+4, for instance. There is nothing to configure and no third-party tool worth adding alongside it. Validation grades an address against a postal database. It does not decide how a carrier will classify that address for billing, which is a separate question with a separate answer. It also does not act on what it finds: turning a grade into a hold, a tag or an alert is an automation rule job.

Question 13

Does ShipStation validate international addresses?

Accepted Answer

In the application, only for the countries its Address Verification feature supports — eleven as of September 2026, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United States. Ship somewhere else and ShipStation documents the outcome as address verification not completed, because the country is not supported. The ShipStation API is a wider surface: it validates those same eleven and, in its own words, over 160 others. On that wider API surface the depth varies by country and the status does not, which is the part worth knowing. ShipStation's API documentation publishes a validation level per country, and a verified address on a City/Municipality country means the city and postal code exist and correspond — the street, building number and apartment were never checked. Look up the level for the countries you actually ship to before deciding how much weight the flag carries.

Question 14

Does an address validation warning stop me printing a label?

Accepted Answer

No. ShipStation states that warnings do not stop you creating a shipping label — they exist to bring something to your attention that might influence your shipping decision — while an error blocks creation and requires a change before you can proceed. Address verification sits on the permissive side of that line: a verification warning or error still lets you attempt the label, though the postage provider may reject it afterwards. Through the ShipStation API it is a choice instead. The validate_address property defaults to no_validation, which runs no validation at all; set validate_only or validate_and_clean and an address that cannot be validated returns an error and the label is not created.

Question 15

Do automation rules re-run when an order changes?

Accepted Answer

Depends which your account has. Classic rules fire once, when an order first enters Awaiting Shipment or On Hold, and changes after that don't trigger them. Some accounts now have a redesigned Automation Rules screen where rules are grouped into named workflows, each with a trigger type — the default is Orders imported, and a workflow can also run off a tag being added, a tag being removed, or a schedule. This is rolling out gradually and is not documented — we see accounts with it and accounts without, so check Settings → Automation → Automation Rules in your own account. Either way, a trigger only decides when logic runs, which is a separate question from what that logic can evaluate once it does.

Question 16

Can I enforce a shipping cutoff in ShipStation?

Accepted Answer

Yes, through four mechanisms rather than one setting. A rule can hold an order until a date or for a number of days and set its Ship By Date; label creation takes a Scheduled Ship Date for the whole batch; shipment notifications can be delayed until a set hour, a number of hours after the label, or the first carrier scan; and End of Day manifests the day's shipments to the carrier. The piece you drive by hand is the import. ShipStation states that automatic imports cannot be scheduled or customized and that store auto-refresh cannot be set to run at intervals, recommending you press import when you need current orders. Since classic rules fire when an order first lands, a manual import at the cutoff minute is how you draw the boundary where you said it would be.

Question 17

What order does ShipStation automation run in?

Accepted Answer

Auto-Routing and Auto-Split, then SmartFill, then Preset Groups, then Product Defaults, then Service Mapping, then Automation Rules last. Within rules, ShipStation processes your list top to bottom, and later rules override earlier ones. SmartFill is the one most people do not know is in the chain: it is on by default and fills weight and dimensions from your own recent labels, and everything below it overwrites it. The sequence is also why rules have dependencies you manage yourself — service before insurance, dimensions before Rate Shopper, a tag before any rule keyed to that tag.

Question 18

What is the difference between a Preset Group and a Shipping Preset?

Accepted Answer

A Product Preset Group is a shared product default. Assign products to it and its shipping service, package, weight, dimensions and customs values apply automatically at import, unless an individual Product Default overrides them. A Shipping Preset is a manual shortcut applied at the shipment screen by hotkey or by scanning a barcode. Use a Preset Group when the answer is a property of the product, and a Shipping Preset when a person genuinely has to look at the parcel — presets carry hotkeys and print as scannable barcodes. If you want a rule to apply a saved combination, the mechanism is a Shipping Strategy rather than a preset: ShipStation states you cannot use automation to apply presets, but Set Shipping Strategy is a standard rule action.

Question 19

Can automation rules use OR logic?

Accepted Answer

Only inside a single criterion. Multiple values within one criterion are OR (semicolon-separated for typed values). Separate criteria lines are always AND. There's no OR across lines and no nesting. So (A AND B) OR (C AND D) becomes two rules, and you own the sequencing and override interactions between them. Fine at five rules. Harder to reason about at fifty.

Question 20

Where should the Charge Shipping to My Account rule sit in my rule list?

Accepted Answer

After whatever sets the service, when that is a static rule, a preset or service mapping. Both halves of that are documented: ShipStation processes automation rules from first to last in the list, and the Charge Shipping to My Account action clears the order's shipping service if the service already on the order is not offered by the account the rule selects. When Rate Shopper sets the service instead, the placement reverses — put the account rule above the Rate Shopper rule — but that pairing is my observation rather than documented behaviour, so test it before relying on it. What ShipStation documents for Rate Shopper is the general principle, in the dimensions-then-rate-shop example: rule sequence is crucial, and a rule the Rate Shopper rule depends on must run before it. The account rule is the same principle applied to a prerequisite ShipStation does not name. Placing it wrong is not a tidiness problem — an order whose service gets cleared imports successfully and reaches the packing bench with an empty service field.

Question 21

Why did all my automation rules stop working at once?

Accepted Answer

Most likely a rule with a blank criteria or blank action. ShipStation fails that rule and every rule below it in the list, with no warning.

Question 22

Why do my SKU-based rules only work on some orders?

Accepted Answer

The Item Name, Item SKU, and Warehouse Location criteria only evaluate orders with a single line item. Multi-item orders are skipped. The same caveat applies to Saved Filter criteria keyed on those fields. ShipStation's criteria reference states the restriction directly, and adds a nuance worth knowing: the quantity of that single line item does not matter. That is a different rule from Product Defaults, which do require a quantity of one. The documented answer for multi-item orders is product tags, and it is a good one.

Question 23

What can't product tags do?

Accepted Answer

Tags give you set membership, not the bill of materials. A tag says FRAGILE is in the order. It can't say whether that's one wine glass or nine, or what each item's dimensions are. Which is exactly what every packing decision needs. You can't cartonize from a tag — fitting items in a box requires knowing which items, how many, and how big.

Question 24

Can automation rules do calculations?

Accepted Answer

No. Criteria compare a field to a value you typed. The engine can't compute density or dimensional weight, can't compare two fields to each other, and can't sum across line items.

Question 25

Can automation rules use data from outside ShipStation?

Accepted Answer

No. Criteria read fields already on the order record. There's no action to fetch a forecast, query an ERP, or check anything external. This is the limit behind most cold-chain requirements: the right packaging depends on the forecasted temperature at the destination at ship time, which isn't on the order.

Question 26

Does ShipStation do cartonization?

Accepted Answer

Not in the rules engine, and now partly yes elsewhere. Automation rules apply assumptive logic you wrote in advance — 'if 3 products, use box X' — which works for a narrow catalog and degrades as SKUs and package types multiply. But Packing Recommendations, a beta feature in ShipStation Labs, does compute a packing plan from your product dimensions and available packages, and will build the multi-package configuration in one click. Two things decide whether it helps you. ShipStation documents three requirements — enable it in Labs, add dimensions and weights to your products, and configure your custom packages with dimensions and a maximum weight — and the product dimensions are the one most catalogues do not have. And it is invoked per order and applied by a person, so it does not fire unattended at import and its result does not feed rate selection. Being a Labs beta, its availability may change.

Question 27

Where does ShipStation get an order's weight from?

Accepted Answer

From five places, which override each other in a fixed order: the weight the marketplace sent, SmartFill, Product Defaults or a Preset Group, an automation rule, and finally whatever a connected scale or a person types at the shipment screen. SmartFill runs after Auto-Split and before every other kind of automation, so anything below it wins. The one worth knowing about is SmartFill, because it is on by default and it is not a rule you wrote. It copies weight and dimensions from the two most recent labels for the exact same combination of items, and only when those two agree. Product Defaults are also unusual here: they normally require a single-item order, and weight is the documented exception that applies anyway.

Question 28

Can ShipStation apply the right package dimensions automatically?

Accepted Answer

For single-line-item, single-quantity orders with stable packaging, yes — via Product Defaults, and it works well. ShipStation applies Product Defaults only to orders containing one line item at a quantity of one, so a single SKU ordered three times does not qualify. Item-count rules approximate the rest; accuracy falls as composition varies. SmartFill sits underneath both and is on by default. It copies weight and dimensions from the two most recent labels for the exact same combination of items, and only when those two agree — which makes it a cache of decisions your packers already made rather than a calculation. It runs after Auto-Split and before every other kind of automation, so a Product Default or a rule overwrites it.

Question 29

Should I use carrier packaging or my own boxes in ShipStation?

Accepted Answer

Default to your own, and use carrier packaging on the services that require it to give you their rate. Selecting a carrier's flat-rate package is a declaration, not a note about what you packed: it is how the carrier learns the box is theirs, and entering the same dimensions by hand does not do it. Only the second job changes how the parcel is rated. The carrier prices from the weight and dimensions it is sent, so a saved custom package rates exactly as the generic Package entry does — the value of a package list is accurate dimensions, and separately, box sizes small enough to keep parcels out of dimensional weight. Rate Shopper will not tell you which was cheaper: it compares the rates carriers return for different services, never different packages, so the box is the one input it never varies.

Question 30

Why can't I apply a custom package without setting a carrier?

Accepted Answer

The Set Carrier/Service/Package action sets all three together. The alternative, Set Package Dimensions, applies dimensions but leaves the package name off the order — which breaks anything downstream that reads it.

Question 31

Can ShipStation split an order across multiple boxes automatically?

Accepted Answer

Not by fit. Auto-Split handles it when the rule is a property of the product, configured per product in advance. But deciding how to divide an order that doesn't fit in one box — and building the multi-package shipment — isn't automatable. ShipStation's automation rules criteria and actions reference lists Set Package Dimensions and nothing that builds a multi-package configuration. Split Ship, Auto-Split, and multi-package shipments are three different features that get conflated constantly, and only one of them is automatic.

Question 32

Can I save a multi-package configuration and reuse it?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A Package Set stores the number of component packages and the dimensions, weight and insured value for each one, and can be applied to a single shipment or to many at once with a bulk update. They are created under Settings, Shipping, Packages, on the Package Sets tab. Packing Recommendations, as of August 2026 a beta in ShipStation Labs, goes further: given product dimensions and configured packages it computes a packing plan and creates the multi-package configuration in one click, per order. Three things to know about sets themselves — a saved set cannot be edited, only deleted and rebuilt; one set applies per shipment, though you can add packages afterwards; and USPS does not support multi-package labels, so USPS volume uses split shipments instead.

Question 33

Can ShipStation compare flat-rate programs against standard rates?

Accepted Answer

No. Rate Shopper takes the package as an input — ShipStation's setup docs require the dimensions rule to run before the Rate Shopper rule. Since flat-rate programs require packing into the carrier's box, eligibility is decided upstream of rating, and a box you didn't pack into can't win on price. These misses are invisible. Rate Shopper reports a win every time, because it correctly found the cheapest service for the box you handed it. There's no report line for the box nobody considered. The stop-gap is to audit a sample, find the profile where flat rate wins most of the time, and set that service and package with an automation rule — blunt, since it can't check fit, and better than leaving the category unpriced.

Question 34

Is USPS Ground Advantage Cubic cheaper than standard Ground Advantage?

Accepted Answer

It depends on density, and the rule is simple enough to apply per parcel: cubic beats standard Ground Advantage Commercial once the weight in pounds exceeds the box volume in tenths of a cubic foot. A 0.3 cubic foot box wins on cubic above 3 lb, a 0.5 cubic foot box above 5 lb. The crossover holds in every zone, which is the whole point of cubic — it is priced on volume, so distance does not move it. Three things disqualify a parcel outright: over 20 lb, over one cubic foot, or a longest side over 22 inches. The comparison also changed sharply in 2026. Standard Ground Advantage rose 7.8% in January and took an 8% surcharge in April, and July collapsed the commercial ounce tiers so every sub-one-pound parcel bills at the old top rate. Cubic rose 8.0% across the same period and nothing more.

Question 35

Why didn't Rate Shopper pick the service I expected?

Accepted Answer

It only chooses from services you made eligible in the rule. An economy option that would have arrived in time can't win if it isn't in the set. Delivery time constraints help, but only within what you pre-selected — and a service the carrier returns no transit estimate for drops out entirely.

Question 36

Do I have to pay for Rate Shopper, and are the default strategies enough?

Accepted Answer

On plans sold since 8 July 2025 the default strategies are included at every tier, so turning Rate Shopper on costs nothing. The customisable version is what is gated — ShipStation's plan table marks Custom Rate Shopper unavailable on Starter and available on Standard and Premium. Whether the defaults are enough depends on what you ship with. ShipStation describes the three defaults — Cheapest, Fastest and Best Value — as containing the most-used services from ShipStation Carriers, enumerates exactly which services each one holds, and states you cannot edit or delete them. The defaults therefore price ShipStation's carrier accounts rather than yours. To compare a connected account of your own — or any mix of accounts and services — you build a new Rate Shopper rule rather than editing a default.

Question 37

Can automation rules pick the cheapest service without Rate Shopper?

Accepted Answer

Only by approximation, and it asks the rules engine to do a job it isn't built for. Rules classify an order well — heavy, residential, going to zone 8 — and cannot price one, so a rules-only setup encodes rates you looked up once and they go stale. Rate Shopper prices live. The better shape is a rule that classifies the order and applies a Rate Shopper strategy, leaving the pricing to the thing that can price. The static model is still right in two cases: accounts without Rate Shopper, which is plan-gated, and operations that need a predictable service on every order rather than the cheapest one. Re-price the model whenever carrier rates move.

Question 38

Why is my carrier bill higher than the rate I was quoted?

Accepted Answer

Fuel, residential delivery, oversize and overweight handling, address corrections, and delivery-area surcharges are applied after the fact and often aren't reflected in a base-rate comparison.

Question 39

Can I trust ShipStation's residential/commercial indicator?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is worth routing on. ShipStation validates every order shipping to a supported country, classifies US addresses as residential or commercial, and exposes that as a Residential / Commercial rule criterion alongside an Address Verified criterion. ShipStation documents the two rules that use it to avoid FedEx's Ground and Home Delivery surcharges in both directions. One thing to know about what the flag is. ShipStation states the marker comes from the Stamps.com or Melissa address database and "may not reflect the same determination made by UPS or FedEx", who bill from their own. Two datasets about what kind of building sits at an address will differ at the edges, so routing on it removes the large error rather than all of it.

Question 40

Can I see what the carrier actually billed me, not just what the label cost?

Accepted Answer

Yes, if you are on ShipStation carrier accounts. Settings → Shipping → Carriers leads through to the carrier's billing records, where adjustments and fees appear as their own transaction lines rather than folded into the label price, and the whole thing exports to CSV. This is the difference between what a label cost when you bought it and what the carrier charged once the parcel went through their facility. Summing label costs in a spreadsheet will not show it. On your own carrier accounts rather than ShipStation's, the same records live in each carrier's billing portal instead.

Question 41

Does ShipStation charge extra for insurance, address validation or returns?

Accepted Answer

One of the three. Address validation is included on every plan and runs automatically on orders to supported countries. Insurance is a per-shipment purchase, deducted from your ShipStation Balance when you buy it through ShipStation's partner. Return labels are priced like any other label, but the returns portal is not on every plan. The costs people miss are the indirect ones. Return labels, fulfillments and voided labels all count toward your plan's monthly shipment limit, so a high return rate consumes allowance you were budgeting for outbound. And ShipStation validating an address does not stop a carrier charging an address correction fee weeks later — UPS documents that it may update a validated address if it cannot be used to complete delivery, and bills the shipper for the correction.

Question 42

Should I use my own carrier account or ShipStation's rates?

Accepted Answer

It depends on parcel profile and volume, and it is worth testing rather than assuming. ShipStation's own discounted rates are hard to beat on lighter parcels and at moderate volume. A negotiated account of your own tends to win on heavier packages, on shipments using special services, and once volume is high enough to have earned deeper discounts than the platform's. Two things to price in before switching. Connecting your own carrier accounts carries a fee that varies by plan, and some plans add a per-shipment fee on labels bought against them — ShipStation publishes the current schedule. And the comparison is not one-directional: your negotiated rate can be better on one parcel profile and worse on another, which is an argument for comparing per order rather than picking a side.

Question 43

Is ShipStation Carriers worth using compared to my own carrier accounts?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is not an either/or. ShipStation Carriers needs no carrier account and no add-on to keep on the account, so the cost of having it available is nothing. Your own accounts sit alongside it and add their negotiated rates to the same comparison. The difference that shows up in operations is billing. ShipStation Carrier labels are bought from your ShipStation Balance at the moment you print them, and an unused label is only refunded if someone voids it — within 30 days for UPS from ShipStation and DHL Express from ShipStation, with funds taking up to 21 business days to return. Your own FedEx and UPS accounts are post-billed, so a label you never ship simply never appears on the invoice. Voided labels still count toward your plan's monthly shipment limit either way.

Question 44

Are ShipStation's FedEx rates good, or should I use my own FedEx account?

Accepted Answer

ShipStation's are good and require no FedEx account at all. FedEx from ShipStation is a ShipStation Carrier, so you enter billing details and start printing; ShipStation publishes the US discount as up to 90% off standard list rates, up to 53% off Ground Economy and up to 39% off One Rate. Your own contract tends to win once you have negotiated volume, and on the services and features ShipStation's version does not carry. Two documented differences decide it more often than the rate does. FedEx from ShipStation does not support pickups, and a pickup booked on your own account that collects those parcels is charged $4.00 per package. And FedEx Ground Economy on your own account requires FedEx to approve you for it, which is a conversation with a rep rather than a checkbox. As with UPS, you can connect both and let a rate comparison decide per order.

Question 45

Should I connect my own FedEx account to ShipStation, or use FedEx from ShipStation?

Accepted Answer

Connect your own if you need a capability ShipStation's FedEx account does not carry, or if you have negotiated a contract at all. ShipStation's FedEx rates are good, and a connected account does not have to beat them to be worth adding — Rate Shopper picks the cheaper of the two per order, so an account that wins occasionally still earns its place. You are adding a rate to the comparison, not replacing one. FedEx from ShipStation supports pickups in the UK only, and does not support third-party billing, collect on delivery, carrier insurance or multiple accounts. A connected FedEx account carries all of those for US and Canadian accounts, and FedEx invoices you monthly rather than drawing from a prepaid ShipStation Balance. The cost of connecting one depends on when you signed up: nothing if that was on or after 9 July 2025, a monthly add-on by tier on Legacy plans, a per-shipment fee on High Volume.

Question 46

Can I run two accounts with the same carrier in ShipStation, and how do orders get to the second one?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on carriers that support it. Connect both accounts and the first one becomes the primary — ShipStation states it always defaults to the primary account for a carrier when you select a carrier service. To send an order to the other account, change the Shipping Account in Other Shipping Options on the order, apply it to a selection in bulk, or set it at import with the Charge Shipping to My Account automation rule action. Three things always use the primary account regardless of what you configure: return labels, labels created directly in the Rate Calculator, and any service picked from a list sorted by carrier rather than by account. Not all carriers allow multiple accounts, and ShipStation recommends giving each one a unique nickname so they are distinguishable in the service menu.

Question 47

Can ShipStation use the shipping option the customer chose at checkout?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The checkout selection arrives as the Requested Service, and it is available to automation rules as criteria — both the raw marketplace value and the value after Service Mapping has run. So each option on your storefront can route to its own Rate Shopper configuration. That matters because the checkout selection is the only record of what you promised. A single rate shopper across all orders will happily win a cheap slow service on an order somebody paid a premium to have quickly. One configuration per shipping option you sell, routed on the requested service, keeps the price comparison while making sure every possible winner honours the promise.

Question 48

Does the $800 de minimis exemption still apply to shipments into the US?

Accepted Answer

No. CBP has indefinitely suspended the de minimis administrative exemption for imports valued at $800 or less, from every country. Two interim final rules published on 24 June 2026 cover it: one for goods arriving through the international postal network, one for every other mode. Low-value shipments now require formal or informal entry procedures and are subject to applicable duties. The dates differ and are worth getting right. The non-postal rule took effect on 24 June 2026. The postal rule took effect on 24 July 2026. A separate compliance date of 22 October 2026 applies only to one narrow postal requirement — that certain postal shipments file formal entry — and CBP is opening a voluntary Entry Type 13 test for shipments valued at $2,500 or less when that window closes.

Question 49

How does Amazon Buy Shipping interact with rate shopping?

Accepted Answer

It sits outside it. Amazon Buy Shipping is not part of the Rate Shopper comparison, and the services available through it — along with their prices — can differ from one order to the next, so a static automation rule cannot reliably pre-select one either. It is usually still worth using on Amazon orders. Amazon sets the terms for both the delivery-performance credit and the A-to-Z Guarantee protection that come with buying through it, and changes them from time to time, so check the current policy in Seller Central rather than taking it from here. The practical consequence is that Amazon volume ends up on a different decision path from everything else you ship.

Question 50

Can ShipStation hold orders based on inventory levels?

Accepted Answer

Partly. ShipStation's internal inventory tracks On Hand, Committed, Allocated and Available stock, and allocation reserves units against orders in Awaiting Shipment so you can see what is genuinely covered. Classic automation rules cannot see stock — inventory is not among the criteria, and they fire once at import. On accounts with the newer scheduled workflows that has changed: in accounts I work in, a workflow running on a cadence will hold an order once its stock reaches zero. None of that is documented, so check your own account. What none of it settles is sequencing. A scheduled check answers whether any stock is left, not which of two competing orders should get it. ShipStation documents allocation as manual and says stock is deducted as you ship whether you allocate or not, so deciding who gets the last six units when two orders need four each is still a person looking at a grid.

Question 51

Can ShipStation batch by multiple criteria at once?

Accepted Answer

Batches group orders by whatever you can filter or select on, and ShipStation gives international shipments, a specific warehouse, particular products and priority orders as the common cases. A batch can be assigned to a named user, moves through open, processed and archived states, and Scan to Batch adds orders by scanning the barcode on a packing slip. Pick Lists then give the picker one aggregated list of SKUs, quantities and warehouse locations for the whole batch. What is not automated is building the batch. No automation rule action creates or fills one, so somebody applies the filter and clicks, every shipping day. That is fine for one or two consistent groupings and gets harder as the combination — zone and cutoff and priority and carrier — becomes specific to your floor.

Question 52

How do I set Purolator's confirmation with automation rules?

Accepted Answer

ShipStation presents confirmation as a carrier-agnostic list, so Purolator's own labels do not appear in the dropdown. The options you need are there under different names. In the Canadian accounts I have set this up in, Origin Signature Not Required maps to Delivery, No Confirmation maps to Online, and Residential Signature Domestic maps to Signature. That mapping is not in ShipStation's documentation, so confirm it against a test label before relying on it.

Question 53

What does ShipStation tell my customer about their delivery?

Accepted Answer

Four emails, per store: shipment confirmation, estimated delivery date, out for delivery, and delivered. They carry your branding, ShipStation flags the marketplace so the channel does not send a duplicate, the confirmation can be delayed three different ways, and automation rules can pick which template a given order gets. One thing is not among them: there is no delivery exception email. ShipStation tracks the condition — Delivery Exceptions is a shipment status with its own filter and its own dashboard metric — but nothing emails on it. Working that filter daily is the manual answer, and for most operations it is the highest-value ten minutes in the day.

Question 54

Can ShipStation handle dangerous goods and hazmat?

Accepted Answer

Yes, on your own carrier accounts where that carrier permits it, and there is a two-second test per shipment: configure the carrier and service, then look for "This shipment contains dangerous goods" in Other Shipping Options. If the option is present, that combination supports the marking. For USPS, ShipStation states the service must be Ground Advantage, on a directly connected Stamps.com or Endicia account rather than USPS from ShipStation. The constraints are carrier constraints rather than software ones, and two are significant. ShipStation documents that dangerous goods cannot be shipped on any ShipStation Carriers service, that shipping them is not allowed when creating UPS labels in ShipStation, and that they are not available for the ShipStation FedEx integration — both must be booked with the carrier directly. As of August 2026, product-level classification fields are Australia and New Zealand only.

Question 55

A shipment was lost or damaged. Where do I file the claim?

Accepted Answer

It depends on how the label was bought. If you added ShipStation's insurance, you file from the Insurance column of the Shipments grid. If the label came from ShipStation Carriers, ShipStation handles the claim and states it must be filed through them rather than the carrier. If you used your own carrier account, you file in that carrier's portal. Deadlines are shorter than people expect and are measured from the scheduled delivery date rather than from when you noticed. ShipStation documents 60 days for UPS from ShipStation. Damage claims need photos of the packaging and contents, and ShipStation states partially completed forms cannot be processed at all — an incomplete claim is not a slow claim, it is no claim.

The ShipStation Automation Guide: What It Does, and Where Custom Logic Starts

What it handles

How the engine behaves

Reading what's in an order

Packing

Rates

Business-specific logic

If one of these is your situation