Follow this step-by-step guide to configure your WooCommerce store to sell Inkthreadable products to anyone, anywhere in the world.

WooCommerce offers multiple methods for handling shipping costs for your customers. Inkthreadable's shipping is weight-based, so to match these rates we'll need to use weight-based shipping in WooCommerce.

Inkthreadable ships to most countries, and each parcel will be a different weight and use different couriers. We'll set up rates that cover every eventuality. There's a bit of leg work, but once set up you'll only need to revisit your rates if you want to change what your customers pay.

Before you get started, you'll need to install a plugin that allows weight-based shipping.

There are different options available, but the one we recommend is Weight Based Shipping for WooCommerce. The basic version is free to use and includes all the necessary features.

Log in to WordPress and click the Plugins icon to find the plugin store. Search "Weight Based Shipping" and install the Weight Based Shipping for WooCommerce plugin.

Inkthreadable uses grams/kilograms and all products are exported with a weight value in these units. If your store is set to any other weight unit your shipping rates will not be calculated correctly.

To check your store is using the right units, head to your dashboard and click WooCommerce > Settings.

Click the Products tab and scroll down to change the default weight unit. Select kg from the drop-down menu and click the Save Changes button.

Changing these settings changes the default weights for calculating shipping.

Since we're using weight-based shipping, you'll also need to make sure your products have weight values assigned to them.

If you're just getting started and don't yet have any products listed in your WooCommerce store, you can skip this step.

Any products exported from Inkthreadable to WooCommerce will automatically have the correct weight values assigned to them, so if you've imported products, you can also skip this step.

We recommend exporting products from Inkthreadable to your store for this reason, and you can always edit the finer details afterwards.

But if you already have some products that you created manually in your WooCommerce store, follow the process in the drop-down below to ensure your shipping is calculated correctly:

Before we get started, it's worth mentioning your shipping rates don't need to match the Inkthreadable rates.

Inkthreadable has never taken any profit from shipping. Our costs are passed on to you to keep shipping rates as low as possible. This gives you some flexibility when it comes to setting up your own rates.

You can charge your customers less to offer them cheaper shipping, more to increase your profit, or nothing if you want to offer free shipping. In each case, we'll still charge you the rates listed on our site.

Head to WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping.

Each zone Inkthreadable ships to will need a corresponding zone in your WooCommerce shipping settings to define its shipping rates.

Click Shipping Zones.

Select Add shipping zone and enter the following details:

Then, click Save changes.

Next, click Add shipping method, and select 'Weight based shipping' from the drop-down.

Click Edit on the new shipping method you've created to start adding the shipping rules. This page is where we'll add a rule for each weight bracket for each shipping method to the UK.

This method may have some default rates. Delete these by ticking them and clicking the bin icon.

Click ADD FIRST RULE.

A new blank rate will appear will various fields for you to fill. You'll find all the required information to fill these fields below.

Title
The titles of your shipping rates are what our system reads when assigning a shipping method to your orders. Our integration is looking for the specific keywords used in this guide, and if a keyword is not detected the shipping method will default to Royal Mail 24.

Destination

This will depend on the zone you're working with. For the UK it's simple, but it gets a little more complex for European zones. The guides below will help with configuring these.

Products & Value

This guide simply explains how to set up your rates so they work with the WooCommerce integration. You can take this a step further by creating custom Weight Based Shipping rates for orders based on the products ordered, or the order value. This will allow you to offer things like free shipping or shipping discounts in line with specific promotions (think about those stores that offer free shipping above £60). As long as your product weights and title keywords are sound you can create your own rules.

Weight

Inkthreadable's shipping costs are tiered based on parcel weights. Royal Mail charges more for larger & heavier parcel sizes, and our couriers charge more for parcels above 6 kg. This is reflected in the rates below.

Shipping

You can chose between Free, Flat, Incremental, and Base + Incremental. We use flat rates for everything but again, if your title keywords and product weights are sound you can use these alternative options to create your own custom rates.

We'll start by setting up Royal Mail 48 rates.

For the other fields, enter these details:

A t-shirt weighs 0.1 kg, so based on these rules a single tee will cost £2.88 to ship to the UK on RM48, and two to six tees will cost £3.78. Seven plus t-shirts will cost £5.99.

To continue adding UK rates, follow the same process to add the following:

Optionally starting the first Courier rate at 0.7 kg means your customers will only see this rate as an option if their order weight triggers it. You can change this value to 2 kg if you only want it to trigger when the Royal Mail options are not available, or change it to 0 kg to offer the Courier option alongside all Royal Mail rates.

The second Courier rate covers parcels above 6 kg when the weight tips it into two consignments rather than one. This weight would be represented by 61+ t-shirts, if you're not expecting to take orders of this volume then this rate is probably unnecessary.

Your UK rates should now be set up! Remember to click Save changes.
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Return to the Shipping Zones page and click Add shipping zone.
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Name the new zone Wight Based Shipping (Europe Zone 1).

Click into the Zone regions box. You'll need to enter each country manually. The list of the Europe Zone 1 countries is as follows:

Germany, Netherlands, Austria, France, Italy

Click Save changes.

We'll follow the same process as above to add rates for this zone. Click Add shipping method and select Weight based Shipping. Click to Edit this shipping method.

Delete the defaults and click ADD FIRST RULE. The steps are the same as previous rates, following the table below:

The destination for these rates can be left as the default 'Any' as we've already defined the countries these rates apply to.

Save your changes then return to the Shipping Zones page.

Click Add shipping zone, and name this one Weight Based Shipping (Europe Zone 2).

We'll need to add a longer list of countries in the Zone regions field:

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Georgia, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vatican City.

Click Save changes.

Too add your rates, click Add shipping method and select Weight Based Shipping. Follow the same process as above to add the following:

Click Save Changes and return to your Shipping zones page.
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Click Add Shipping Zone. Name it Weight Based Shipping (USA), and then add the United States under Zone regions.

Create the Weight Based Shipping shipping method, then add rates to this zone to match the following:

Click Save Changes and return to your Shipping zones page.

Click Add Shipping Zone, name it Weight Based Shipping (Canada), and select the Canada region to include all 13 provinces.

Then, follow the process to add rates using the details of this table:

Click Save Changes and return to your Shipping zones page.

All remaining countries will be covered under one final zone.

Instead of clicking Add shipping zone, this time, we'll click Locations not covered by your other zones.

You should have a default zone that covers the rest of the world. You'll be able to click Edit to add Weight Based Shipping rates to this zone.

Follow the same process as above: delete the default rates, and add new rates based on the table below.

Click Save changes to apply the changes.

And that's it. You've now created rates for all services shipping to all destinations!

We recommend reviewing your shipping profile to double-check your condition columns and prices. It's so easy to accidentally type an extra 0 or forget to add a minimum weight, which could cause checkout errors for your customers.

At this stage, it's a good idea to add some products to your basket to see the shipping rates in action. Test different product combinations and shipping destinations to ensure your store calculates the prices correctly.