Enable FedEx as the only Shipping Method for WooCommerce

choose fedex as shipping method

This article will tell you how you can set FedEx shipping as the default shipping method on your WooCommerce or Shopify store. Read along to know more.

Handling customers online is a tricky job, especially when you have to quote a shipping price at the Cart page. Things get out of hand if told to provide live shipping rates from carriers like FedEx and UPS.

Talking about FedEx in particular, you will have to go to the FedEx Ship Manager and fetch the FedEx shipping estimates. If that doesn’t sound scary to you, think about dealing with 50 of those orders every single day.


Solution:

By using online solutions like WooCommerce FedEx Shipping Plugin and Shopify Ship, Rate, and Track for FedEx, you can provide real-time shipping rates on your Cart/Checkout page. Moreover, you can even print FedEx shipping labels, automate shipment tracking, schedule FedEx pickups, and much more.

Apart from the default shipping methods like flat-rate shipping and free shipping, you choose to offer only FedEx services on the Cart page. Let us quickly see the differences between these two types of shipping methods.


Difference between FedEx and default shipping methods in WooCommerce

As you might already know, WooCommerce comes with three default shipping methods – Flat-rate shipping, Free shipping, and Local pickup. These shipping methods come along only with the shipping regions. So if you want to offer any of these shipping methods to your customers, you would have to choose/specify the region before doing it.

For example, if you want to offer Free shipping in the U.S. and Flat rate & Local pickup in Canada, you need to first set up the WooCommerce shipping zones. The zone settings under the WooCommerce shipping option look like the following.

woocommerce shipping zones

WooCommerce FedEx Shipping Plugin, on the other hand, is a shipping plugin that is responsible for all FedEx shipments. This plugin interacts directly with the FedEx servers and APIs and operates based on the type of request.

Each request contains vital order and shipping information necessary to fulfill the shipment. The WooCommerce FedEx Shipping plugin sends various information including the package’s dimension & weight, delivery area, distance, and many other important parameters.


To understand this better, let us take a real-life example.

Live scenario

Alan is a WooCommerce store owner and our customer. Check out his request.

Alan owns a store that sells custom-made decorative glass items. He wants to use FedEx as the shipping service in order to ship those items. Alan needs to offer only FedEx shipping rates to his customers but somehow he is not able to do that. As a result, his customers are choosing Local pickup as the shipping method.

Moreover, his customers are requesting him to deliver those items via third-party shipping services, as picking up the orders themselves is inconvenient for them.

We replicated Alan’s case with the WooCommerce Shipping Plugin for FedEx with Print Label and found out that it is very easy to solve this issue. All he needs to do is go to the shipping zone setting page and disable the Local pickup option.


fedex local pickup

As you can see in the image above, you can go to the Shipping zones and then choose the region. In the image above, we have taken the example of the US and disabled the Local pickup option for the same. After doing this, you should scroll down the page and save the changes that you have made.

Now, you have to make sure that the FedEx shipping calculations in enabled. Enabling this option will display the shipping rates to the customers in real time. You can refer to the following image.

fedex shipping method

Trying out the Checkout page

Now, that you have enabled the required settings and options, it is time to check how the cart shows the FedEx shipping rates. For that, let us order the following item from a WooCommerce store.

cart page

Now that we have included the above items in the cart, let’s try to buy the item without entering the shipping address. For that, you can refer to the following screenshot given below.

shipping address

As you can see in the image above if the customer has not entered his or her address, the Cart does not show the FedEx shipping rates. Rather, it displays the message saying, “Enter your full address to see shipping costs”. This is the solution to Alan’s issue as the customer won’t be able to order the products unless there is a shipping address.

Now, let us try to fill in the shipping details and see whether the FedEx shipping rates are displayed or not.


shipping rates

As you can see in the above image, as soon as the customer’s address is filled up, the FedEx shipping rates appear on the Checkout page. To further confirm the proper functioning of this setup, let us go and order the items using the FedEx Standard Overnight shipping service.


cash on delivery

You can see in the above image that the order was successfully placed. Moreover, the shipping service is the same, that is, the FedEx Standard Overnight and the payment is via Cash on delivery.


Defining FedEx as the default shipping method in Shopify

You can display real-time FedEx shipping rates on your Shopify Checkout page with the help of Shopify Ship, Rate and Track for FedEx. The App is really easy to configure and you can enjoy features like auto-generate multiple FedEx shipping labels, shipment tracking, FedEx pickup, and a lot more.

As you know, Shopify shipping handles most of the shipping requirements by default. You can even create shipping zones and have multiple shipping options under each zone. So if you want to provide FedEx shipping for the U.S. region then you may define is here. Have a look at the following image.

shopify fedex shipping zones

As you can see, you can define multiple ‘Ship from’ addresses, set a default shipping origin, and create various shipping zones. Under each shipping zone, you can select the Calculated rates as FedEx Rates Service. Refer to the image below.

fedex shipping methods

Doing this will allow shipping in the defined zones only. And if any other address is entered in the Cart page, Shopify will hide available FedEx shipping methods. Here’s how the Checkout page looks with the FedEx shipping methods listed.

fedex shipping rates

Conclusion

When it comes to managing shipments through FedEx, both WooCommerce Shipping Plugin for FedEx with Print Label and Shopify Ship, Rate and Track for FedEx prove to be helpful. They allow you to selectively offer FedEx shipping methods based on your choice and need.

We hope this article has helped you figure out ways to define FedEx as the default shipping method. If you have any queries regarding this guide or need any help in setting up FedEx shipping on your online store, then contact us.

Happy selling!

2 thoughts on “Enable FedEx as the only Shipping Method for WooCommerce

    • PluginHive Editorial Team
      PluginHive Editorial Team says:

      Hi Daniel,

      Yes. Can you please let us know what exact problem are you facing with this?

      Our team will surely help you.

Comments are closed.