How to Ship From Multiple Locations on Shopify

Shopify can ship one store's orders from a warehouse, a retail store and a 3PL at the same time, and charge different rates depending on which of them sends the parcel. The settings sit in three places, Locations, shipping profiles and order routing, and the order you set them up in matters: a location that doesn't fulfill online orders never appears in a shipping profile.

The question merchants hit first is cost: when a cart needs two locations, does the customer pay shipping twice? The answer depends on how you group your locations and which rate type you use, so this guide starts there and then walks through each screen in the admin.

How Shopify Ships From More Than One Location

Four settings decide where a parcel leaves from and what the customer pays for it:

One boundary runs through the whole guide. Shopify is moving every store from shipping profiles to shipping options by market, but as of November 2026 its Help Center says most stores still use shipping profiles and keep their current setup until they're upgraded. Everything up to the section on shipping options by market describes stores on shipping profiles; that section covers what changes after the upgrade.

When Does a Customer Pay Shipping Twice?

Shopify adds rates together only when there is no option to have a single rate from one shipping profile or location. If every item can come from one location, fulfillment priority picks that location and no second location rate is added. When no single location can cover the cart, Shopify's combined-rates page states the rule:

Find your cart below. Every row except the last describes a store on shipping profiles; the single-flat-rate row is the one Shopify confirmed in its changelog post on flat rates for split shipments.

Shopify's two-shirt example, in numbers

Shopify's split-shipping page works through one case. A store sells shirts from Location A and Location B; the green shirt is in stock only at A, the red one only at B, and a customer orders both. The store offers a standard and an express method, and the grouping alone decides the bill:

• Both locations in one group: the customer pays $10 for standard shipping or $20 for express, once for both shirts.
• Locations in two different groups: standard becomes $20, $10 per shirt, and express $40.
• Two groups, mixed services: express for one shirt and standard for the other comes to $30.

Nothing about the parcels changed between the first two lines; only the grouping did. That is why the fix for a double charge is usually a grouping decision rather than a new rate. Stores upgraded to shipping options by market price the same split differently, and that section carries Shopify's third example.

What the built-in settings do about a double charge

• One group, flat rates. If two warehouses ship to the same countries at the same price, keep them in one location group and use flat rates: Shopify then charges the flat rate once for the order. The grouping steps are in Create a separate location group.
• Stock what sells together in one place. If all items can come from one location, fulfillment priority picks it, so the order isn't charged per location; products from different profiles still add their own rates.
• Know which rates never merge. Shopify's single-charge rule covers flat rates only: weight-based, carrier-calculated and app rates apply a combined rate even inside one group. If your groups run on carrier quotes and the summed total is the problem, ShipperHQ, covered in When the Built-In Setup Isn't Enough, describes whole-cart rules.

Set Up the Locations That Ship Online Orders

Every origin you ship from has to exist as a location first. Shopify's steps for adding one:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings › Locations.
2. In the All locations section, click Add location; in the admin we checked on November 3, 2026, the button read + Location.
3. Enter the location's name and address.
4. Leave online fulfillment on if the location ships web orders; Shopify makes inventory at a new location available for online purchases by default.
5. Click Save.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Locations

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A few defaults catch new setups out. New products are stocked at a new location with a quantity of 0, so set its inventory before you expect it to ship anything; tracking and adjusting that stock is routed from our inventory management guide.

A location created after a shipping profile exists is added to every profile's Not fulfilling from section, the General profile included, and no rates apply to it until you add it to a location group. And the new location is added to the bottom of your order routing list, so it fulfills last until you change the rules.

How many locations you can run depends on your plan: 2 active locations on Starter, 10 on Basic, 10 on Grow, 10 on Advanced, and 200 on Plus. Locations created by 3PL, dropshipping or custom fulfillment apps are treated as locations but don't count toward that limit.

Shopify Academy's two-minute overview from July 2023 walks through the same Locations screens, including fulfillment apps and fulfillment priority; some button labels have changed since it was recorded.

Check that each location fulfills online orders

Open each location from Settings › Locations and look at its Fulfillment section. The toggle that matters is Use inventory at this location to fulfill online orders: Shopify doesn't display locations that don't fulfill online orders in your shipping profiles, so with the toggle off there is nothing to put in a location group.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Locations
3. My Custom Location

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A location you deactivate stays visible in the profile with an Inactive label. You can still give it zones and rates, but Shopify doesn't use them at checkout until you reactivate the location.

How Do You Set Different Shipping Rates for Different Locations?

Shopify's tool for pricing by origin is the location group: a collection of fulfillment locations created within a shipping profile. A profile can hold several groups, each with its own rates and shipping zones, and Shopify's location-management page sums it up as setting different rates depending on which location fulfills an order.

The trade-off sits in Shopify's own example: an order that needs a New York location and a Kansas location from different groups has the two groups' rates added together. Separate groups buy you different prices per origin at the cost of a combined charge whenever both origins are needed.

Every new profile starts with one group

Open Settings › Shipping and delivery and click a profile in the Shipping profiles section. Its Fulfillment locations section lists the locations in each group. To have a location from Not fulfilling from share an existing group's zones and rates, click Add location in Fulfillment locations (+ Location in the admin we checked on November 3, 2026), select it and click Add.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery
3. General profile

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Create a separate location group

Shopify's steps for a new location group:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings › Shipping and delivery.
2. In the Shipping profiles section, click the profile you want to edit.
3. In the Fulfillment locations section, click the location that should get its own group.
4. Choose whether the new group uses existing shipping options: select Use existing shipping options from another location and pick that location, or select Create new shipping options for this location, then create its shipping zones and add its rates.
5. Click Save.

In the admin we checked on November 3, 2026, the location that belonged to no group was listed under Not fulfilling from with a Start shipping button, and that button opened the same two choices in a dialog. Shopify's step describes clicking a location in Fulfillment locations, so use whichever entry your profile shows.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery
3. General profile

Zoom

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery
3. General profile

Zoom

To take a location out of a group, click it in Fulfillment locations, select Don't ship from this location, click Done, then Save. Locations that aren't in any group are listed in the Not fulfilling from section.

Location group or a second profile?

Groups and profiles answer different questions, and both end up in the same checkout total:

If one product line needs its own price wherever it ships from, that is a profile decision, and our guide to when you need a second shipping profile covers it. Shopify lets a store create up to 99 custom shipping profiles for different products.

How Split Shipping Shows Up at Checkout

Shopify's split-shipping page splits an order into multiple shipments when it includes any of five item types:

• Preorders
• Subscriptions
• Separate products shipping from different locations
• Products from different shipping profiles
• Buy with Prime products

The Shipping method section of the checkout then shows how many shipments the order is split into and the shipping methods available for each one. By default, checkout selects the lowest total shipping cost for all shipments. What the customer can't change is the split itself:

So the levers are yours: location groups, shipping profiles and where stock sits.

Shopify's split-shipping page also notes that if you have local delivery activated, checkout won't display multiple shipments, and that certain third-party fulfillment apps might not be compatible with split shipping; if you aren't sure about your app, Shopify suggests testing by adding eligible items to the checkout on your storefront.

After the parcels leave, the order status page has its own logic, covered in what a customer sees when one order ships in two parcels.

Turn split shipping on or off

Until your store is upgraded to shipping options by market, you adjust split shipping from the Shipping and delivery section of your admin settings:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings › Shipping and delivery.
2. Below your shipping profile list, click split shipping; in the admin we checked on November 3, 2026, the line read Manage split shipping, and Shopify's steps name Manage as the link on stores without fulfillable inventory settings.
3. In the Split shipping in checkout modal, select or clear Show split shipping in checkout.
4. Click Save.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery
3. Manage split shipping

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The modal describes the ticked state in its own words, as we read it on November 3, 2026: shipping is split when products in an order are fulfilled from different locations or belong to separate shipping profiles, and “Customers will be able to select the shipping method for each shipment separately.” Shopify's split-shipping page, read the same day, doesn't describe checkout with the box cleared. Before you clear it, put items stocked at two locations into a test cart and compare checkout both ways.

When one product's quantity spans two locations

The question: a customer orders several units of one product, and no single location holds them all. Shopify's own pages, read on November 3, 2026, answer it two ways:

While the pages disagree, don't build a promise on either reading. If a product often sells in multiples, keep enough units of it at one location; then the order never depends on which rule checkout applies.

Which Location Fulfills the Order

Order routing answers a different question from rates: which location actually fulfills the order. It requires 2 or more active locations, and Shopify offers five rules. The first three form the default strategy, Minimize split fulfillments, Stay within the destination market and Ship from the closest location; the other two are Use ranked locations and Use location metafields.

Minimize split fulfillments optimizes for the fewest packages, putting locations that have all items in stock ahead of those that don't. If no single location can fulfill the order, Shopify says it's split across multiple locations or the highest-priority location oversells the product.

To review the rules, go to Settings › Shipping and delivery, click Order routing in the Shipping section, then add, edit or reorder rules and click Save.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery
3. Order routing

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Ranked locations, metafield rules and how routing draws on stock are covered in our guide to how orders pull stock across locations.

Once an order has arrived split, the fulfillment side is yours to adjust: if one location can ship everything after all, see whether you can merge fulfillments.

When only part of an order is ready to go, splitting a fulfillment by hand works the other way round.

Where Carrier Rates and Labels Take Their Origin

Origin decides more than distance: it decides which carrier rates appear at all. Shopify's rate troubleshooting, location fulfillment and carrier-calculated shipping pages give four rules:

Because labels are priced per fulfillment location, an order split across two warehouses has each label priced from its own warehouse. Labeling only part of an order at a time is covered in whether you can print multiple shipping labels for one order.

What Changes With Shipping Options by Market

Shopify's developer changelog says market-driven shipping starts rolling out to merchants on October 1, 2026, and all merchants will be on it by July 1, 2027. The rollout is gradual, stores that use shipping apps might be upgraded later, and as of November 2026 the Help Center still calls shipping options by market early access, available only to certain stores.

A store still on shipping profiles may already see the move announced. In the admin we checked on November 3, 2026, a banner above the profile list in Settings › Shipping and delivery read “Shipping is moving to Markets on July 1, 2027”, with an Upgrade button.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Settings
2. Shipping and delivery

Zoom

Shopify's upgrade page lists what changes for a store that ships from several locations:

Shopify's third example shows the new pricing. A Standard option has a $10 rate for products that ship from Location A and a $12 rate for products that ship from Location B, and a customer who selects Standard is charged $12 for both shipments; the shipment from Location A is labeled Included.

Rate types that were added per shipment before the upgrade stay that way:

How same-named rates are consolidated during the upgrade, and why the highest one wins, is explained in our guide to what market-driven shipping does to your rates.

When the Built-In Setup Isn't Enough

Before installing anything, check what is built in. The Shopify App Store's built-in features page for Shopify Shipping lists Multi-origin as Supported, next to rate blending, multi-zone, product-based and weight-based rates.

Apps that market themselves on multi-origin shipping add more on top. As listed on the Shopify App Store on November 3, 2026, ShipperHQ: Shipping & Checkout describes split shipments with multi-location inventory, per-shipment rates and whole-cart rules, and Calcurates: Accurate Shipping lists multi-origin shipping, estimated delivery dates and rates by vendor.

Calcurates states that it requires carrier-calculated shipping (CCS), so on that kind of app the plan question comes first: third-party CCS is included on Advanced and Plus, and Grow can add it for a monthly fee or with annual billing. Whether labels and checkout rates should come from an app at all is weighed in when a shipping app earns its place.

The “activate multi origin shipping” publishing error

Some merchants meet the phrase as an error: “please activate multi origin shipping on Shopify side and try publishing again.” No official Shopify, TikTok, Meta, eBay or Amazon page we found on November 3, 2026 contains or explains that message, and no Shopify setting we read carries that name. Its wording points at the tool that publishes products to your store, so ask that app or channel's support what it checks before you publish again.

Your Multi-Location Shipping Setup Checklist

Steps one to four cover your locations; steps five to eight happen in Settings › Shipping and delivery. A store already upgraded to shipping options by market has no shipping profiles, location groups or shipping zones for steps five to seven: it sets up shipping options for each market in Markets, where each rate uses location conditions to set which locations it ships from, and the split shipping setting in step eight no longer applies.

The Bottom Line

The decision that most changes what customers pay is the grouping, together with the rate type; every other screen in this guide supports them. Set the groups first, check the result with a two-location test checkout, and revisit the setup when your store is upgraded to shipping options by market.

Frequently Asked Questions