Shipping Experiences FAQs

Common Questions about Shipping Experiences

Shipping Experiences FAQs

Shipping has two experience types and they work differently, so some answers below apply to one and not the other.

• A Shipping Rates experience replaces the rates in your Shopify profiles, group by group, using Shopify's third-party carrier rate API. It always runs as a test.

• A Free Shipping experience discounts a qualifying rate to $0 once the cart meets a minimum you set, using Shopify Discount Functions. Your Shopify rates stay where they are. It runs as a test or a personalization.

Where an answer applies to only one type, it says so.

Thresholds and currency

Is a shipping threshold based on a pre or post discount subtotal?

The shipping threshold is based on the post-discount subtotal. This matches how Shopify provides shipping rates when set up directly within Shopify. It holds for a Free Shipping offer's minimum purchase requirement and for the threshold rate types in a Shipping Rates experience.

Shopify changed the platform in early 2026 so apps could read the post-discount subtotal, and Intelligems adopted it. If you find an older article saying we read the pre-discount amount, it predates that change.

Merchandising thresholds work the other way round. A Volume Discount tier or a Free Gift minimum reads the subtotal before any discount, so a $598 item still counts as $598 toward a $500 tier even when a discount code brings it to $478.40. This is intentional. It stops a shopper losing a reward they've already earned when a discount pulls their cart back under the line. There's no setting to change it, so if you're stacking a sitewide discount on top of a tiered offer, raise the threshold to compensate.

Can I run a shipping experience in a currency other than my store's default currency?

You can serve rates in another currency. In a Shipping Rates experience, use the Rate Currency dropdown at the top of the Set Rates Per Group stage to pick the currency you want to test rates in.

Thresholds are a different story, and this is the part that has cost people tests.

How shipping thresholds are calculated:

• Free shipping thresholds, on both experience types, are always calculated in your store's default currency

• This happens because Shopify's third-party rate carrier API only receives cart totals in the store's default currency

• The threshold you set is read in your default currency whatever currency the shopper is viewing

Example:

• Store default currency: USD

• Customer viewing in: EUR

• Threshold: $50 free shipping

• The system checks whether the cart total is at least $50 USD, converted from the EUR cart value, not €50

Can I lower a free shipping threshold and raise it?

Lowering one, or adding one where you have none, is what a Free Shipping experience is for. Raising one needs a Shipping Rates experience instead.

A Free Shipping offer discounts a qualifying rate to $0. It doesn't remove or hide the free shipping your store already offers, so a group set to a higher minimum still gets free shipping at your existing, lower one. If you offer free shipping at $120 today and you want to find out whether $140 holds, build a Shipping Rates experience and use the Threshold Only rate type. That one replaces your rates while it runs, which is what a higher number requires.

This applies whether your current free rate comes from Shopify or from a third-party rate app.

Progress bars and on-site messaging

I want to test my shipping threshold! What should I do about the progress bar in my cart?

There are three options for how to correctly update your progress bar for a shipping threshold test.

Option 1: Use the Intelligems progress bar. Add it as a component in your experience and each group sees its own threshold, with no code on your side beyond a one-time snippet. See our integration guide here.

Option 2: Rebuild your bar in the AI Visual Builder. Worth it if your existing bar has a design you want to keep and you'd rather not write code.

Option 3 (more advanced): Use our JavaScript API to feed the visitor's group into the bar you already have. window.igData?.user.getTestGroup(experimentId) returns the group the visitor is in, and the group object carries a freeShippingThreshold and a shippingRate value, so you can read the number for that group and set it on your own bar. Use this if your bar has a unique design or specific tiers you want to preserve.

Using UpCart? The Intelligems bar won't render inside the UpCart drawer until you turn off UpCart's "render cart in shadow DOM" setting. You can also leave an UpCart gift progress bar in place and add the Intelligems bar for the free shipping piece.

Can I coordinate a shipping experience with another experience so visitors see the same group in both?

No. Two experiences bucket visitors independently, and there's no way to tie an assignment in one to an assignment in the other. A visitor can land in your shipping treatment group and still see control copy on the site, and that mismatch makes the results unreliable.

Build it as one experience instead. A Shipping Rates experience carries Content Edits and Styles & Javascript modification cards alongside the rates, and a Free Shipping experience carries the same, so the announcement bar, the shipping FAQ page and the rate all change together for each group.

If you need two experiences to stay out of each other's way rather than move together, use mutually exclusive experiments. Bear in mind the trade-off: splitting traffic between experiments that can't overlap means each one takes longer to reach significance.

What you can and can't test

Can I run a shipping experience on specific products?

At the moment, Intelligems doesn't support running shipping tests at the product level. Shipping tests can only be applied sitewide or based on broader cart conditions like cart value or destination.

This limitation exists because Shopify doesn’t offer a straightforward way to assign different shipping rules to specific products within the same test environment. Since shipping is calculated at the cart level, it's tricky to ensure a consistent and accurate experience when trying to apply different shipping logic to only a subset of products without causing conflicts or confusion at checkout.

That said, if you’re looking to test how shipping impacts conversion or AOV, we can help you structure a sitewide test that isolates the variable cleanly. Feel free to reach out to our support team here with any additional questions.

My rates come from a third-party rate app. Can I still test shipping?

Not directly. A Shipping Rates experience can only select and replace rates configured natively in Shopify, because Shopify doesn't allow rates from another rate carrier or shipping app to be manipulated. If all your rates come from an app, the Rates to Replace list will come back empty.

A third-party carrier registered on the zone can also take precedence over the Intelligems rate at checkout, so it's worth checking which carriers are registered on the zone you're testing even when your on-site messaging looks correct.

Two things you can still do:

• Set up flat rates in Shopify that approximate what the app charges, then test raising or lowering those.

• Run a Free Shipping experience instead, since it discounts a rate rather than replacing it and works regardless of who provides the rate. Remember it can only lower a threshold, not raise one.

Contact support and we can look at your rate setup and tell you which route fits.

My test rate isn't showing at checkout and everything looks configured correctly. What should I check?

A Shipping Rates experience decides which rate to serve by reading a custom property that Intelligems attaches to each cart line item, carrying the shopper's group. Anything that rebuilds the cart drops that property, and then no test rate is served at all. There's no error, and your cart and progress bar still look right.

Three things do this:

• A bundle app. If adding a bundle to the cart expands it into component line items, the rebuild loses the property. To spot it, add a bundle to your cart, then add the same products individually at the same cart value. If the test rate shows on the individual products and not on the bundle, that's your cause. Either run the experience on a path that skips the bundle, such as directing traffic to individual product pages, or move to a bundle app that doesn't rebuild the cart.

• A Pricing experience on Shopify Functions with the Expand operation. See the answer below.

• A third-party rate carrier registered on the zone. See the answer above.

Running more than one experience

Can I run more than one shipping experience at the same time?

It depends on the type.

Shipping Rates: one at a time, including one you've created but haven't started. Intelligems installs the rate carrier on your Shopify profile as soon as the experience is created, and the carrier doesn't distinguish which experience a zone belongs to, so a second one in a pending or running state causes conflicts. To build a new one, end any that are running and delete any that are pending.

Free Shipping: as many as you like, including alongside a live Shipping Rates test. A Free Shipping experience installs no carrier rate, so the limit above doesn't apply to it.

Can I run a shipping experience and a pricing experience at the same time?

It depends.

If your Price Test integration is configured using Shopify Functions with the Expand operation, you cannot run a Price Test and a Shipping Rates experience at the same time.

An easy way to tell whether this applies to you: if your store is not on Shopify Plus, and your Price Test integration is not set up using duplicate products, then your integration uses the Expand operation and this limitation affects you. You can confirm it under Settings > Plugin configurations and Settings > Manage Functions.

This happens because of how the two test types interact at checkout. During a Shipping Rates experience, Intelligems decides which test shipping rate to serve by reading custom properties on the products in the cart, and these properties carry the test group ID. The Expand operation used to apply prices during a Price Test clears those custom properties, removing the exact information the Shipping Test needs. As a result, no test rates get served at checkout, disrupting the experience for customers trying to complete their purchase. There's no error to tell you it's happening.

If you need to run both, you have a few options:

• End the currently active experience before starting the other one.

• Switch your Price Test integration from the Expand operation to the Update operation (available on Shopify Plus).

• Move to running Price Tests using duplicate products instead.

A Price Test on Functions with the Update operation, or on duplicate products, runs alongside a Shipping Rates experience without this problem. A Free Shipping experience isn't affected either way, since it doesn't read line item properties to pick a rate.

If you're unsure which approach is best for your store, reach out to our support team, and we'll help you find the right setup.

Starting, ending and duplicating

What happens when I end my shipping experience?

Shipping Rates: the Intelligems rate carrier stops providing shipping rates, and we restore the rates that we removed when you started. If you want to roll out a rate you tested rather than go back to what you had, set it up in Shopify before you stop the experience, and update any on-site copy naming your old rates or threshold at the same time.

Free Shipping: the offer stops applying and shipping is charged at your normal rates again. Nothing was removed from Shopify, so there's nothing to restore.

I duplicated my shipping experience. What are the steps I need to take to complete the setup?

For a Shipping Rates experience, duplicating copies your groups and settings but not your rate configuration, so you'll need to edit the experience and select the profiles, zones and rates that you'd like to test. Here is a video walking through these steps. Remember that you can only have one Shipping Rates experience at a time, so end or delete the original before you start the duplicate.

For a Free Shipping experience, the offer copies across with it and there's nothing further to rebuild. Check the minimum purchase requirement and the eligible rates on each group before you start it.

Please reach out to support here if you have any questions.