Printful does not replace or disable any shipping profiles or settings in your Shopify store automatically. For flat rates, Printful creates its own shipping profile for your Printful products. For live rates, Printful adds its rates directly to the general shipping profile. Your existing shipping rates remain intact unless you manually remove them.
How shipping profiles work with Printful
Shipping profiles vs. shipping rates
- A shipping profile is a set of shipping rules and rates configured for specific products and locations in your store.
- A shipping rate is the price assigned to a shipping profile for certain destinations.
To ensure Printful shipping options show correctly:
- Your Printful products must be assigned to the Printful shipping profile.
- That shipping profile is tied to the Printful location.
- Shopify will only present rates from the profiles that contain the products in the customer’s cart.
Common mistakes related to shipping profiles
- Assigning non-Printful products to the Printful shipping profile won’t display Printful rates. Non-Printful items have 0 stock in Printful location, so rates for them won’t show.
- If Printful products are assigned to the general (default) shipping profile (when using flat rates) or a custom Shopify profile, they may use non-Printful shipping rates if available there.
Best practices for managing shipping profiles
For flat rate setups
- Make sure Printful products are assigned only to the Printful shipping profile.
- Shopify will then apply rates set within this profile for those products.
- Do not assign Printful products to other profiles; even if they exist, they won’t display applicable rates.
For live rate setups
- When live rates are enabled, Printful assigns products to the General shipping profile by default.
- If you’ve added additional manual rates (e.g. USPS, DHL) to the General profile, those may appear at checkout alongside Printful’s rates.
- To avoid confusion:
- Remove any non‑Printful rates from the General profile, or
- Move non-Printful products out of the General profile into their own custom profiles with separate rates configured.
Mixed orders (Printful + non‑Printful products)
When customers order a mix of product types:
- Shopify applies Printful shipping profile rates for Printful items.
- Shopify applies relevant rates from other profiles to non‑Printful items.
- The customer sees a single combined shipping cost at checkout.
Quick checklist
| Scenario | What to do |
| Flat rates only | Assign Printful products exclusively to the Printful shipping profile only |
| Live rates enabled | Remove extra rates from the General profile or reassign non-Printful products |
| Mix of Printful + non-Printful | Keep product assignments clean by profile group to avoid mixed rates |
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