When selling with Printful through Big Cartel, it’s important to manually set your shipping prices in your Big Cartel store. Printful doesn’t push shipping rates automatically to Big Cartel, so using Printful’s flat rates as a reference is the best way to make sure your pricing covers fulfillment costs and protects your profit margins.
Use Printful’s flat shipping rates
Printful charges flat shipping rates based on the product type and destination. You can find the current rates on our Shipping page. These are the exact amounts Printful will charge you when an order is shipped, so they’re your most reliable reference when setting your own shipping prices in Big Cartel.
To calculate accurate rates for your store:
- Choose the product’s shipping category
- Look at the Single product and Additional product columns
- Add rates accordingly for orders with multiple or mixed items
Add shipping rates manually in Big Cartel
You can set up Product shipping profiles in Big Cartel to customize rates for different product categories. Here’s how:
- In your Big Cartel dashboard, go to Account → Shipping profiles (or Shop settings → Shipping) → Add product shipping profile.
- Create a new shipping profile and give it a name that represents a product category (e.g., T-shirts, Hoodies, Posters).
- Select the country or region where you’ll ship.
- Enter your shipping rates based on Printful’s shipping rates page. Be sure to set prices for both First item and Each additional item.
- Repeat the process for all the regions you’d like to sell to.
- Create additional product shipping profiles for each product category you offer.
- Go to the Products tab in your dashboard, edit each product, and assign it to the appropriate shipping profile you just created.
This setup ensures that your shipping costs align with Printful’s rates and are tailored to each product category you sell. For more help using Big Cartel’s shipping tools, check out Big Cartel’s shipping guide.
Offer free shipping (optional)
Some sellers choose to offer “free” shipping to encourage more sales. You can do this by including the shipping cost in the product’s retail price.
For example, if you want to offer free shipping on a hoodie that costs $35, and the shipping rate is $8.49, you can price the hoodie at $43.49 instead. That way, you’re still covering your fulfillment and shipping costs.
For more guidance, check out our detailed shipping video tutorial.
Still need help? Our Support Team is here for you—reach out anytime through our contact form or start a chat with us.