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What is ShipperHQ ?

ShipperHQ is the dominant Magento shipping rate platform — a SaaS rate engine that replaces Magento’s built-in carrier calculators with multi-carrier real-time rates from UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, Canada Post, Australia Post, plus LTL freight (XPO, Old Dominion, Saia), Amazon Logistics, and 30+ regional carriers. It handles dimensional weight, multi-origin shipping, per-product overrides (oversized / hazmat / fragile), per-zone restrictions, and dynamic shipping promotions. Pricing: $75 – $200/mo SaaS on top of the free official module.

Need ShipperHQ setup help? How it works

Written by Kishan Savaliya — Adobe Certified Magento & Hyvä developer, 8 years on platform

How it works

Five steps from signup to live rate quotes

ShipperHQ is a SaaS rate engine wired into Magento through an official Composer module. Here is the wiring, end to end.

  1. 01

    Sign up at shipperhq.com and configure your carrier accounts

    Create a ShipperHQ account at shipperhq.com and add the carriers you want to quote against — UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, Canada Post, Australia Post, plus any regional carriers from their marketplace. Enter each carrier’s API credentials (account number, meter / payer ID, license / secret) directly in the ShipperHQ dashboard. Each carrier’s negotiated rates flow through to your Magento checkout once the account is linked.

  2. 02

    Composer-install the official ShipperHQ Magento module

    Add the official ShipperHQ extension with composer require shipperhq/module-shipper. The module is free — you pay the SaaS subscription on top, not for the connector itself. It ships with full Hyvä compatibility (2024+), supports Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce, and registers a single carrier code (shipperhq) that replaces Magento’s native UPS / FedEx / USPS shipping methods at quote time.

  3. 03

    Run setup:upgrade then flush the cache

    Run bin/magento setup:upgrade --keep-generated && bin/magento cache:flush to register the new module, install its DB schema (shipping rule tables, carrier mapping), and load its admin configuration scope. On Adobe Commerce Cloud the deploy script picks this up automatically; on self-hosted Magento you run it via SSH. After the upgrade the new ShipperHQ admin tree appears under Stores → Configuration → Sales → Shipping Methods.

  4. 04

    Enter your API key and secret in Magento admin

    In Magento admin go to Stores → Configuration → Sales → Shipping Methods → ShipperHQ, paste the API key + API secret generated in the ShipperHQ dashboard, and save. Disable Magento’s native UPS / FedEx / USPS carriers under the same screen — otherwise both calculators fire at quote time and the customer sees duplicate shipping options. Enable for the correct store views only, not all stores by default.

  5. 05

    ShipperHQ quotes rates at checkout and stores method codes

    At checkout, Magento calls the ShipperHQ API with the cart contents (SKUs, weights, dimensions), origin warehouse(s), and destination address. ShipperHQ returns a list of rate options — each with a method code like shipperhq_ups_ground, a price, and a transit time. The customer picks one; Magento stores the method code on the order’s shipping line and the chosen rate ships with the order through to fulfilment.

When to use

Four situations where ShipperHQ pays for itself

ShipperHQ is not the right answer for every Magento store, but in these four scenarios the $75 - $200/mo subscription pays back inside a month.

  • Magento stores shipping from multiple warehouses

    Multi-origin shipping is ShipperHQ’s killer feature. If you fulfil from two or more warehouses (East Coast + West Coast, UK + EU 3PL, Sydney + Melbourne), ShipperHQ rate-shops the cart per-warehouse and either splits the shipment automatically or picks the cheapest single origin. Magento’s native shipping has no concept of multiple origins — it assumes one fixed warehouse address per store view, and that breaks the moment you scale fulfilment.

  • Stores with oversized, hazmat, fragile, or refrigerated products

    Per-product shipping rules are the second-strongest reason to switch. ShipperHQ lets you tag SKUs with attributes (oversized, hazmat, fragile, refrigerated) and apply per-rule logic — only LTL freight for oversized, no air shipping for hazmat, signature required for fragile, only refrigerated carriers for cold-chain. Magento native cannot do per-product carrier filtering; you’d need a custom module per rule type.

  • B2B / wholesale with LTL freight alongside parcel

    B2B stores need to quote pallet-level LTL freight (XPO, Old Dominion, Saia, R+L Carriers) alongside parcel for small B2B orders — sometimes in the same cart. ShipperHQ is the only Magento shipping platform that rate-shops both networks in one quote and picks the cheaper option per line. Native Magento has no LTL support at all; you’d hand-quote freight by email otherwise. Dim-weight calculation on freight is automatic.

  • Stores running dynamic shipping promotions

    ShipperHQ supports rule-based dynamic promotions that Magento’s built-in shipping cannot — for example “Free shipping over $75 to East Coast zip codes only”, or “Free overnight on Tuesday for B2B group only”, or “$5 flat rate ground for orders under 5 lb”. Rules combine cart total, customer group, zip-code zone, weight, day of week, and product attributes. Magento’s free-shipping cart-rule engine cannot reach this level of granularity.

Common mistakes

Three ShipperHQ misconfigs that wreck checkout

Every ShipperHQ-related Magento outage I have been called in to debug came from one of these three mistakes. Audit your admin config and SKU attributes before launch.

  • Leaving Magento’s native UPS / FedEx calc enabled alongside ShipperHQ

    After installing the ShipperHQ module, the single most common misconfiguration is leaving Magento’s native UPS, FedEx, or USPS calculators enabled in parallel. Both calculators fire at quote time, the customer sees two “UPS Ground” entries with slightly different prices, picks the cheaper one (usually the wrong one because Magento native ignores your dim-weight rules), and you lose margin on every order. Fix: disable all native carriers under Stores → Configuration → Sales → Shipping Methods.

  • Forgetting to set product dimensions and weights

    ShipperHQ’s dimensional-weight algorithm only fires when each SKU has length, width, height, and weight populated. If those attributes are missing or zero, ShipperHQ falls back to a default cube (typically 12x12x12 inches at the SKU’s weight), dim-weight kicks in across the board, and customers see inflated rates for any light-but-bulky product like pillows or lampshades. Audit your catalog with a SQL query for SKUs where length IS NULL OR length = 0 and bulk-fix before launch.

  • Skipping warehouse-origin setup in the ShipperHQ dashboard

    The ShipperHQ dashboard ships with one placeholder origin warehouse (00000 ZIP code in the US). If you never replace it with your real warehouse address(es), every rate quote uses the placeholder origin — rates are wildly off for cross-country shipments and you completely miss the multi-origin lift even after paying for the SaaS. Add each real warehouse under Locations in the ShipperHQ dashboard with correct address, hours, and which carriers ship from there.

Related concepts

Five neighbour concepts most readers want to look at next. Click through for the full deep-dive.

  • What is ChannelAdvisor

    ChannelAdvisor is the marketplace listing platform that syndicates Magento products to Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target+, and 100+ marketplaces with stock-sync.

    Read the entry

  • What is Akeneo PIM

    Akeneo PIM is the dominant product information management platform paired with Magento — centralised attributes, multi-channel publishing, translation workflows.

    Read the entry

  • Magento multi-store development

    Multi-store Magento builds — multi-website, multi-store-view, per-locale catalogues, separate tax / shipping per store. ShipperHQ pairs with multi-store via per-store warehouse origins.

    See the service

  • Magento extension development

    Custom Magento module development — if ShipperHQ’s rules engine can’t express your shipping logic, I’ll write a bespoke carrier module against the native shipping API.

    See the service

  • Hire a Magento developer

    Adobe-Certified Magento & Hyvä developer, 8 years on platform. ShipperHQ installs, multi-origin setup, dim-weight tuning, LTL freight integration — fixed-price or hourly.

    Hire me
FAQ

ShipperHQ - frequently asked questions

  • ShipperHQ vs Magento’s built-in shipping — when do I switch?
    Switch the moment one of these four is true: (1) you ship from more than one warehouse and want rate-shopped multi-origin; (2) you have products that need per-SKU carrier rules — oversized, hazmat, fragile, refrigerated; (3) you need LTL freight quotes alongside parcel in the same cart (B2B / wholesale); (4) you want dynamic shipping promotions Magento’s free-shipping cart-rule engine cannot express (zone-based, group-based, day-of-week, weight-banded). If none of those apply — you have one warehouse, parcel-only, no special products, and basic free-shipping-over-X promotions — Magento native is fine and you save the $75 – $200/mo subscription.
  • How much does ShipperHQ cost?
    ShipperHQ’s Standard plan is $75/mo at the entry level (single carrier, basic rules) and climbs to roughly $200/mo for the full Pro plan with multi-origin, all carriers, dim-weight, and the LTL freight network. Enterprise pricing starts around $400/mo and scales with order volume, number of warehouses, and number of B2B accounts. The official Magento module itself (<code>shipperhq/module-shipper</code>) is free on Packagist — the subscription is for the ShipperHQ SaaS API on top. There is no per-quote or per-order overage; pricing is a flat monthly subscription.
  • Can ShipperHQ do LTL freight and parcel in the same quote?
    Yes — that’s the differentiator versus other Magento shipping platforms. ShipperHQ ships with an LTL freight network (XPO Logistics, Old Dominion, Saia, R+L Carriers, plus regional LTL carriers) and quotes pallet-level rates alongside parcel rates in the same cart. The rule engine can route oversized SKUs to LTL only, small SKUs to parcel only, or rate-shop both and pick the cheapest. Dim-weight is calculated automatically on both networks. No other Magento connector offers this combined parcel + LTL rate-shopping in a single API call.
  • Does ShipperHQ support Hyvä?
    Yes — ShipperHQ ships an official Hyvä compatibility module that has been GA since 2024. The Hyvä checkout fires the same ShipperHQ rate-quote API call at the same checkout step, the rate selector UI is rebuilt as Alpine.js + Tailwind to match the rest of the Hyvä theme, and the dynamic-rate refresh (when the customer changes address) works without KnockoutJS. If you’re on Hyvä checkout, install both <code>shipperhq/module-shipper</code> and the matching <code>shipperhq/module-shipper-hyva-compat</code> — the second one handles the Alpine binding.
  • ShipperHQ vs ShipStation — same thing?
    No — they sit in different parts of the order pipeline. ShipperHQ is a pre-checkout rate calculator — it quotes what shipping will cost the customer before they pay, so they pick a method and pay the right amount. ShipStation is a post-checkout label printer and fulfilment workflow — once the order is paid, ShipStation pulls the order, prints the carrier label, batches with other orders, and pushes tracking back to Magento. Most Magento stores actually run both: ShipperHQ at the storefront for the rate quote, ShipStation in the back office for label printing and fulfilment. They are complementary, not competitive.
  • Does ShipperHQ handle Amazon Logistics and regional carriers?
    Yes — ShipperHQ has a carrier marketplace with 30+ regional and last-mile carriers on top of the headline UPS / FedEx / USPS / DHL / Canada Post / Australia Post. That includes Amazon Logistics (AMZL) for US fulfilment, OnTrac for West Coast US, LaserShip / OnTrac merged network for East Coast US, GLS for European parcel, Aramex for Middle East, Sendle / Couriers Please for Australian regional, Posti for the Nordics, plus dozens more. Each one is enabled with a single toggle in the ShipperHQ dashboard once you have the carrier account credentials — no separate Magento module per carrier needed.
ShipperHQ audit

Want a ShipperHQ setup or audit on your Magento store?

Send your storefront URL and current carrier mix - I will scope a ShipperHQ install (multi-origin, dim-weight, per-SKU rules, optional LTL) and reply with a written plan, fixed-price quote, and earliest start date. 24-business-hour turnaround.

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