What is ShipperHQ?
Short answer ShipperHQ is a shipping rate platform for Magento: a hosted rate engine that takes over from Magento’s built-in carrier methods at checkout. You connect your carrier accounts (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL and others, plus LTL freight carriers) in the ShipperHQ dashboard, and it returns live rates for each cart. It also handles the things Magento cannot do on its own, like dimensional weight, multi-origin shipping and per-product rules for oversized or hazmat items. The Magento module is free; ShipperHQ itself is a monthly subscription.
- Sign up at shipperhq.com and configure your carrier accounts 01
- Composer-install the official ShipperHQ Magento module 02
- Run setup:upgrade then flush the cache 03
- Enter your API key and secret in Magento admin 04
- ShipperHQ quotes rates at checkout and stores method codes 05
Most common mistake Leaving Magento’s native UPS / FedEx calc enabled alongside ShipperHQ
Five steps from signup to live rate quotes
ShipperHQ runs outside Magento and connects through its own Composer module. This is the setup order I follow on a store.
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01
Sign up at shipperhq.com and configure your carrier accounts
The carrier setup happens in ShipperHQ, not in Magento. I create the account, add each carrier the store ships with (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL and so on) and enter that carrier’s account credentials in the ShipperHQ dashboard. Because the store’s own carrier accounts are used, the rates shown at checkout are the store’s negotiated rates, not list prices.
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02
Composer-install the official ShipperHQ Magento module
The Magento side is one Composer package:
composer require shipperhq/module-shipper. The module costs nothing; you pay for the ShipperHQ subscription. It works on Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce and adds one carrier,shipperhq, that returns all the rates from your ShipperHQ account. On a Hyvä store, check the checkout you use is supported before you start. -
03
Run setup:upgrade then flush the cache
Then
bin/magento setup:upgradeandbin/magento cache:flushregister the module and create its tables. On Adobe Commerce Cloud the build and deploy hooks run this for you; on a self-hosted server I run it over SSH as part of the deploy. After that, the ShipperHQ settings appear under Stores → Configuration → Sales → Delivery Methods. -
04
Enter your API key and secret in Magento admin
In the ShipperHQ section of the Delivery Methods screen, paste the API key and authentication code from the ShipperHQ dashboard and save. On the same screen I switch off Magento’s own UPS, FedEx and USPS methods. If you leave them on, the shopper sees two sets of rates for the same carrier. Enable it only on the websites that should use it.
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05
ShipperHQ quotes rates at checkout and stores method codes
When the shopper enters an address, Magento sends the cart (SKUs, weights, dimensions) and the destination to ShipperHQ. ShipperHQ applies your rules and returns the rate options with prices and, if set up, delivery dates. The shopper picks one, and Magento saves that method code and price on the order like any other shipping method, so fulfilment and ERP exports keep working.
Four situations where ShipperHQ pays for itself
A store with one warehouse and simple parcels can usually live with Magento’s built-in carriers or table rates. These four cases are where I suggest ShipperHQ instead.
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Magento stores shipping from multiple warehouses
This is the most common reason I see stores add ShipperHQ. If you ship from two or more warehouses, or from your own warehouse plus a 3PL, ShipperHQ can rate each part of the cart from the right origin and add the costs together. Magento’s built-in carriers quote from the single origin set in Stores → Configuration → Sales → Shipping Settings, so rates go wrong as soon as stock ships from more than one place.
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Stores with oversized, hazmat, fragile, or refrigerated products
ShipperHQ lets you group products with shipping attributes and attach rules to each group. For example: oversized items only get freight rates, hazmat items never get air services, cold-chain items only show the carriers that can handle them. Magento has no built-in way to limit carriers per product, so without ShipperHQ this ends up as custom code.
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B2B / wholesale with LTL freight alongside parcel
Wholesale orders can be a small parcel one day and a full pallet the next. ShipperHQ can quote LTL freight carriers next to parcel carriers in the same checkout. Magento has no LTL freight support out of the box, so without something like this, freight orders get quoted by hand over email.
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Stores running dynamic shipping promotions
Magento cart price rules can give free shipping, but they get awkward once the offer depends on zone, weight and product type together. In ShipperHQ you can build rules such as free ground shipping above a cart total for certain zip-code zones only, or a flat rate for one customer group. Rules can combine cart total, customer group, zone, weight and product attributes.
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.
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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.
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Forgetting to set product dimensions and weights
ShipperHQ’s dimensional-weight algorithm only fires when each SKU has
length,width,height, andweightpopulated. 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 wherelength IS NULL OR length = 0and bulk-fix before launch. -
Skipping warehouse-origin setup in the ShipperHQ dashboard
The ShipperHQ dashboard ships with one placeholder origin warehouse (
00000ZIP 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.
ShipperHQ - frequently asked questions
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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 to $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 (shipperhq/module-shipper) 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 bothshipperhq/module-shipperand the matchingshipperhq/module-shipper-hyva-compat, 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.
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.