You have arranged your shipping rates carefully in the admin. Then you open a real checkout and they are in a different order — the cheap postal option on top, the local delivery you actually want people to choose sitting underneath it.
That is not a bug, and it is not something you have configured wrongly. Shopify decides the order shipping options appear in at checkout, broadly by price, and the arrangement in your shipping profile is about how you manage rates rather than how a buyer reads them.
For a lot of shops that is fine. For some it is quietly expensive.
Why the default order works against some shops
The cheapest rate is a reasonable default and a poor fit whenever the rate you most want chosen is not the cheapest one:
- A bakery or florist with its own local delivery. You control the van, the timing and the handover. A cheaper postal rate listed above it wins orders you would rather have delivered yourself.
- An economy rate that generates support email. It is the slowest thing you offer and the source of most "where is my order" messages, and it is sitting at the top of every checkout because it costs the least.
- A pickup option nobody scrolls to. Free, instant, and last on the list underneath three paid rates.
None of that is visible to Shopify. It is a fact about how your business actually runs, not something expressed anywhere in your rate list — which is why there is no setting for it.
What Shopify's own tools can and can't do here
Worth being straight about where the native tools genuinely help:
- Shipping zones and profiles control which rates exist, where they apply, and what they cost. They are the right tool for pricing and coverage, and this doesn't replace any of that.
- Rate names are the one lever you do have — a clearer name earns attention. But renaming changes the label, not the position.
- Deleting a rate removes it everywhere, for every order, and getting it back means rebuilding it.
What none of them do is change the sequence a buyer reads, or take a rate off the checkout while leaving it in your settings.
The fix: arrange the options yourself
A checkout rule can set the order directly:
Show Local delivery, then Standard post, then Express — and hide Overnight courier.
Two things happen. The options you named appear in exactly that order, top to bottom. The rate you hid is not offered at all — while staying in your shipping profile, untouched, ready to switch back on by turning the rule off.
Anything you did not name keeps its usual place below the ones you did, and stays visible. That is deliberate, and it is the direction that fails safely: a carrier tier you add next month appears at the bottom of the checkout rather than being silently swallowed by a rule you wrote before it existed. It also means you only have to name the rates you care about.
This rule applies to every checkout rather than waiting for a condition, because the ordering problem is the same for every buyer. If you want the order to change by destination or cart, you can add conditions to it afterwards — but most shops want one order, applied always.
The one mistake worth knowing about
Hiding rates is the half that can bite, because it is one click per option and it is easy to get carried away.
A checkout with no shipping option left is the worst outcome a shipping rule can produce, so it is refused rather than allowed. If an arrangement would leave a particular buyer with nothing, that buyer keeps every option and you get a warning instead. You will also be told before you save if the arrangement empties the checkout outright.
That check runs against the real buyer, not just against your draft, which matters because the rates a checkout offers vary by address, cart weight and market. An arrangement that looks complete against your own test cart can still meet a buyer whose address only qualifies for one of the rates you hid.
Check it before it is live
Two ways, and they answer different questions:
- Preview it on a test shopper. Pick a shopper, run the rule, and read the option list back in the order a buyer would see it. This answers "did I write the arrangement I meant?" in a few seconds.
- Run it in monitor mode. The rule records what it would have done against your real incoming orders without changing anything at checkout. This answers "is this right for the orders I actually get?" — worth it if you are hiding a rate and want evidence before you commit.
Both are included on the free plan, on a real store, so you can judge the change on your own traffic before deciding it is worth paying for anything.
In short
Shopify sorts your shipping options for you, and the sort it picks is right for some shops and quietly wrong for others. If the rate you most want chosen is not the cheapest one, the order is working against you on every checkout. A rule that sets the sequence — and switches off the rates you never want picked — is a small change that every buyer sees.