Setting up shipping zones

Updated 23 July 2026

A zone answers "where?": which addresses get this set of delivery options. Build zones in Shipping settings under the shipping zones section.

Ways to define a zone

• Whole country — e.g. all of the United Kingdom. (GB, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man are treated as one UK cluster.)
• States / provinces — e.g. mainland vs islands, or Northern Ireland via its BT postcodes.
• Postcodes / ZIP codes — the precision tool:
  • Patterns: EH*, G1 *, UK district-aware matching (spaces and case don't matter — eh11ab matches EH1 1AB).
  • Ranges: 90000–96199 for US ZIPs.
• Cities — for metro-area services.

Postcode entry is validated per country (UK, US, CA, AU, NL, FR, JP, CH and more have their own formats), and save errors point you to the exact zone and entry that failed.

Add profiles to the zone

Inside each zone, add one or more shipping profiles — the actual options shoppers see. Per profile you set:

• Name (what appears at checkout, e.g. "Standard delivery", "Local same-day").
• Transit time — fixed days, or live UPS/FedEx transit.
• Delivery days and shipping days for that service.
• Price and tiers — see rates and pricing.
• Conditions — when the profile is offered at all (cart value, weight, products, and more).

Overlapping zones are fine

Zones may overlap — a "UK-wide" zone plus an "Edinburgh same-day" postcode zone is the classic setup. When an address matches several zones, Flare offers the combined set of valid profiles from all of them, so your Edinburgh shopper sees Standard and Same-day. Use profile conditions or priorities when you want one service to replace another rather than sit alongside it.

Mixed carts and safety

If no single profile can handle every item in the cart (say frozen items excluded from your postal profile), Flare refuses to offer an option that would strand part of the order rather than show a misleading rate. Design one catch-all profile per zone that can take any cart, or use Product & customer rules to keep incompatible items apart.

Preview before going live

Zones save as a draft. Use the calendar preview and a test address to check what a shopper in each region would see, then set the zones live. To test any address/cart combination quickly, ask Sparky to run it.