Shipping Profiles is the way you charge Shipping cost at checkout. By default, a single Shipping rule cuts across all the products in your cart. This rule can be basis the Cart Total Order value or Total Product Weight. This means that even if the Cart has products from different Vendors, involving multiple shipments, the Shipping cost for the customer will be a single charge.

With Advanced Shipping Profiles, you can set Shipping rules at a Vendor level. At checkout, we will split the Cart into different “Vendor sub-carts” and calculate the Shipping cost for each sub-cart separately. The customer will then be shown the sum of the individual Shipping costs at a Vendor level.

While starting out, you may want to keep it simple and offer a flat shipping rate, no matter the Vendors in the cart. But with scale, it will be critical for you to manage this piece effectively cause Shipping is the single biggest cost in Ecommerce after Marketing.