Exclude products from a Region

Product exclusions let you stop a Region from offering any shipping rates when a customer's cart contains certain products. This is useful when you can't, or don't want to, deliver some items to an area. For example:

• Bulky or heavy items you can't send to the Scottish Highlands and Islands
• Perishable goods that can't survive the longer delivery times to remote postcodes
• Restricted or hazardous items your courier won't carry to some areas

How it works

When a customer reaches checkout, Postcode Shipping finds the Regions that match their address. If a matching Region has Product Exclusions turned on and the cart contains one or more excluded products, that Region is skipped. It won't return any rates, even for the other items in the cart.

If the customer's address also matches another Region in the same Shipping Zone, that Region can still return rates as normal. If no other Region matches, Postcode Shipping won't offer any rates for that address.

You can exclude products in one of two ways:

• By product variant: pick specific products and variants from your Shopify store.
• By product group: exclude every product that belongs to one or more of your product groups.

Setting up Product Exclusions

1. Go to Shipping Zones and open the Shipping Zone that contains your Region.
2. Open the Region you want to edit, or create a new one.
3. Scroll to the Product Exclusions section.
4. Tick Exclude products from this Region.
5. Under Exclude by, choose Product variants or Product groups, then follow the matching steps below.
6. Click Save.

Excluding product variants

1. Choose Product variants.
2. Click Select products.
3. In the product picker, search for and tick the products you want to exclude. Tick a whole product to exclude all its variants, or expand it to choose only some variants.
4. Click Select to confirm.

The section then shows a summary, such as "5 variants from 2 products excluded". To change what's excluded, click Edit selection. The picker opens with your current selection already ticked.

Products with more than 50 variants: the Shopify product picker only loads the first 50 variants of a product. If you select one of these products, we'll ask whether you meant to exclude all of its variants or only the ones you selected.

Excluding product groups

Product groups need to be turned on for your shop before you can use this option. Learn more about product groups.

1. Choose Product groups.
2. Tick each product group you want to exclude.

Inactive product groups are labelled Inactive and can't be selected. If you selected a group that was later made inactive, you can still untick it.

If product groups are turned off for your shop, you'll see a warning. You can still save your choices, but they won't take effect until product groups are turned back on.

Good to know

• One excluded item is enough. A cart with even one excluded product won't get rates from this Region, whatever else is in it.
• Exclusions are saved per variant. If you add new variants to a product after excluding it, the new variants aren't excluded automatically. Click Edit selection to add them.
• Only active product groups count. If an excluded product group is made inactive, its products stop being excluded at checkout.
• Your settings are kept when you switch. If you change between Product variants and Product groups, or turn exclusions off, your earlier selections are saved. You won't need to start again if you switch back.
• Deleted product groups are removed automatically from your exclusions the next time you save the Region.
• Duplicating a Region copies its exclusions along with the rest of its settings.

Testing your exclusions

Use the Rate Sandbox to check your setup. Add an excluded product to the test cart, enter an address in the Region, and confirm the Region's rates don't appear. Then remove the product and check that the rates come back.

Troubleshooting

I can't save the Region.

When exclusions are turned on, you need to select at least one product (for Product variants) or one active product group (for Product groups). If you don't want to exclude anything yet, untick Exclude products from this Region.

Customers are still seeing rates for an excluded product.

Check the following:

• The address may match another Region in the same Shipping Zone that doesn't exclude the product.
• The customer may have a variant you haven't excluded, such as a newly added one.
• If you're excluding by product group, the group may be inactive, product groups may be turned off for your shop, or the product may belong to a different group
• Customers aren't seeing any rates. If the excluded product is in the cart and no other Region matches the address, no rates will be returned. Add a Region that covers those postcodes without the exclusion if you still want to offer shipping.

Updated on: 12/10/2026