An effective shipping strategy is important for any E-Commerce store to reduce cost and risk. There are cases when a specific shipping method or a carrier has to be restricted. Sometimes a shipping method to a particular country/location needs to be restricted due to the high shipping cost. Other times, a shipping method has to be restricted based on the products, categories, time, customers, cart or other attributes.

Imagine a merchant who wants to restrict shipping of a product if its size or weight exceeds a certain limit. Similarly, a store owner can use the location attribute to restrict shipping i.e. shipping is not allowed to a specific county/region/zip code.

With the default Magento 2 offering a very limited shipping restrictions parameters (only supports shipping restrictions by country), it’s important to use a third party plugin that allows multiple restrictions parameters. This is where the Magento 2 shipping restrictions extension by FMEextensions comes in handy. It supports a wide variety of restriction parameters which allows store owners to make a flexible shipping strategy.

Let’s see how to use different parameters to restrict shipping methods using the extension.

After installing the extension, go to FME Extensions – >Manage Restriction Rules from the back end.

Restrict Shipping Carriers or any of their methods

The extension allows you to block any shipping carrier or their methods. This applies when you don’t offer a specific shipping method(s) in your store.

For example, if you want to block the Free Shipping and some shipping methods of UPS, you can select it in the Shipping Methods option.

Use the Cart Attributes the Base for Shipping Restrictions

This is one of the common parameters by which merchants want to apply shipping restrictions. For example, a merchant may want to restrict Free Shipping for cart total less than a specific amount.

In the following example, we restrict the [fedex] Freight and Free Shipping methods for cart amount less than $50.

In the Shipping Method tab we specify the restriction name, enable the rule, and choose the carriers and the methods we want to block.

It is also important to specify the conditions for the rule to be applied. For this particular example, we will use the Cart Subtotal attribute as shown below.

Customer Group/Customers

In this tab you can use specific customer groups and customers as a restriction base. For example, you can restrict the Magento 2 free shipping method for retail users.

Restrict by Days & Time

The extension allows adding specific days with time for shipping restrictions. This feature comes in handy when you don’t offer shipping on the weekends or on special holidays.

The following screenshot restricts shipping on Saturday & Sunday from 1:00 am to 9:00 am. To add more days, click the Add More button.

Restrict by Location

The extension by FME offers Magento 2 merchants to restrict their shipping by flexible location parameters. They can use the Post Code, Region, State/Province or Country.

For example, if you want to block the Flat Rate&Best Way shipping methods for Texas, select these methods as shown below.

The customers won’t see these shipping methods when they select Texas as State/Province.

Following is the condition according to which the above rule will be applied.

Coupon Codes& Catalog Rules

Use this tab to limit some certain customer’s facilities and to disable or allow shipping with coupon code.

For example, if you want to offer discount to customers when they enter a special coupon code. You can offer several discounts based on unique coupon codes & catalog rules.

As you can see, the extension offers a wide range of parameters which you can use a base for restrictions. You can make your store more aligned with the international legal restrictions, minimize your cost, and improve productivity.

The extension comes with a 45 days money back guarantee, FREE lifetime support & upgrades. If you have any question regarding the extension or its features, please contact the support team by submitting a ticket here.