How To Restrict Your Ecommerce Sales to Specific Countries and States
One of the biggest appeals of running an online store is the fact that every corner of your store is available to everyone around the world.
But this also has its drawbacks, one of them being that if you run a store that focuses on providing services to people within a certain location; or your store cannot deliver its product to specific states or countries, then you’d need to restrict your services to visitors in those regions you cannot cover.
Why? Because limiting sales to those locations you can’t cover would help you provide excellent services to your target market, optimize your site’s performance, and boost overall user experience and customer satisfaction.
Although every entrepreneur wants to make as many sales as possible, there are specific times when those sales shouldn’t be made. So, we prepared this simple guide to show you some great, affordable plugins for restricting sales.
But before we get into that, you need to know specific qualities to look for in a great shipping plugin.
What to Look for in a Great ‘Restricted Shipping’ Plugin
A great plugin provides many options for limiting sales based on customer location, product category, and product weight. So, before picking a shipping plugin, be sure it offers these essential features:
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Supports multiple shipping and transport methods
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Offers multiple tiers of shipping rates; progressive shipping rate, or a flat rate, depending on the total cart weight
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Displays tax for different shipping methods
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Offers advanced tracking features like tracking number, and shipping carrier tracking
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Restricts shipping method based on customer location, products, total order weight, or volume
With that said, let’s look at some great shipping plugins for restricting sales in WooCommerce or Shopify.
5 Best WooCommerce Shipping Plugins for Restricting Sales To Specific Locations
Courtesy: Pexels
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Conditional Shipping for WooCommerce: $79/yr
If you have a store on WooCommerce, then Conditional Shipping is an excellent plugin that’d allow you to restrict your product’s shipping to specific states and countries. With over 9,000 installations, the plugin seamlessly allows you to restrict shipping based on several conditions like: type of product, total weight, length, height, width, and volume.
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Table Rate Shipping for WooCommerce: $99/yr
Courtesy: Woocommerce.com
Table Rate Shipping by Flexible shipping is one of the best shipping plugins available. The plugin offers several unique and highly customizable shipping options. Also, it greatly simplifies the process of adding table rate shipping data. And take it from us; creating your table rate is a complex and time-consuming process.
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Flat Rate Shipping for WooCommerce: Free
Flat Rate Shipping is one of the better, free plugins for restricting sales on Woocomerce. When it comes to restricting sales, flat rate shipping offers region-specific conditions that must be met for shipping to be possible. And although it’s free, the plugin’s premium version would cost your business $99/yr.
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Innozilla Conditional Shipping and Payments: 59.99/yr
Courtesy: wordpress.com
Innozilla’s Conditional Shipping and Payment plugin allow you to create conditional rules to restrict the payment gateways, shipping methods, as well as the states or countries your product can be shipped to. If conditions aren’t met, the plugin automatically disables and hides shipping options. These restrictions can be applied globally or per product.
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Easy Shipping: Free
Countless entrepreneurs trust Easy Shipping because of its flexible and easy-to-use interface. The plugin not only allows store owners to restrict sales to specific states and countries but also to get discounts on USPS shipping rates, as well as customized tracking emails. And yes, the plugin is free for the first fifty shipments you make every month.
3 Best Shopify Shipping Plugins for Restricting Sales To Specific Locations
If you have a Shopify store and want to restrict sales to certain states or countries, then these are the three best and affordable shipping plugins you can use.
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Easy Shipping Restriction: $4/month
Courtesy: Apps.shopify.com
Easy Shipping Restriction is perfect for any Shopify store looking to only focus on offering local deliveries, shipping, and pickups. The plugin processes your customers’ postal/ZIP codes to determine if they can proceed with their order.
By using postcodes to permit shipping to specific areas, Easy Shipping Restriction has made it easier for new store owners to run their business locally before expanding at their own pace.
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Locksmith: $9/month
Courtesy: Apps.shopify.com
Locksmith is an excellent content locking plugin that makes it easy to restrict certain visitors from accessing specific parts on your Shopify store.
Shopify store owners love this plugin because it doesn’t just let you create keys that help manage who gets to see these locked pages but also adds a powerful fear of missing out in the minds of your customers.
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Zip Code Restriction: $3.99/month
Courtesy: Apps.shopify.com
Gone are the days when you’d spend valuable hours chewing your nails wondering how your US-based business is going to make timely delivery to that customer in Siberia because, with Zip Code Restriction, a fully customizable plugin, you can easily restrict customers in specific locations from placing an order.
Conclusion
Whether you run a store on WooCommerce or Shopify, they’re lots of plugins that can help you restrict sales to whichever state or country you want. These plugins would help you boost your eCommerce site, maintain your superior service, and satisfy your customers’ needs.
