The Problem – Losing Money on Rural New Zealand Customers
If you sell across New Zealand, you already know the rural shipping problem: customers either get charged the wrong rate, or they accidentally select the cheaper “standard” option when they’re actually rural.
I ran straight into this issue while converting a client’s existing WooCommerce site over to Shopify. Their WooCommerce setup had a rural shipping option set up but it also relied on an honour system. Customers had to manually tick the rural delivery rate, and (unsurprisingly) many weren’t ticking it at all. Some missed it, some ignored it, and the business ended up wearing the extra rural shipping cost.
During the Shopify rebuild, I went looking for a smarter, automated solution — something that could detect rural postcodes and apply the correct rate without relying on customers to choose it.
The Fix – The Rural Shipping NZ Shopify App
I found NZDev – Rural Shipping NZ, a Shopify app that automatically applies the correct shipping rate based on the customer’s New Zealand postcode.
Here’s what the app does (in plain English)
- Checks the customer’s postcode during checkout.
- If it’s rural, it shows only the rural shipping rate.
- If it’s urban, it shows only the shipping standard rate.
- Comes with a preloaded list of NZ rural postcodes that you can edit.
- Works on all Shopify plans (no carrier-calculated shipping needed).
It solved the exact problem I was dealing with, removing the manual choice and making sure customers are charged correctly every time.
And it Comes with Outstanding Developer Support
I had a question during setup, so I emailed the developer, Cameron. He replied almost immediately and went above and beyond to help, it was genuinely one of the best app-support experiences I’ve had in a long time. With his guidance, the setup was smooth, quick, and completely hassle-free.
The Result
The rural-shipping logic on the new Shopify store now works perfectly. No more missed rural charges, no more confusion at checkout, and no more manual workarounds. Just a clean, automated experience that protects the business from shipping losses while giving customers the correct rate every time. And one very happy client.
