BS ‑ Better Shipping
It does the per-product and per-postcode rate rules Shopify can't, and multi-year users stay — but it's sold on the support team configuring it for you, two reviewers say the developer pressured them over their reviews, and only three reviews exist from the past year.
Should you install it?
This is a checkout rate-rules app, not a carrier or label app: per-product and per-variant flat rates, postcode and zone splits finer than Shopify allows, weight and quantity tiers, free-shipping thresholds with exclusions, and blocking specific products from specific destinations. On that job it works, and the strongest evidence is retention — stores at 4, 5, 6 and 7+ years are still writing in [9954, 0350, 0597, 4323]. The catch is that almost every success story runs through the support team building the configuration; multiple reviewers, including happy ones, say they could not work it out alone [7828, 7342, 9783, 9263], so budget for an email exchange rather than a self-serve afternoon. Known gaps a buyer should confirm before installing: no bulk import for large rule sets [9263], no tag-driven rules [3264], and one unresolved report of Shop Pay rates failing and blocking checkout [0621]. Judge the 4.8 sceptically — 44% of reviewers had used it under a month, two reviewers say the developer pressed them to change their review [7876, 3264], and only three reviews exist from the past year.
Fair evidence. Three things cap this. (1) Review integrity: two documented reports of the developer pressuring reviewers [7876, 3264] plus 11 edited reviews mean the positive text cannot be taken at face value. (2) 44% of reviewers used the app for under a month, many for hours, and their praise is almost entirely about onboarding support rather than the app running in production. (3) Only 3 reviews in the last 12 months, so the app's current state — particularly whether the Shop Pay checkout failure [0621] was ever fixed — is barely evidenced in either direction. What holds confidence at medium rather than low is the substantial, specific, multi-year cohort describing exactly which rate rules they run.
Right for
- Stores where shipping cost is per item — heavy or bulky goods where each product needs its own flat rate, or a rate per variant [4589, 0597, 6907, 0987]
- UK, Australian and Canadian stores needing postcode- or zone-level rates finer than Shopify's zones allow [4210, 9446, 9783, 0350]
- Stores that must block certain products from certain destinations while shipping the rest worldwide [8344, 1843, 0349]
- Merchants who want quantity or weight tiers, free-shipping thresholds with product exclusions, or charging only the highest rate in a mixed cart instead of stacking [8840, 7217, 8805, 6940]
- Owners willing to email support and have them build the configuration — that is how most successful setups here happened [7828, 7342, 9783, 1564, 6907]
Wrong for
- Anyone who needs to self-serve a complex setup without contacting support — repeated reports that it is unintuitive, including two who quit within hours [7876, 9847, 9263]
- Stores with hundreds of rate rules to load: no Excel/CSV import for rules, so rows are entered by hand [9263]
- Stores wanting rules driven by product tags, so new products are covered automatically [3264]
- Anyone needing carrier-account live rates, label printing or tracking — no reviewer mentions any of that; this is rate rules only
- Merchants who want an app that visibly ships new features — one long-term user said improvement had stalled [3264]
What will annoy you
Hard to configure alone — most successful setups happened because support did it, and several people gave up before that: 12 reviews, steady, last seen 2025-01.
How the developer behaves when it breaks
Replies to 19% of reviews overall but 100% of negative ones — though eleven of those negative replies were posted in a single backfill on March 17, 2019, years after the complaints [7484, 6416, 5428, 9847, 2057]. Two replies are concretely useful: [9263] offers to auto-generate the merchant's 30 per-KG rules for them, and [3264] lists features actually shipped (per-variant rates, tiered variant rates, UK postcode improvements). The rest explain rather than fix — 'Shop Pay is having an internal issue unrelated to our app' [0621], Shopify's 24h cache causes the lag [7484], try version 2 [9073, 2057, 5428] — and end by inviting the merchant back. The v2 invitations were not empty: the stacking bug in [9073] is confirmed fixed by [7217] in 2023, and the missing per-variant rates in [2057] appear as shipped in the [3264] reply. Against that, the Shop Pay failure [0621] was still unresolved for a 3+ year customer, and the off-review follow-up crossed into pressure in two cases [7876, 3264].
What goes wrong 9 recurring themes
- Hard to configure alone — most successful setups happened because support did it, and several people gave up before that 12 reviews steady, last seen 2025-01
“It is so difficult to configure the shipping rules especially when there is no bulk upload function.” review 9263
- No Excel/CSV bulk import for rate rules — large rule sets are typed row by row (30 rows for per-KG pricing) 1 review fading, last seen 2022-04
“We need a way to set shipping charge for each KG, but have to create 30 rows to manually input the charges.” review 9263
Also 9263 - No rules based on product tags — new products must be added to rules by hand 1 review fading, last seen 2021-08
“No rules based on tags, you have to manually do it.” review 3264
Also 3264 - Rates not presented at Shop Pay checkout, blocking the 'Pay Now' button; developer and Shopify each pointed at the other 1 review fading, last seen 2021-10
“With the app running customers can sometimes not checkout as rates are not presented and the 'Pay Now' button is greyed out.” review 0621
Also 0621 - Rates wrong or slow to reach the cart — one store saw every rate show as 'Free', another found test rates lagged (developer attributed the lag to Shopify's 24h rate cache) 2 reviews fading, last seen 2018-12
“All of the rates I set show up as "Free". No customer support.” review 6416
- Cost questioned relative to what it does — $15 spent before discovering it wouldn't do the job; a long-term user called the ongoing price high 3 reviews fading, last seen 2021-08
“Quite disappointed I needed to pay $15 to find out that the app didn't offer the level of customization that I needed.” review 5428
- Developer contacted reviewers repeatedly asking them to change their review, and did not stop when asked 2 reviews fading, last seen 2021-08
“They are literally contacting me to alter this review because they don't want their rating to go down.” review 7876
- Per-item charges stacked instead of combining, producing $41.70 shipping on a six-item order — fixed in v2 tiering 1 review resolved, last seen 2017-03
“if they purchase 6 items, it charges $6.95 shipping for every item for a shipping cost of $41.70 instead of just $6.95” review 9073
Also 9073 - Could not set different prices per variant — later shipped as per-variant rates 1 review resolved, last seen 2017-10
“This app doesn't allow setting different prices for variants.” review 2057
Also 2057
What it does well 5 themes
- Per-product, per-item and per-variant flat rates that Shopify can't do natively 24 reviews
“Better Shipping provides a way to set up per product shipping that no others seem to.” review 6907
- Postcode and zone-level rate control, and restricting products to specific destinations 16 reviews
“We needed an app that could restrict certain postal codes for certain products only.” review 9783
- Email support that answers fast and builds the configuration for you (named: Peter, Jess, Andrew) 45 reviews
“Excellent support. Knowledgeable staff. I worked with Peter, who assisted me with my shipping needs.” review 8356
- Weight and quantity tiers, free-shipping thresholds, and charging one rate instead of stacking per-item rates 12 reviews
“choosing only the most expensive shipping rate when two products with different rates are added to cart (currently Shopify adds up the two different shipping costs)” review 7217
- Long-term stability — users on it for 4 to 7+ years still reporting it works 15 reviews
“I have been using this app for the last few years and have found the support and responsiveness to be fantastic!” review 9954
Red flags
- Two reviewers in different countries and different years report the developer pressuring them to change a review. [7876] asked four times in writing to be left alone and says the emails continued; [3264], a 4-star reviewer with no grievance, appended 'The developer contacted me several times asking me to reconsider my review'. Read the 5-star wall with that in mind. 7876 3264
- 11 of 89 reviews are marked as edited ([1377], [0621], [0646], [3264], [7509], [0150], [9338], [7876], [3366], [7850], [9446]), several of them glowing. No individual edit is provably coerced, but combined with the two pressure reports above it is a pattern a buyer should know about. 7876 3264 0621 3366 9338
- Every developer reply to a negative review is real, but eleven of them are dated the same day — March 17, 2019 — a one-day backfill across years of old complaints, not support at the time of the problem. 7484 6416 5428 9847 2057
- One checkout-blocking bug went unresolved: Shop Pay rates absent and 'Pay Now' greyed out, with the developer saying the fault was Shopify's. The reviewer, a 3+ year customer, dropped to 3 stars and no later review confirms a fix. 0621
- Two reviewers paid and installed, then found within hours that it would not do what they needed; one had spent $15 first. 7876 9847 5428
Trend
Volume has collapsed: 3 reviews in the last 12 months against 8 the year before, roughly 0.2 a month on an app that has been listed since 2014. The 3 recent ones ([0350] Jul 2026, [4714] Jun 2026, [4323] Nov 2025) are all 5 stars from long-tenure stores (6+, 4+ and almost 5 years) and all praise the same things as the older reviews: zone/postcode/product-specific rates and fast email support. Nothing new is being reported, good or bad. All eight negative reviews predate April 2022, and complaint themes have shifted over time — the 2017-18 complaints (rates stacking, no per-variant pricing) were genuinely fixed in v2, while the last substantive ones were configuration effort [9263, 2022] and the Shop Pay checkout failure [0621, 2021]. Read the zero negative share in the last 12 months carefully: it is zero out of three. With this little recent volume you cannot confirm the Shop Pay problem was fixed any more than you can confirm it persists, and the setup-difficulty theme is still visible inside 2024-25 positives where support did the configuring [1564, 6907].
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