A virtual product is any product that would not be shipped, such as a downloadable e-book or a warranty for example.
Generally speaking, these products do not have any weight value assigned. In order for ShipperHQ to return shipping rates, a weight must be assigned and greater than 0. Below, we’ll address how each eCommerce platform functions with ShipperHQ when virtual products are in the cart.
Shopify
With Shopify, any item that has 0 weight on the product, will be treated as a virtual product, therefore ShipperHQ will not try to pull rates for that product if it is in the cart.
In the case of a cart that contains a virtual product and a physical product with an assigned weight, only the item with an assigned weight will be used in the shipping rates returned to checkout.
Shopify has published some additional details on configuring virtual products here.
BigCommerce
Similar to the way virtual products are handled with Shopify, any product with a weight value of 0 in BigCommerce will result in no shipping rates being quoted. If combined with a physical product in the cart, ShipperHQ will return a shipping quote based on the weight assigned to the physical product only.
For more details on configuring digital products within BigCommerce, please visit BC’s support site.
Magento/Adobe Commerce and Zoey
Magento & Zoey have a product type for Virtual Products and is not just determined by 0 weight.
There is a corresponding setting within the websites section of ShipperHQ specific to Magento, Adobe Commerce, and Zoey accounts that allows you to choose whether or not to ignore virtual products.
This option is selected by default so virtual products are ignored but that implies you can set Magento and Zoey to send them in the rate request, however, these products can still be taken into account within SHQ by deselecting this option.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce merchants using ShipperHQ on their site to return rates can also leave virtual products set with a weight value of 0. Similar to BigCommerce and Shopify, when a virtual product in WooCommerce is in the cart along with a physical product, only the physical product’s weight will be used in the rates returned at checkout.
For more details on setting up digital or virtual products in WooCommerce, please see their setup guide found here.