What happens when a customer’s zip code doesn’t match any of your delivery zones? Without a fallback, they may see no delivery option at all — and that often means an abandoned checkout. 😬

A fallback zone catches those orders. It acts as your safety net: if no other zone matches, the fallback zone’s rates are offered instead.

📋 Before You Begin

• ✅ You’ve created at least one delivery zone — see How to Setup Delivery Rates and Zones?
• ✅ You know what “default” rate you want to offer unmatched customers

⚙️ Step 1 — Mark a Zone as Fallback

→ Go to Rates → Edit the zone you want to use as the safety net (or create a new one with Add delivery zone).

In the zone form, tick:

✅ Mark this zone as fallback when zip codes in other zones don't match

→ Click Add Zone / Update Zone, then Save in the save bar.

👀 Step 2 — Confirm the Fallback Badge

Back on the Delivery Rates page, your zone now shows a • Fallback zone label under its name in the zone list.

That’s your confirmation the safety net is active ✔️

🔍 How Fallback Works at Checkout

Understanding the order of evaluation helps you predict what customers see:

1. The app checks the customer’s zip code (or country) against all non-fallback zones first.
2. If a zone matches and one of its rate rules applies, those rates are shown — fallback zones are skipped entirely.
3. Only when no other zone produced a rate are fallback zones evaluated, using their own rate rules (price, weight, product, time, days, or multi condition).

⚠️ A fallback zone is always evaluated last — it never overrides a zone that matched the customer directly.

💡 Give your fallback zone broad rate rules (for example, a price rule from 0 to a very high maximum) so nearly every unmatched customer still gets a delivery option.

💡 Tips

• 💡 Use a fallback zone to cover “the rest of the country” while your regular zones handle specific zip codes.
• ℹ️ Excluded zip codes from other zones also end up here — see How to Exclude Specific Zip Codes from a Zone.
• ℹ️ If several rates match at checkout, the Multiple Rates at Checkout setting decides what’s shown — see How to Setup Delivery Rates and Zones?.

🎉 Final Result

Once saved:

✅ Customers outside all your zones still see a delivery rate
✅ Fallback rates only appear when nothing else matched
✅ The • Fallback zone badge makes the safety net easy to spot in your zone list

No more dead ends at checkout 🚀

Updated on: 20/08/2026