Shipping rates are the shipping options your store offers to customers, and they are related to your store's shipping policies. Prices agreed between your store and the responsible for the delivery service, such as carriers, pickup points, and service providers, must be configured as shipping rates.

The total shipping cost to the customer includes the shipping rate, additional shipping costs and, a loading dock fee.

You can add shipping rates in the Admin by using:

• The Shipping strategy page: you must upload the shipping rate template when adding a Shipping policy or updating an existing one. We recommend this option for adding many postal codes and their shipping costs at a time.
• The Shipping rates page: for when you want to update existing rates or add a few. It allows you to edit and add shipping rates without using the shipping rate template. To learn more, see our tutorial Managing shipping rates.

The **shipping rate template** is the only option for configuring the location polygon (geolocation), the insurance cost and additional shipping costs.

If you need to update or add multiple shipping rates, we recommend using the shipping rate template instead of the Shipping rates module. If you want to check out how shipping rates are added and displayed to the end customer, use the **Shipping simulator** module.