WooCommerce and its built-in shipping options do not include a way to offer shipping insurance. This guide describes two approaches you can use to cover insurance costs for shipped goods: including the cost in your product prices or adding insurance as a separate fee at checkout.
Include insurance in product prices
↑ Back to topYou can include the insurance cost in the price of each product. This approach is straightforward but may give customers an inaccurate impression of the actual product cost, since the insurance fee is not shown as a separate line item.
To include insurance in your product prices:
- Determine the insurance cost per product. Contact your shipping carrier or insurance provider to find out the rate for each item based on its declared value.
- Go to Products in your WordPress dashboard and select the product you want to update.
- In the Product data section, locate the Regular price field under the General tab.
- Add the per-unit insurance cost to the existing product price. For example, if the product costs 25.00 and insurance is 1.50 per unit, set the price to 26.50.
- Click Update to save the product.
- Repeat for each product that requires insurance coverage.
Keep a record of your original product costs and insurance amounts so you can adjust prices if insurance rates change.
Add insurance as a separate fee
↑ Back to topIf you prefer to add insurance as a separate charge rather than building it into product prices, you can use an extension to display insurance as its own line item at checkout. This approach gives customers transparency into the cost breakdown.
- If the insurance is optional, you can use an extension that adds optional fees at checkout, allowing customers to choose whether to include shipping insurance. Search the WooCommerce Marketplace for extensions that support optional checkout fees.
- If the insurance is required, you can use an extension that adds fixed fees to orders. Search the WooCommerce Marketplace for extensions that support additional checkout fees, such as surcharge or extra fee extensions that allow you to apply a flat or percentage-based insurance charge to every order.
Note: The best extension for your store depends on whether insurance should be optional or required, and whether the fee is a flat rate or percentage of the order total. Review extension descriptions and documentation carefully to confirm the extension supports your specific use case.
Questions and support
↑ Back to topDo you still have questions and need assistance?
This documentation is about the free, core WooCommerce plugin, for which support is provided in our community forums on WordPress.org. By searching this forum, you’ll often find that your question has been asked and answered before.
If you haven’t created a WordPress.org account to use the forums, here’s how.
- If you’re looking to extend the core functionality shown here, we recommend reviewing available extensions in the WooCommerce Marketplace.
- Need ongoing advanced support or a customization built for WooCommerce? Hire a Woo Agency Partner.
- Are you a developer building your own WooCommerce integration or extension? Check our Developer Resources.
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