We all know that free shipping has long been one of the strongest — if not the strongest — incentives a webshop can offer; it's easy for the customer to understand, the offer is simple to communicate, and on top of that it's a discount whose value is felt immediately. It's no coincidence that in almost every product category you come across offers like "free shipping over HUF 20,000" or "we cover the delivery cost above HUF 25,000".
From the customer's side all of this genuinely looks like free shipping, but from the webshop's perspective there is of course nothing free about it; the courier fee, the cost of packing and handling, and any cash-on-delivery or other logistics items still have to be paid — only in this case they fall on the merchant rather than directly on the customer. That's why a poorly chosen threshold can easily turn into a discount that brings in more orders while reducing the profitability of each transaction.
The most important thing is to work out the order value above which it's actually worth absorbing the cost of delivery. With a well-set threshold, the customer may be willing to add one more product to the cart to qualify for free shipping, which can raise the average order value and even the profit realised on the order. But if you draw the line too low, you can easily end up financing the shipping of purchases that would have happened without free shipping anyway.
HUF 20,000 isn't a good threshold just because it sounds good
With free shipping thresholds you run into round numbers remarkably often: 15, 20, 25 or 30 thousand forints. From a communication point of view that's completely understandable, but in business terms what matters isn't how good a number looks in the header — it's how well it fits your webshop's real order data. If, for example, your average cart value hovers around HUF 18,000–20,000, a HUF 25,000 free shipping threshold can still feel like an easily reachable goal. In many cases all it takes is a small accessory, a second item or a product the customer would have bought anyway.
Things look quite different if that same threshold is HUF 35,000. Now we're no longer talking about a few thousand forints of extra spend, but a much bigger gap compared to the cart the customer originally had in mind. If the goal feels too far away, the incentive effect of free shipping practically disappears.
A threshold that's too low can be just as problematic. If carts already sit around HUF 20,000 and shipping becomes free from that amount, a large share of orders gets the discount without any extra spending at all. That's great for the customer, but for the webshop it's nothing more than an added cost.
Average order value can be deceptive
It's worth examining the problem thoroughly, because when setting a free shipping threshold, many merchants look at the average order value first. It really is a useful starting point, but for many it can paint a misleading picture of customer behaviour. Imagine a webshop where most orders fall between HUF 10,000 and 15,000, but every now and then a purchase over HUF 100,000 comes in. Those big carts can pull the average up significantly, while the typical customer spends far less. Alongside the average, it's worth looking at the median and the distribution of order values too. In many cases, knowing that most purchases fall between HUF 16,000 and 22,000 tells you more than the fact that the average cart value is HUF 24,300.
It's especially important to look at what happens just below your planned free shipping limit. If, say, a lot of orders close between HUF 22,000 and 24,000, a HUF 25,000 threshold has a good chance of encouraging some extra spending. But if most carts sit at HUF 12,000–15,000, that same threshold may feel too distant to meaningfully influence the buying decision.
Let's calculate what free shipping really costs
We like to repeat ad nauseam that the cost of free shipping shouldn't be judged on the courier fee alone. Fulfilling an order can also involve packaging, warehousing, payment or cash-on-delivery handling costs, and with certain products the risk of returns and failed deliveries can be a significant item too.
There's no need to overcomplicate things — there is no exact answer to this problem anyway — but a simple calculation can help a lot. Suppose delivery costs the webshop HUF 1,650, while you normally charge the customer a HUF 1,490 shipping fee. The merchant is therefore already absorbing HUF 160 of that cost by default. If the shipping fee drops to zero above a certain cart value, the webshop gives up a further HUF 1,490 in revenue compared to the previous situation. The question then becomes whether the margin on the extra purchase can compensate for that.
If, after deducting direct costs, an average margin of 32 percent remains on your products, you need roughly HUF 4,650 of additional purchases for the extra HUF 1,490 shipping subsidy to pay for itself:
1,490 / 0.32 ≈ HUF 4,656
This is of course a simplified calculation — in reality, varying margins, payment fees, taxes and other costs all influence the result — but it clearly shows why you shouldn't set your free shipping threshold at random. If a HUF 19,000 cart only grows to HUF 20,000 so the customer can reach free shipping, that HUF 1,000 of extra revenue hardly offsets a new discount of nearly HUF 1,500. If, on the other hand, the same order climbs to HUF 24,000–25,000, the outcome can be much more favourable.
What the customer adds to the cart matters too
The calculation above assumes an average margin, while in most webshops there can be significant differences between the margins of individual products. A HUF 3,000 accessory might carry a substantial margin, while another product of the same value generates barely any profit at all.
From a free shipping perspective, it's not just how much the cart value grew that counts, but which products make up that extra amount. That's exactly why a free shipping threshold and deliberate cross-selling can work so well together. If a customer is, say, HUF 2,400 short of free delivery, they won't necessarily browse your entire catalogue again because of it — but if they see a few genuinely relevant accessories near the cart or on the product page, items that logically connect to what they've already chosen, the decision becomes much easier for them.
Parcel lockers and home delivery probably shouldn't share the same threshold
In our experience, many webshops treat different delivery methods as if their costs were nearly identical, when in practice there are often significant differences between them. Parcel locker delivery is usually cheaper than home delivery, while an oversized or heavier shipment can come with an entirely different price list.
If the logistics costs differ, there's no particular reason for every delivery method to share the same free shipping threshold either. A webshop might, for example, set a HUF 20,000 limit for parcel locker pickup, while home delivery only becomes free above HUF 30,000. The exact amounts should of course always be aligned with courier fees, your product range and the margin available. And the benefit isn't only on the cost side. By attaching a lower free shipping threshold to the cheaper delivery option, you can gently steer customers towards the solutions that cost you less to fulfil — without having to restrict any other pickup method.
In Sellvio's shipping settings you can configure flat-rate, weight-based and cart-value-based pricing, and for each delivery method you can separately define the order value above which delivery becomes free. That's a far more flexible solution than trying to force a single blanket rule onto the entire webshop.
Sometimes "free or paid" isn't the best split
Free shipping doesn't have to be treated as a simple binary choice between paid and free delivery. For many webshops, a tiered system works better, where the shipping fee gradually decreases as the cart value grows. In such a model, shipping might cost HUF 1,890 below HUF 15,000, drop to just HUF 990 between HUF 15,000 and 25,000, and become completely free above HUF 25,000. This way, customers with mid-value orders also receive a noticeable discount, while the webshop doesn't have to rush into absorbing the full logistics cost.
This can be a particularly good tactic in product categories where the margin doesn't allow free shipping to be tied to a low threshold. Partially subsidised shipping can be a good compromise here: the customer perceives a real discount, while the merchant keeps better control over the margin left on the order.
Sellvio's cart-value-based shipping fees make it possible to build exactly these kinds of multi-tier structures, so you don't have to cling to a single rigid free shipping threshold.
If they don't know about it, they won't grow their cart
A free shipping threshold alone won't increase cart value if the customer never learns about it. For a discount like this to genuinely work as an incentive, it has to be communicated clearly and visibly to the potential buyer.
Baymard's UX research has long shown that shipping costs strongly influence purchase decisions, which is why many customers look for this information well before checkout. It's therefore not a good idea for the delivery cost — or the order value at which it becomes free — to only surface in the final steps of payment. A "free shipping over HUF 25,000" message in the header is a good starting point, but a dynamic indicator that adapts to the current cart can be far more effective, for example:
"You're only HUF 2,840 away from free shipping."
That creates a concrete situation: the customer sees exactly how close they are to the threshold and how much is still missing to reach it. If relevant product recommendations accompany it, the webshop isn't just communicating a discount — it's actively helping the cart grow, because adding an accessory, or swapping a chosen device for a bigger, better or newer one, becomes a logical decision for the customer.
Even a well-functioning limit deserves a periodic review
In everyday practice, a webshop sets its free shipping threshold once and then leaves it untouched for a long time; meanwhile courier fees can rise, product prices and margins can change, and customers' ordering habits can shift as well. But why is that actually a problem?
Because it can easily happen that a HUF 20,000 threshold that worked well a few years ago is now reached by the majority of orders without any special effort. At that point the discount loses its original incentive role: the webshop keeps absorbing the shipping cost, but no longer necessarily receives a higher cart value in return.
The opposite can happen too. If the limit drifts too far from typical order values, customers simply stop seeing it as realistically attainable, and the motivating effect of free shipping can all but vanish. That's why it's worth revisiting your order data from time to time: how the average and median cart values are developing, how many purchases end just below the threshold, how much more those who reach it actually spend, and how much margin remains on those orders.
Conversion matters, but in the end it's profit that counts
Free shipping can improve your conversion rate, increase average order value, and reduce the chance of customers changing their minds before payment because of higher-than-expected extra costs. None of that means, however, that every conversion increase is also profitable business.
If a shipping discount brings in more orders but leaves noticeably less margin on each one, revenue may climb nicely while the webshop's actual bottom line stagnates — or even deteriorates.
Which shows that when testing, it's not enough to watch only the order count or the conversion rate. Just as important are the average cart value, the number of items per order, the amount spent subsidising shipping, and above all, how much profit ultimately remains on each purchase.
Two free shipping thresholds that produce similar conversion rates can differ substantially in this respect, so the better solution isn't necessarily the one that brings in more orders.
There is no universal "right" threshold
It's very important to say that there is no free shipping threshold that works equally well for every webshop; a cosmetics store operating on higher margins has an entirely different room for manoeuvre than, say, an electronics retailer where many products leave only a few percent of margin. Logistics costs are equally incomparable: delivering a lightweight parcel of clothing is a completely different proposition from shipping a large piece of furniture.
So the free shipping limit isn't something you should simply copy from a competitor's header. You're better off starting from your own order data: look at the typical cart value, the distribution of orders by value, your margin, your actual shipping costs, and also which products can realistically grow the cart. Based on these, you can set an initial threshold and then refine it over time against real results. How flexible your webshop platform is matters a lot here too. With Sellvio, the different delivery methods, cart-value-based fees and free shipping thresholds, B2B and B2C conditions, as well as related products and bundle offers can all be managed in concert with one another.
The best way to think about it is that free shipping rests on a simple balance: the customer experiences the offer as a genuine discount, while the webshop receives a larger — but still profitable — order in return. If that balance tips over and only the customer wins, free shipping is no longer an incentive tool, just an extra cost.