New Zealand only · Shopify app
Charge your rural rate to rural addresses. Nobody else.
Shopify cannot tell an RD address from a suburban one. Your courier can, and it bills you for the difference. Backblock reads the delivery address at checkout and shows the one rate that applies — so you stop absorbing rural freight, and your urban buyers stop subsidising it.
USD $14 / month · 7-day free trial · no usage fees
Postcode 8052 is not in the rural set, and no RD route appears in the address — classified urban.
Shipping method
Example rates in NZD, shown to illustrate the split. Backblock prefills no prices and suggests none — both figures are typed in by the merchant.
Setup
Two numbers, one policy, then it runs itself.
Backblock asks for the figures only you know — what your courier actually charges you — and then stays out of your existing shipping setup entirely.
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Install it
Backblock creates one delivery profile of its own and refuses to write to any other. Your current shipping profiles and rates are never edited.
creates: Backblock Rural rates -
Enter your standard rate and your rural rate
For carts up to 25 kg. Backblock prefills nothing, suggests nothing, and looks up no carrier pricing, so the rates your buyers see are the rates your business agreed with its courier. Then pick what happens above 25 kg: block Backblock’s methods, or charge a flat rate you set.
0–25 kg · over 25 kg: block or flat rate -
Confirm, then publish
You confirm New Zealand-only setup and both rates before anything goes live — publishing is blocked until you do. From then on every checkout is shown the one rate that applies to the address in front of it.
publish gate: both rates confirmed
Scope
A short app with a short list of promises.
What it does
- Tells rural New Zealand delivery addresses from urban ones at checkout, and shows the matching rate
- Reads a numbered RD route off the address line, then checks the delivery postcode
- Hides the rate that does not apply, so buyers are offered one shipping method, not a choice of two
- Creates one delivery profile of its own and leaves your existing profiles untouched
- Handles oversize carts your way: block Backblock’s methods over 25 kg, or charge a flat rate you set
- Works on any Shopify plan — no Advanced plan and no carrier-calculated shipping entitlement needed
- Includes a Preview tool to check which rate a buyer sees for any postcode and cart weight
- Includes diagnostics for delivery profile, function activation, webhook health and billing state
What it does not do
- Quote, calculate, prefill or look up carrier prices, or display a carrier’s retail price
- Connect to a carrier account, or use live carrier rates or Shopify CarrierService
- Price by distance, origin, parcel dimensions or delivery speed
- Edit your existing delivery profiles or your existing rates
- Support any country other than New Zealand
- Store buyer addresses — address fields are read during checkout and never written to the app database
- Claim affiliation with, endorsement by, or resale for any courier
Independent app. No carrier affiliation, no carrier logos, no live carrier-rate claims. The rate methods are deliberately named without any courier’s name in them.
Classification
711
New Zealand rural delivery postcodes in the set that decides the answer
How an address is read.
The main check is the delivery postcode against that set, and the set decides both answers: an address is urban because its postcode is not in it, not because nothing else matched.
Sitting in front of the postcode is one override, for the case the postcode alone gets
wrong. If the address itself spells out a numbered Rural Delivery route — a line
or city field such as RD 2 or R.D. 4, or a route trailing a
road that already has its own type word — the address is rural outright, even on
an urban postcode. That catches rural properties sitting on urban postcodes. Most rural
addresses arrive with no RD text at all, so the postcode set does the day-to-day work.
This is a postcode and address-line classification, not an address-level lookup, so treat it as a very good rule rather than a guarantee. A rural buyer who omits their RD route and sits on an urban postcode will be read as urban. The Preview tool inside the app lets you check any postcode before your buyers meet it.
Pricing
USD $14 a month. That is the entire price list.
One plan, billed by Shopify on your normal app invoice, with the first seven days free. No usage fees, no per-order charge, no metering on classifications — the price does not move when your order volume does.
Your own shipping rates are a separate thing entirely: you set those in your store, in your currency, and your buyers pay them to you.
Backblock Rural Shipping Rates
$14 USD / month
- 7-day free trial
- Unlimited orders and checkout classifications, with no usage fees
- Works on any Shopify plan, Basic and Grow included
- Preview tool and setup diagnostics included
- Cancel by uninstalling — Shopify ends future app billing
Billed through Shopify in USD. Backblock never charges your buyers.
Questions
Asked before installing.
Where do the shipping prices come from?
From you, entirely. You type your standard rate and your rural rate and confirm them. Backblock has no defaults, no suggestions and no carrier price lookup, and it cannot publish anything until you have entered both.
How does it decide an address is rural?
The main check is the delivery postcode, against a set of 711 New Zealand rural delivery postcodes. That set decides both answers: an address is urban because its postcode is not in the set, not because nothing else matched.
Ahead of it sits one override, for the case the postcode alone gets wrong. If the
address itself spells out a numbered Rural Delivery route — a line or city field
that is a route such as RD 2 or R.D. 4, or a route trailing a
road that already has its own type word, as in 45 Test Road RD 2 —
the address is rural outright, even on an urban postcode. Backblock is deliberately
careful here: 10 Ridge Rd 10 and 14 Rutland Rd 3204 are urban
addresses where “Rd” is the road’s own abbreviation, and they are not
read as routes.
How accurate is that?
It is a postcode and address-line classification, not an address-level lookup, so treat it as a very good rule rather than a guarantee. A rural address whose buyer omits their RD route and sits on an urban postcode will be read as urban. If you need to confirm the exact rural delivery status of a specific address, NZ Post’s Address Finder is the authority, not this app. The Preview tool in the app lets you check any postcode before your buyers meet it.
Is this live carrier-calculated shipping?
No. Backblock does not use Shopify CarrierService, does not connect to a carrier account, and does not call any carrier API.
Do I need a carrier account?
No. Backblock is built for merchants who do not have one.
Does it work on Shopify Basic?
Yes, and on any other plan. It uses a Shopify delivery profile plus a Delivery Customization Function to hide the rate that does not apply, so it does not depend on an Advanced-plan carrier-calculated shipping entitlement.
Will it change my existing shipping profiles?
No. Backblock creates and maintains exactly one profile of its own, named
Backblock Rural rates, and refuses to write to anything else.
What happens to carts over 25 kg?
You decide during setup, and Backblock never guesses a price. Either its methods stop applying above 25 kg so checkout cannot use them, or your buyer is offered a flat rate you entered yourself.
What does the app cost?
USD $14 per month with a 7-day free trial, billed by Shopify on your normal app invoice. There are no usage fees and no per-order charges. Your own shipping rates are separate — you set those, and your buyers pay them to you.
Which countries are supported?
New Zealand only.
Are you affiliated with a courier?
No. Backblock is independent. No carrier logos, no affiliation, no reselling. The rural and urban split is an address classification, not a courier product, and the rate methods are deliberately named without any carrier’s name in them.
What happens if I uninstall?
Shopify ends future app billing through its normal app billing flow. The
Backblock Rural rates delivery profile is a Shopify object and survives
uninstall, so review your Shopify shipping settings and remove or replace it if you no
longer want it. If you reinstall, Backblock adopts the existing profile instead of
creating a duplicate.
Do you store my customers’ addresses?
No. Address fields are read while the checkout is calculating and are never written to the app’s database. See the privacy policy.
Rural orders are already costing you. Split them out.
USD $14 / month after a 7-day free trial. New Zealand stores only.