• Online Stores · OpenCart

Delivery zones: one delivery price for all of Ukraine means someone is paying for someone else

Delivery to the next district of your city and delivery to a village sixty kilometers off the highway cost different amounts — to you. But the site often charges both the same. Then one of two things happens: either the figure is too high for nearby customers and they go where it is cheaper, or it is too low for distant ones and you quietly cover the difference from your margin. Zoning removes this compromise: the country is split into groups, and each has its own terms.

See how it works
Price
after a free audit
Guarantee
30 days after project sign-off
Focus
online stores, mostly OpenCart
after a free audit
Price
Guarantee

days after project sign-off

online stores, mostly OpenCart
Focus
Timeline

to 21 working days

free review of your delivery setup
Start
Warranty

days from the date the acceptance act is signed

within 2 hours
Reply
under a written contract
Terms
What's included

Complete list of work and what you get as a result

  • a zone map: a list of which regions and settlements fall into which group
  • separate terms for each zone: base cost, surcharge, free-delivery threshold
  • a separate rule for the city where you deliver with your own vehicles
  • a rule for addresses that fall into no zone — no error and no silent zero
  • zones carried into the cart so that the buyer sees not only the figure but also the reason
  • aligning your zones with the carrier's own zones, if it has them
  • an interface or a file you use to change zone boundaries without a developer
  • testing on real addresses from different ends of the country
When this service isn't right

What's not included — so there are no surprises at delivery

  • agreements with the carrier on individual rates
  • extending the carrier's coverage in remote villages
  • setting up your own courier service
  • promises of growth in the number of orders from the regions
  • a legal assessment of territorial delivery restrictions
Who it's for

Situations where this service delivers results

Scenario 1 of 4

A store with its own delivery in its home city

You deliver around the city yourself, and it costs you almost nothing, while across the country you pay the carrier. Without zones, both cases look the same on the site.

We'll review your situation in a free audit

Free review of your delivery setup

We look at whether you need zones at all: for some stores the difference between regions is not worth the added complexity.

What we measure

  • Where your orders come fromIf 90% come from three regional centers, zones will change almost nothing. If the geography is even, the difference in cost is already noticeable.
  • How much you overpay nowWe compare the amount the site charges the buyer with the amount you paid the carrier. The difference by region is the answer to whether there is a task here.
  • Whether there is a city with your own deliveryThis is the most common reason to introduce zones: your own city is cheaper, and there is no point charging the carrier's rate for it.
  • How the free-delivery threshold behavesOne threshold for the whole country usually means that some free deliveries lose you money and others are needlessly generous.
  • Where you do not shipAlmost everyone has restrictions, but they are rarely described on the site. As a result the order is accepted and then canceled manually.
  • Whether addresses are recognizedZones work on a directory of settlements. If the address is typed as free text, that has to be solved first.

What you get

  • an answer on whether zones are justified for your order geography
  • a draft split into zones based on your data
  • an estimate of the work broken down by stage
  • an honest answer if it is simpler to keep a single rate

Timeline: 2–4 working days

Why is it free

Zones make sense only when your order geography is genuinely uneven. That shows in a few months of data, and looking at it is faster than arguing.

What's next

You receive a draft split into zones and an estimate. Then you decide for yourself — the document stays with you.

Short form: your contact and site URL

We work officially

Contract, act and invoice — for every project, not just large ones.

Trusted by6 brands

Trusted by: Kvant Energy, GYPSUN, Naturel Cosmetics, Pancer Protection, LUGI, BeeTech

Terms fixed in writing8 points
  • 01

    Contract, act and 30-day warranty

    Every project gets a written contract: scope, deadlines, amount, acceptance procedure. After delivery — act and invoice, then 30 calendar days of warranty.

  • 02

    Sole proprietor & bank transfer

    The contractor is a registered sole proprietor. Payment by invoice with closing documents.

  • 03

    Rights & access — yours

    Code, design and materials transfer to you after full payment. Domain, hosting, repository and analytics are registered to you.

  • 04

    Client portal instead of email chains

    During the project you get access to a portal: contracts, invoices, acts and project status in one place.

  • 05

    Sites in nine countries

    Our sites run in nine countries: besides Ukraine — Poland, Germany, Austria, England, Norway, Bulgaria, Moldova and Spain.

  • 06

    Verifiable numbers

    Every case in the portfolio comes with a link to a live site and a technical measurement.

  • 07

    Audit first, then pricing

    There is no price list on the site intentionally: the scope of the same work differs multiples between clients.

  • 08

    We say "no" when unsure

    If the task isn't ours or the deadline is unrealistic — we tell you upfront.

  • 01

    Contract, act and 30-day warranty

    Every project gets a written contract: scope, deadlines, amount, acceptance procedure. After delivery — act and invoice, then 30 calendar days of warranty.

  • 02

    Sole proprietor & bank transfer

    The contractor is a registered sole proprietor. Payment by invoice with closing documents.

  • 03

    Rights & access — yours

    Code, design and materials transfer to you after full payment. Domain, hosting, repository and analytics are registered to you.

  • 04

    Client portal instead of email chains

    During the project you get access to a portal: contracts, invoices, acts and project status in one place.

  • 05

    Sites in nine countries

    Our sites run in nine countries: besides Ukraine — Poland, Germany, Austria, England, Norway, Bulgaria, Moldova and Spain.

  • 06

    Verifiable numbers

    Every case in the portfolio comes with a link to a live site and a technical measurement.

  • 07

    Audit first, then pricing

    There is no price list on the site intentionally: the scope of the same work differs multiples between clients.

  • 08

    We say "no" when unsure

    If the task isn't ours or the deadline is unrealistic — we tell you upfront.

We sign NDAs on request. After completing the work, we delete our access to your services ourselves.

What affects the price

Why two seemingly identical tasks are priced differently

  • Number of zonesTwo zones are almost a simple condition. Five or six zones with their own thresholds and surcharges mean a separate rule table and a separate test for each.
  • How the zone is determinedBy region, it is simple. By city or postcode, you need a directory and its updates. By distance from the warehouse, it is a different and more expensive task.
  • Number of carriersEach carrier has its own idea of what counts as remote. Your zones have to be aligned with theirs, otherwise the calculation will diverge from the invoice.
  • Your own deliveryYour own city usually needs separate logic: different timelines, a different payment method, sometimes a choice of time window. It is not just another figure in the table.
  • State of the address dataIf the city is typed by hand, the zone will not be determined reliably. Address input will first have to be tied to a directory.
  • Who will manage the zones laterIf you change the boundaries yourself, you need a clear interface. That adds work but removes dependence on us for every edit.
Cases

Tasks and results in numbers — all metrics measured by us

Kvant Energy

a retail online store of heating equipment, a catalog of ~3,500 SKUs

Task
Bring the full range of heating equipment online (bimetallic radiators, electric radiators, breezers, fan heaters, underfloor heating, thermostats), with navigation and filters for comparing technical specifications, and with a checkout that serves both retail buyers and sole traders/LLCs paying VAT.
Solution
An OpenCart 3 store (oct_showcase theme, nginx). Two language versions, uk/ru, with correct hreflang and x-default. Checkout with monobank, cash on delivery via the carrier, cash on pickup and a bank-transfer invoice for sole traders/LLCs paying VAT. Four delivery methods: Nova Poshta, Meest Express, Delivery Auto, in-store pickup in Kharkiv. GTM/GA4, Google Maps and Telegram/Viber/WhatsApp messengers are connected.
Result
3,565 product cards in the live catalog (measured 31 July 2026 with the standard OpenCart search on an empty query: 36 pages of 100 items, the last with 65). TTFB 0.52 s, full HTML load 0.66 s at 296 KB of markup. 4 payment methods and 4 delivery methods at checkout. Two language versions with valid hreflang and x-default.

Greenter

a store of automatic and drip irrigation systems with landscape services, a catalog of 300 items

Task
Bring together in one store a technical range of irrigation systems — Hunter equipment, drip line, polyethylene pipes and fittings. The items here are small and look alike: elbows, couplings and tees differ only in diameter and thread type, so without deep category nesting and a filter the buyer will not find the right part. The second requirement was to keep the response fast and to allow ordering with delivery to a branch, by courier or to a parcel locker.
Solution
An OpenCart 3 store (chameleon theme) on nginx with HTTP/2 and brotli compression. The catalog was built out to 4 nesting levels so that fittings are divided by connection type and thread (elbow → with internal thread / with external thread / connecting); the OCFilter module works in categories. We added quick product view, 1-click ordering, store and product reviews, callback requests, and Viber, Telegram and Messenger widgets. At checkout: Nova Poshta (branch, courier, parcel locker) and Ukrposhta (express to a branch, standard to a branch, courier), payment on delivery, bank transfer and card via LiqPay. Images load lazily, and canonical on all page types points to the non-www domain.
Result
Measured 1 August 2026: 300 products in 40 categories across 4 nesting levels — the figure confirmed by two independent methods (crawling the root categories page by page with ?limit=100 and merging internal search results for 18 different queries); both methods produced the same set of IDs, a 0% discrepancy. First server response 235 ms (median of 5 measurements), full HTML 262 ms. The homepage HTML weighs 143.6 KB, 22.5 KB with brotli. At checkout, 6 delivery methods from 2 carriers and 3 payment methods, including LiqPay.

Did not find your case?

Describe how it works on your side — we will tell you whether “Delivery rate zoning” fits and what it means in your situation. No brief and no call: one question, one answer.

Process steps

Transparent stages with approval at every step

Total duration:5–20 days

  1. Reviewing your geography

    2–4 working days

    We look at where orders come from and what each direction really costs you. This is where it becomes clear how many zones are needed and where the boundaries run.

  2. Agreeing the zones

    1–3 working days

    We finalize the split, the terms of each zone, the free-delivery thresholds and the list of places you do not ship to. The decision is yours; we provide the figures.

  3. Addresses and the directory

    2–5 working days

    We tie address input to a directory of settlements so that the zone is determined unambiguously rather than guessed from hand-typed text.

  4. Rules and calculation

    3–7 working days

    We implement the zone table, surcharges, separate terms for your own city and the behavior for addresses outside all zones. We work in a test environment.

  5. Testing at the boundaries

    2–4 working days

    We run addresses from different ends of the country, and separately those that sit on the border between two zones. That is usually where a rule turns out to be written vaguely.

  6. Launch and reconciliation

    1–2 working days

    We roll out the changes and compare the calculated amounts with the carrier's actual invoices on the first orders. After that the 30-day warranty from the date the acceptance act is signed applies.

Technologies & integrations

What we build on and what it connects to

Stack

  • OpenCart
  • WooCommerce
  • PHP
  • JavaScript
  • TypeScript
  • MySQL
  • MariaDB
  • Next.js
  • Git

Integrations

  • Nova Poshta
  • Ukrposhta
  • Meest Express
  • Delivery Auto
  • Google Analytics 4
  • Google Tag Manager
Zones or one rate for the whole country

How this option differs from the alternative

Nearby orderspay for their own distance
Distant orderscover your costs
Your own citycan be made cheaper or free
Maintenance efforta zone table and its updates are needed
When the simple option is enoughoverkill if the geography is uniform
What we need from you

We can't start without this — best to prepare in advance

  1. order statistics by region or city for recent months
  2. how you currently split the country by delivery cost, if you do
  3. whether there is a city where you deliver with your own vehicles
  4. where you do not ship as a matter of principle
  5. whether the free-delivery threshold should apply the same way everywhere
  6. who on your side accepts the work

If something is missing — let us know, we'll help you gather it or do it as a separate task.

FAQ

Most frequently asked questions — with concrete answers

How many zones do we need?

Usually two to four, and it is not a matter of taste. The number is set by how many groups really differ in cost: your own city, regional centers, the rest of the country, remote settlements. You can split more finely, but every zone is a row in a table that someone has to maintain.

Won't a higher delivery price to the regions put customers off?

Some customers, yes. But the alternative is not “everyone is happy”; it is “nearby customers pay for distant ones, or you do.” One technique helps: do not hide the surcharge, state the reason right in the cart. A person who lives far away usually knows that delivery to them costs more and accepts it calmly when they see the explanation.

How is the zone determined: by region or by city?

By region is simpler and cheaper, but rough: one region contains both the regional center and a village with no branch. By city is more precise and requires a directory of settlements. We usually advise starting with regions and refining the ones where the difference is really noticeable.

What happens to an address that could not be assigned to a zone?

The worst option is an error or a silent zero in the cost. The right behavior is to apply the most general rule and note that a manager will confirm the amount. The order still goes through, and you see such cases as a separate list and gradually fill in the directory.

Can free delivery be offered only in our own city?

Yes, and it is one of the most common scenarios. You serve your own city yourself or deliver in batches, so the cost there is different. What matters is that the condition is visible on the site to exactly the people it applies to, not written in small print on the delivery page.

Who changes the zone boundaries later?

This is settled before we start. If changes are rare, it is enough for us to make them as part of ongoing support. If you plan to edit regularly, we build an interface or a file your manager can handle. The second option costs more at the start and less later on.

How long does it take?

9 to 21 working days. The rules themselves are written quickly; the time goes into the address data. If the city is typed into orders as free text, input first has to be tied to the directory, and that is the longest part.

Will this increase profit?

We do not name a figure in advance. What will definitely change: you will stop quietly overpaying for distant shipments, because the difference between the calculated and the actual cost becomes visible for every zone. How much that matters depends on your geography, and that is exactly what we look at during the review.
Demo

Your catalogue on a phone screen

This is how your store can look on a phone: a collection banner, popular products and a cart one tap away. Tap “Add to cart” and the counter in the header updates, just like in a real store.

  • Collection bannerThe first screen shows what is new, not a logo.
  • Product cardsPhoto, price and a button — no extra page to open.
  • One-tap cartThe counter in the header updates instantly, like in a real store.
Stores in the portfolio

This is a demo interface, not a client's store. Live projects are in the portfolio.

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Let's see whether you need zones

We will compare the geography of your orders with what you pay the carrier. The review is free, we reply within 2 hours.

From measured casesMeasured 1 August 2026: 300 products in 40 categories across 4 nesting levels

View cases
  • Reply within 2 hours
  • No commitment
  • We work under a contract

There is no price list on the site on purpose: the same work differs several times over between two clients, and a “from” figure explains nothing in that case. First a free audit — we count your pages, duplicates and speed — then we name the sum and the deadline and fix both in the contract.