This week we finally packaged the full release of Commerce Shipping 2.0, and I couldn't be happier. Thanks to the efforts of my co-maintainer, googletorp, and contributors helior, cvangysel, and andyg5000, we have a solid shipping framework for Drupal Commerce that offers more flexibility and granular control than any other shipping system I've seen, Drupal or not.

Commerce Shipping checkout panes on the default checkout form.
What's the big deal?

As I wrote in the release notes, this milestone really is a big deal for Drupal Commerce. Among the many benefits this module brings to the table are:

• The ability to use any number of shipping methods to calculate shipping rates on a site, using Rules to control when a particular method should be enabled. You can use one carrier to quote domestic rates, another to quote international rates, and a flat rate to offer free shipping if certain conditions are met.
• An architecture that subdivides shipping methods into their individual shipping services (e.g. Ground, 2nd Day Air, Next Day Air, etc.), giving you granular control through Rules over which services should be available to an order. You might use this to ensure perishable products only ship overnight or to only offer guaranteed delivery dates for items in stock.
• A shipping rate caching system that allows carrier rated quotes to be fetched in a single API request and stored locally (with an optional timeout) for the duration of the checkout process.
• A shipping rate calculation API that lets you perform additional calculations on top of the base shipping rate for each service through custom modules or Rules. This allows you to add taxes, handling fees, discounts, and more to your shipping rates. It also turns the Flat Rate module into the basis for more complex shipping calculation schemes - weight based, quantity based, etc.
• A checkout pane that can automatically recalculate shipping rates as customers enter their billing and shipping information. This lets you display accurate shipping rates that depend on address data on a single page checkout form.

Additionally, in conjunction with last month's Commerce 1.4 release, Drupal Commerce supports copying addresses and other matching field data between your billing information and shipping information checkout panes. Many thanks to the contributors mentioned above for working out all the kinks between this feature and the recalculation of shipping services.

This architecture removes limitations found in other open source eCommerce systems, like Ubercart and Magento, that often take an "all or nothing" approach to showing shipping services from any given carrier on the checkout form. Even better, features that this module delivers for free would actually cost you extra to add to systems like Magento that nickel and dime you through plugin marketplaces just to make your checkout form more customer friendly.

Next steps for Commerce Shipping

With this release there are already modules to support Flat Rate shipping, carrier rated quotes from UPS, FedEx, USPS, and others, and in store pickup facilitated by Kiala. Additional contributed modules focus on extending the system with other features, like joachim's Shipping Weight Tariff module that offers a simplified table based interface for setting shipping costs by total order weight.

Next steps involve bringing these contributed modules and their dependencies (like the Physical Fields module and Commerce Physical Products) to a full release, an effort already underway thanks to andyg5000 and other contributors / maintainers.

This work has been a community effort, and it has paid off for everyone.