Docs · Getting started

Install, connect, go live

From first click to your first international label: connecting your Shopify store takes a minute, and the guided onboarding is seven short steps — typically about five minutes. Everything you set can be changed later in Settings.

Before you start

·A Shopify store (any plan — see the note on checkout rates below).
·A card for the wallet — you approve payments once, during onboarding.
·Nothing else. Carrier accounts, tax registrations, and customs setup are Forto’s side of the deal. If you already have carrier contracts you love, you can plug them in later.

Live checkout rates and your Shopify plan

Live carrier-calculated rates in Shopify checkout use Shopify’s CCS (carrier-calculated shipping) feature. Shopify includes it on Advanced and Plus, offers it on Grow (free with annual billing, otherwise a Shopify add-on fee), and doesn’t offer it on Basic/Starter. No CCS? Forto still works — Manual Rate Mode uses your Shopify shipping zones at checkout, and Forto’s routing engine still picks the carrier at fulfillment. It’s a first-class flow, not a degraded one.

Connecting your store

Every path starts at forto.app/connect (all the “Start free” buttons lead there). Enter your .myshopify.com domain, approve the app in Shopify’s OAuth screen, and you land in onboarding. If you’ve connected before, “Sign in” takes you straight to your dashboard.

If you arrived from the pricing page, the plan you clicked is pre-selected in onboarding — you confirm it there, nothing is charged before the billing step.

The seven onboarding steps

01SetupForto registers its infrastructure with your store: the carrier service for checkout rates, webhooks for orders and returns, and a sync of your markets. Automatic — you watch it complete.
02Go LiveEnable global shipping. From here Forto begins quoting and routing international orders. Domestic orders are untouched.
03ReachConfirm where you ship to and where you ship from. Forto reads your Shopify markets and shipping zones, and your origin location decides which carriers and customs regimes apply.
04TaxesTax registrations for the markets you sell into — IOSS for the EU, UK VAT, and threshold-based registrations like Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Where Forto can act as intermediary, it's handled for you; anything else can be added later in Settings.
05DutiesChoose your DDP approach — where customers see duties in their journey: at Checkout only; across PDP + Cart + Checkout (early visibility, Growth and up); or Baked-in, where duty-inclusive prices are published into your catalog (Enterprise). You can change this later.
06BillingPick your plan (Starter is free), add a card, and approve payments once. That single authorization covers the subscription, wallet top-ups, and duty settlement — no surprise re-approvals.
07DoneYou're live. The dashboard shows your first quotes as they happen.

Your first international order

Nothing to do — that’s the point. The customer sees one total with duties in (on DDP plans), pays it, and the order appears in Fulfillment with a carrier already picked. You print the label (single or batch), pack the box, and the pickup is booked. Tracking flows to the customer automatically.

On Starter, orders ship DAP: the checkout shows goods + shipping, and the destination country collects duties from your customer on delivery. Duties at checkout (DDP) starts on Growth.