How to fulfill digital products and courses in Shopify
For digital products, downloads and courses we want to avoid sending any shipping related emails to customers.
In order to do this the setting "This product requires shipping" should be disabled. You can find this setting when you create products.
To auto fulfill digital products and courses we recommend using this Shopify Flow template. It automatically checks your orders and only fulfills digital (non-physical) products. If your order contains physical products along with digital products, it will only partially fulfill the orders, so only digital products / courses will be auto fulfilled.
To fulfill a specific item, please visit the order details page in your Shopify admin ➜ Orders and click Fulfill item button:
Shipping info email will not be sent to the customer when you fulfill an order as we made it a digital (not a physical) product on the first step of this tutorial:
This info will be sent only if you click on the checkbox with setting “Send shipment details to your customer now“. It's disabled by default:
If you need to set up custom fulfillment rules, like auto-fulfilling digital products, while keeping manual fulfillment for physical products, please check specialized auto fulfillment apps in Shopify App Store.
Conclusion:
1) we recommend using a Shopify Flow template to automatically fulfill digital products (courses, digital downloads);
2) for non-physical products (courses, digital downloads) please do not check “Send shipment details to your customer now“ when fulfilling orders.
In order to do this the setting "This product requires shipping" should be disabled. You can find this setting when you create products.
Auto fulfilling digital product and courses
To auto fulfill digital products and courses we recommend using this Shopify Flow template. It automatically checks your orders and only fulfills digital (non-physical) products. If your order contains physical products along with digital products, it will only partially fulfill the orders, so only digital products / courses will be auto fulfilled.
Manually fulfilling digital product and courses
To fulfill a specific item, please visit the order details page in your Shopify admin ➜ Orders and click Fulfill item button:
Shipping info email will not be sent to the customer when you fulfill an order as we made it a digital (not a physical) product on the first step of this tutorial:
This info will be sent only if you click on the checkbox with setting “Send shipment details to your customer now“. It's disabled by default:
If you need to set up custom fulfillment rules, like auto-fulfilling digital products, while keeping manual fulfillment for physical products, please check specialized auto fulfillment apps in Shopify App Store.
Conclusion:
1) we recommend using a Shopify Flow template to automatically fulfill digital products (courses, digital downloads);
2) for non-physical products (courses, digital downloads) please do not check “Send shipment details to your customer now“ when fulfilling orders.
Updated on: 27/05/2025
Thank you!