Automatically validate shipping addresses to reduce carrier fees and prevent failed deliveries
Frequently Asked Questions
Curious about what we do? We’ve compiled all of the common questions that we get from our customers.
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General
1. How does Address Guard help e-commerce brands?
Сustomers often mistype shipping addresses when ordering online. This can range from a simple misspelling of the street address or something more complex such as a missing house or apartment number.
When these situations occur they often result in the shipping carrier failing to deliver the package and ultimately returning the package back to the sender. This creates two major problems, the first is the expensive redelivery fees that the carrier charges the sender and second, the customer is now unhappy that their package is late.
To solve these common problems, Address Guard will validate the shipping address at time of entry and prompt customers with suggested corrections. Our simple interface can help boost customer satisfaction by reducing the frequency of failed deliveries.
In addition, beyond validation we also offer the ability to create unique rules around your shipping policies to prevent orders from being submitted with restricted address information - such as PO Boxes or Military addresses.
With accurate customer data, e-commerce brands can increase delivery rates and ensure customers are happy with the shipment time.
2. What countries does Address Guard support?
Address Guard processes orders in 240+ countries and territories ensuring our global address verification service can help your customers – regardless of their location.
To see a full list of countries we support, review our guide here.
3. Which e-commerce platforms are supported?
Today we integrate with:
- Shopify
- Shopify Plus
- BigCommerce
- Maropost
- Custom API (Enterprise Plan only)
Looking for platform support not yet listed? Please reach out to our team, so we can evaluate adding Address Guard to your platform.
4. How easy is it to get started?
Getting started is very simple, the first step is to install the app to your store, than configure your address rules and you’re all done. It takes just a few minutes to get started, and once installed; Address Guard will automatically prompt customers with suggestions for problematic address issues.
Beyond the simple setup, you can also configure the platform to meet your shipping policy guidelines such as: Preventing shipments to PO Boxes based on specific carriers or private mail box addresses, all in 1-click.
5. Where does the data come from?
We source our data from the best-in-class shipping carrier providers including official local postal authorities in their respective country such as: USPS, Canada Post, UK Royal Mail, Australia Post, PostNL, etc.
We combine this with shipping carriers such as: UPS, FedEx, and DHL, to create the most comprehensive mailing database.
To ensure address data is accurate, we apply daily updates to our platform based on the particular shipping authority.
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Platform Features
1. Which orders does Address Guard process?
Address Guard processes all orders that flow through the checkout flow for your store. Depending on the platform itself though there are a few variations.
For Shopify, BigCommerce, or Maropost - order validation is handled once order has been placed and the customer lands on the thank you page. At this time validation occurs, and our popup appears with suggestions.
For Shopify Plus - order validation can take place before checkout on the shipping address page using our Checkout Extensions or Checkout.liquid option depending on your version of checkout.
Learn more about the 3 ways we handle checkout validation here.
2. What type of address rules or automated shipping policy restrictions are supported?
There are two aspects of our logic engine, both of which are meant to help brands prevent orders from being shipped to addresses that are against their shipping policy.
The 1st option is Checkout Workflows for Shopify Plus. This feature allows you to automate text inputs on the shipping address page relative to the shipping method, in order to display custom text and block checkout.
The 2nd option is Address Rules (available on all platforms), which allow you to provide warnings to customers if a particular address issue is detected. These rules can be customized with your own text and enabled with 1-click. Today we support:
- PO Boxes
- Private Mailboxes
- Highway Contract Route
- Rural Route
- Non-contiguous US States
- US Military Addresses
- Missing House #
- Missing Street Name
- Missing Apt # or Suite #
- Extra Long Addresses (set character limit)
- Non-Latin characters
- Emojis
3. Residential Vs Commercial addresses
For United States addresses, we offer RDI data that lets you know which addresses are residential or commercial. This data is stored within your Address Guard order history page. In addition, for Shopify based stores, we also offer the ability to push this RDI data in the form of Order Tags which are visible within your Shopify order page.
Shipping carriers in general need to be notified the type of address they are delivering to, and with Address Guard you can now automate this process.
4. Does Address Guard support Shopify tags?
Yes, Address Guard will automatically push relevant order tags to Shopify based on your settings. Today we support 15+ tags that indicate deliverability issues such as misspelled cities or incorrect zip codes. Deliverability tags can also be automatically removed once a customer updates their shipping address.
5. What happens if an address cannot be verified?
Despite our best efforts, it’s sometimes possible for a customer to provide a shipping address which cannot be verified. This is usually the case if the information is incorrect on many levels or the misspelling far outweighs a similar value we can compare against.
We handle this situation in a few ways:
The 1st way is by sending an automated email notification to the customer informing them of the issue. From here, the customer can click to update the shipping address, which is then verified again to ensure your brand has an accurate address prior to shipping. There is no charge for this 2nd validation on the same order. Learn more about our email notifications.
The 2nd way is relevant only for Shopify brands, where we will push a tag to the order page for the customer indicating this address is undeliverable. This method keeps your logistics team informed and does not ship out the order. Learn more about Shopify tags.
The 3rd way is relevant only for Shopify brands, where we have the ability to hold fulfillment in Shopify by automatically placing any order on hold if address issues are detected. Once an order address is fixed, the hold is automatically removed. Learn more about Shopify hold fulfillment.
6. How does Address Guard ensure an Email Address is accurate?
When an email address is placed within an order, Address Guard will first perform a syntax check to make sure the common @ and other symbols are applied correctly. Next, we will parse the domain for any common typos, such as (gnail instead of gmail) and offer a suggestion to the customer to resolve. Lastly, we will perform a live mailbox check to ensure the email can in fact receive email.
These methods ensure the customer's email address is accurate when it is pushed to your online store. In addition, your marketing team can have the confidence of sending campaigns knowing the email will not produce a hard bounce.
7. How can I reduce wasted SMS spend with phone number validation?
At the core of Address Guard, our goal is to ensure your marketing team has an accurate representation of your customer's data profile. This includes a valid phone number that is active and can receive messages. When we validate a phone number, we first check the type of phone number (landline, mobile, or voip), alongside the underlying carrier. This can help prevent marketing spend if the customer has placed a non-mobile number.
Next, we will check if the number is active to receive ongoing messages. This helps to give final reassurance the customer has used a valid number and is available for future campaigns.
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Pricing
1. How does Address Guard pricing work?
We prefer to keep our pricing simple and transparent without any complicated monthly fees or contracts. Address Guard charges $0.03 per United States order & $0.04 per International order.
Our Enterprise program allows large-volume brands to qualify for discounted processing rates, coupled with priority roadmap support. If your store is processing more than 15,000 monthly orders, please reach out to us at:
[email protected] or live chat with your current monthly order volume.
Our team will review and follow up the same day with an Enterprise quote. Once your company creates an account, the rate will be automatically applied.
For our optional email & phone number validation service, we also charge a separate fee of:
- $0.01 per email address validation
- $0.03 per phone number validation
The email address & phone number validation service is disabled in your account by default, and can be enabled with 1-click from the Order Automations section.
2. Does the price change by country?
Our international pricing is all inclusive, regardless of the country; it’s simply $0.04 per International order across 240+ countries. For orders within the United States, those process at $0.03 per order.
3. What orders will I be charged for?
There are two ways we charge for orders today, which is dependent on the location of the address validation prompt.
For the After Checkout display option (Available on all platforms) - orders are charged once the customer completes their order and lands on the thank you page.
For the Before Checkout display option (Available on Shopify Plus only) - orders are charged when the customer enters in their shipping address information. This means an order does not need to be submitted for the validation to occur.
A few other important notes:
- Brands will be charged for all addresses processed, regardless if the original address is correct. The platform does not know if an address is correct until it goes through the validation process.
- Address Guard does not charge for address updates which are made for the same order either via checkout or the address form, which require another validation check.
By charging per unique order, we help brands save money on additional validation checks when customers make changes to their order shipping address.
