The Book Boss® Shop review for Lulu Direct
April 21, 2026
Shipping errors: Lulu should be applying the lowest available shipping rate, per their documentation, but this doesn't work in practice, it's not "set and forget", and the head-scratching caveats essentially mean you can't manage shipping effectively unless you're on the Shopify Advanced or Plus plans. Phone number required by Lulu: There's no way to collect phone numbers for one product in Shopify, so if you're not *only* selling books then you'd be forced to collect phone numbers for every product, which is a total disaster for digital product sell-through. It's not Lulu's fault per se, because the global phone number setting is Shopify's decision, but I'm sure Lulu could find some way to collect phone numbers via their app instead. So... I mean, technically it is an app that works, so yay. The caveats are critical though. UPDATED: To the response: This is a good note to read because it's not clearly documented in the support docs that the phone number is the key to the automatic shipping assignation.
We understand how this requirement can be frustrating, especially for stores that sell both physical and digital products. Carriers require a recipient phone number for all shipments so they can contact the customer directly if there are delivery issues or to help manage delivery. Because of this, it is important that the phone number belongs to the recipient, not the merchant. This information must be collected during checkout, and Shopify currently only allows phone number collection at the store level rather than per product. This limitation is part of the Shopify platform, not the Lulu Direct app. As long as you collect the customer's phone number and the shipping address is valid, we will automatically assign a shipping method to each order and you won't need to manage shipping. We appreciate you sharing this feedback, as it helps clarify these carrier and platform requirements for other merchants considering Lulu Direct.
