shipment-tracking

Shopify sends a basic shipping confirmation email when you add a tracking number at fulfillment. For branded tracking pages and proactive milestone notifications, install AfterShip from the Shopify App Store and configure email/SMS alerts in its Notifications settings.

Both EasyPost and Shippo normalize tracking events across carriers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS into a single webhook feed, making them suitable for custom or headless builds. EasyPost's Tracker API registers tracking numbers and pushes tracker.updated events to your endpoint.

Compute an HMAC-SHA256 digest of the raw request body using your webhook secret and compare it to the signature header. You must parse the raw body rather than JSON-parsed body, since re-serialization changes the bytes and breaks verification.

This is normal for USPS, which can take 24-48 hours to show the first scan after a label is created. Set customer expectations in the shipping confirmation email and fall back to the carrier's native tracking URL if events stop for over 48 hours.

Carriers and aggregators sometimes resend the same event, so deduplicate based on event type per shipment. Store a notification log keyed by order and status, check it before sending, and use ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING when inserting tracking events.

Enable exception notifications in AfterShip for exception, failed attempt, and returned-to-sender events, routed to email or Slack. For custom builds, trigger an internal alert whenever a normalized webhook event maps to the exception status.