DEV Community: Jess Riche

FedEx Shut Down Its SOAP API. Your WooCommerce Store Might Have Failed Silently

Jess Riche — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 22:09:20 +0000

TL;DR: FedEx permanently shut down its legacy SOAP Web Services on June 1, 2026.

Any integration still depending on those endpoints stopped getting FedEx rates.

What surprised me was not the migration itself. It was the way the failure showed up.

The stores I saw did not crash. They did not throw an obvious error. Their uptime monitors stayed green.

They simply stopped showing FedEx shipping rates at checkout.

And in some ways, that is a much worse failure than a site going down.

A little context before I get into it.

I work on the business and support side of WooCommerce shipping plugins, which means I spend quite a bit of time reading tickets from merchants when something suddenly stops working.

So this is less of a migration tutorial and more of an observation from the merchant side of an API shutdown.

You should absolutely compare it with your own logs and implementation.

But I think there is an interesting reliability problem here that goes beyond FedEx.

What FedEx switched off

FedEx retired its legacy SOAP Web Services in favour of its REST APIs.

There were two important deadlines:

March 31, 2026 for software providers and platforms
June 1, 2026 for merchants using their own FedEx credentials

After those dates, the old SOAP integrations were no longer something you could keep running indefinitely.

And this was not simply a matter of changing the API URL.

Authentication changed too.

The old SOAP integration sent things like the key, password, account number, and meter number with the request.

REST uses OAuth 2.0 client credentials instead.

That means there is now a token lifecycle involved:

curl -s -X POST https://apis.fedex.com/oauth/token \
-H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
-d "grant_type=client_credentials" \
-d "client_id=$FEDEX_API_KEY" \
-d "client_secret=$FEDEX_SECRET_KEY"

No access_token means nothing downstream is going to work.

The APIs themselves also changed shape.

Rating, tracking, labels, freight, and other services moved into different REST resources, with different request and response structures.

So for a deeply integrated application, this was not really "replace SOAP with REST."

There is parsing logic to rewrite, service mappings to check, authentication to change, and edge cases to retest.

There is also one very non-technical problem: getting the new credentials usually requires access to the merchant's FedEx account and MFA.

That matters more than it sounds.

A developer cannot always complete this migration alone.

Someone who actually controls the FedEx account has to participate, and on a small WooCommerce store that person may be the store owner who has no idea an API migration is happening in the first place.

The strange part: nothing actually crashed

This was the part that caught my attention.

Imagine a WooCommerce shipping method calls FedEx and gets no usable rates back.

What should happen?

From the store's point of view, "no rates" is not necessarily an exception.

Sometimes there genuinely are no available services for a package or destination.

So the shipping method can return an empty array.

WooCommerce continues rendering the checkout.

The page still loads.

The request still returns HTTP 200.

Your uptime monitor sees: Everything looks good.

Meanwhile the customer sees: No FedEx shipping option.

That is a very different kind of outage.

The application is technically alive, but an important part of the business is no longer functioning.

The fallback-rate problem is even worse

Now imagine the store also has a flat-rate shipping method configured as a backup.

The FedEx rates disappear.

But checkout still works.

Orders keep coming in.

From the merchant's perspective, the site looks completely normal.

Except every order is now being priced using a flat rate someone may have configured months or years ago.

Maybe that number is still close enough.

Maybe it is not.

The store can quietly lose money on every shipment without generating a single obvious technical failure.

That is why I think this type of problem can be more damaging than a crash.

A crash is loud.

Someone notices.

A monitor fires.

A customer complains.

People start looking at logs.

A missing shipping rate can continue for days because almost every layer of the system is technically doing what it was designed to do.

"No service" and "dead upstream" look surprisingly similar

This is the reliability problem I keep coming back to.

From the application side:

FedEx doesn't service this shipment

and

FedEx integration is completely broken

can both eventually become:

[]

That is not a lot of information to work with.

If your monitoring only watches exceptions, HTTP status codes, and page availability, you may never see the failure.

So if I were building or maintaining one of these integrations, there are a few things I would want.

1. Monitor missing rates, not only errors

Your exception handling may be working perfectly.

The problem is that an empty rate response never reaches it.

You need to pay attention to the absence of a result too.

For example, even a basic WooCommerce logger can help:

<?php

/**
 * Warn when a package has no available shipping rates.
 *
 * Logs to WooCommerce > Status > Logs
 * Source: shipping-watch
 */
add_filter(
    'woocommerce_package_rates',
    function ( array $rates, array $package ): array {
        if ( empty( $rates ) ) {
            wc_get_logger()->warning(
                sprintf(
                    'No shipping rates for package to %s %s',
                    $package['destination']['country'] ?? 'unknown',
                    $package['destination']['postcode'] ?? ''
                ),
                [ 'source' => 'shipping-watch' ]
            );
        }

        return $rates;
    },
    99,
    2
);

A few empty results are probably normal.

If suddenly almost every checkout starts producing them, that is much more interesting.

I would rather find that out the same day than discover it from a merchant support ticket two weeks later.

2. Be careful with cached rates while debugging

Shipping rates are often cached, and normally that is exactly what you want.

During an API migration, though, caching can make troubleshooting confusing.

You can change credentials or break an API connection and still see an older successful rate for a while.

That creates the comforting impression that everything is working.

When diagnosing a problem, make sure you know whether you are looking at a live carrier response or a cached result.

In WooCommerce, enabling shipping debug mode temporarily can help while testing:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_shipping_debug_mode', '__return_true' );

Do not leave debugging changes around unnecessarily, but during a migration I want as little ambiguity as possible.

3. Test authentication directly

A checkout is a terrible diagnostic tool.

There are too many layers between the carrier API and what eventually appears on screen.

If authentication is the dependency everything else sits on, test authentication directly.

For FedEx REST, that means verifying that the OAuth request successfully returns an access token.

That is also something you can monitor automatically.

If getting a token suddenly fails, I would much rather receive an alert for that specific problem than wait until someone notices that shipping disappeared from checkout.

4. Put migration warnings where the merchant actually works

This one is less technical, but I think it matters.

API providers send migration emails.

The problem is that merchants receive a lot of emails.

Carrier announcements, pricing changes, service notifications, promotions, account notices...

It all blends together.

And the person reading those emails may have no idea that "SOAP Web Services retirement" translates into:

Your WooCommerce checkout may stop showing FedEx rates.

If you maintain an integration, an admin notice inside the application can be much more effective:

Action required: Your FedEx integration uses a legacy API that stops working on June 1. Update your credentials before that date or FedEx rates may disappear from checkout.

That is much harder to misunderstand.

What worked better on the stores that migrated

The obvious first step was moving to an integration that talks to the FedEx REST APIs natively rather than continuing to depend on the retired SOAP services.

That is also how the FedEx Shipping PRO plugin I work with is built, so take this section with the appropriate amount of bias.

But there are a few design decisions in it that I think are useful regardless of which FedEx integration you use.

One is failure isolation.

Parcel and freight are handled as separate adapters. If a freight request fails, that does not automatically mean your regular FedEx Ground or Express rates need to disappear too.

That sounds like a small implementation detail until something upstream breaks.

Another is having a way to test the integration without using the WooCommerce checkout as your debugging tool.

For example:

wp wc-fedex-shipping status

shows the current FedEx configuration and shipping instances.

wp wc-fedex-shipping validate

runs configuration checks and reports what is passing or failing.

And you can request a live rate directly:

wp wc-fedex-shipping rates quote \
--products=9405 \
--destination="123 Main St, New York, NY 10005, US"

For me, this is one of the biggest lessons from the SOAP shutdown.

A shipping integration should not only be able to return rates when everything is working.

It should also help you understand why rates are missing when something is not.

That is a much better experience than repeatedly refreshing checkout and guessing whether the problem is the address, the products, the shipping zone, the credentials, or FedEx itself.

If you are still using an older FedEx integration, this is also a good reason to check whether it actually uses the current REST APIs rather than assuming an installed plugin is still compatible just because WooCommerce itself is working.

There is a free version of our FedEx Shipping PRO plugin on WordPress.org if you want to test the REST integration on a WooCommerce store:

And if you need more advanced FedEx functionality, the PRO version is built on the same REST-based integration.

I would still rather people test the free version themselves than take my word for it.

This is not really a FedEx problem

FedEx announced the migration well in advance.

The documentation existed.

The deadline was public.

So I do not think the interesting lesson here is:

FedEx turned off an old API.

APIs get retired. That is normal.

What interested me was how many systems between the dead API and the merchant could continue behaving "correctly."

The carrier returned no usable rate.

The shipping integration returned no shipping option.

WooCommerce rendered the checkout.

The web server returned 200.

The uptime monitor stayed green.

Every individual layer could look healthy while the business function they were supposed to support was broken.

That is the part worth thinking about.

We spend a lot of time monitoring failures that produce errors.

Maybe we should spend more time monitoring expected things that suddenly stop happening.

Orders.

Payments.

Shipping rates.

Emails.

Webhooks.

Background jobs.

Sometimes the absence of an event is the actual incident.

If you have worked on shipping, payments, or another API where an empty response can be both completely legitimate and a sign that the upstream service is dead, I would be interested to know how you monitor it.

10 E-Commerce Product Areas I’d Be Watching in 2026

Jess Riche — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 01:13:50 +0000

If I were starting a new e-commerce store in 2026, I wouldn’t begin by asking:

“What product is going viral right now?”

I think that’s one of the easiest ways to end up chasing something that disappears six months later.

I’d ask a different question:

What are people going to keep spending money on?

As an entrepreneur, I’m much more interested in products that have a few things going for them:

repeat purchases
healthy margins
reasonable shipping costs
a clear problem they solve
room to build a brand around them

Global e-commerce is still growing, but what I find more interesting is where the growth is happening. Shopify estimates global e-commerce revenue will reach about $3.89 trillion in 2026, with food, beverages, and beauty among the categories showing strong continued growth.

So if I were researching my next e-commerce store, these are the 10 areas I’d look at first.

1. Supplements and Functional Nutrition

This would probably be near the top of my list.

Protein products, electrolytes, vitamins, collagen, functional powders, and other nutrition products have something every e-commerce entrepreneur loves.

If someone likes the product, they can come back every month.

Wellness spending is also continuing to expand, with the global wellness economy projected to reach around $7.9 trillion in 2026. Functional nutrition and personalized diets are part of that growth.

Of course, health products also come with more responsibility around claims, regulations, and product quality.

But from a business model perspective, recurring consumption is very attractive.

2. Skincare and Beauty

Beauty isn't exactly a new e-commerce trend.

But I still think there is a lot of room here if you don't try to compete as another generic beauty store.

The global beauty and personal-care e-commerce market is expected to continue growing through 2030.

What interests me is the niche potential.

Instead of:

“We sell skincare.”

I’d rather build something around:

skincare for women over 40

or:

travel-friendly skincare for frequent flyers.

Same large market.

Much clearer customer.

3. Pet Products

People spend emotionally when it comes to their pets.

That's something I wouldn't underestimate.

The global pet-supplies market is valued at more than $228 billion in 2026, according to current market estimates cited by Shopify.

Again, I wouldn't build a store selling every possible dog toy and cat bowl.

I'd go narrow.

Maybe products for senior dogs.

Smart feeders.

Grooming products for a particular breed.

The more specific the customer, the easier it becomes to create content and advertising that actually speaks to them.

4. Sleep and Recovery

This is one of the categories I personally find most interesting.

People are increasingly treating sleep like fitness.

They're tracking it.

Optimizing it.

Buying products to improve it.

That creates opportunities around cooling products, pillows, sleep masks, recovery accessories, bedding, and sleep technology.

Shopify's 2026 wellness analysis specifically identifies sleep optimization and recovery tools as a major wellness trend.

I think this is a good example of a market where you don't necessarily need to invent some revolutionary device.

Sometimes the opportunity is simply making an existing solution more comfortable, easier to use, or targeted at a specific customer.

5. Water and Air-Quality Products

This category isn't as exciting as a viral TikTok gadget.

And that's partly why I like it.

Water filters, replacement filters, shower filtration, air-quality accessories, and similar products solve very obvious problems.

Some also have a natural recurring-revenue model.

Sell the filtration system once.

Then sell the replacement filter again and again.

Water filters are also showing up among current e-commerce and dropshipping product opportunities.

I generally like products where the second sale is easier than the first one.

6. Functional Drinks and Specialty Coffee

Coffee, tea, hydration products, powdered drinks, protein beverages, and functional beverages are another area I would investigate.

The global beverages e-commerce market is projected to reach roughly $251 billion in 2026 and continue growing through 2030.

The business model is attractive for the same reason supplements are:

People consume them.

Then they need more.

There's also a lot of room for branding.

People don't just buy coffee because they need caffeine.

They buy a particular roast, lifestyle, story, packaging, or community.

7. Fitness and Active-Lifestyle Products

I wouldn't try to compete directly with Nike selling generic activewear.

But fitness contains thousands of smaller niches.

Cycling.

Running.

Home gyms.

Yoga.

Hiking.

Recovery.

Strength training.

Pickleball.

And every one of those has its own accessories and customer problems.

Activewear, cycling, and related products remain among the product categories showing strong online demand.

The opportunity, in my opinion, is going deeper into one activity instead of creating another general fitness store.

8. Automotive and Mobility Accessories

This one doesn't get talked about as much in entrepreneurial e-commerce discussions.

But I think it deserves attention.

Vehicle parts are already among the major online product categories, and there are countless smaller opportunities around organization, electronics, EVs, motorcycles, scooters, maintenance, and accessories.

People also tend to search for very specific solutions:

“How do I charge this?”

“How do I mount this?”

“How do I protect this?”

Those are great e-commerce searches because there's usually clear buying intent behind them.

9. Personalized and Very Specific Niche Products

This may actually be the biggest trend of all.

Shopify recently reported that product categories outside its top 100 categories now account for nearly 55% of sales on the platform, and those smaller categories are growing faster than the mainstream ones.

That really caught my attention.

It suggests that the opportunity isn't necessarily finding the next giant product category.

It might be finding a tiny category that matters deeply to a specific group of people.

Instead of competing for millions of general consumers, I might prefer serving 20,000 people who feel like a product was made specifically for them.

10. Physical Products + Digital Products

This is probably the business model I find most interesting.

Sell a physical product, but add something digital around it.

For example:

A fitness product + training program.

Coffee equipment + brewing guide.

Gardening kit + video course.

Craft supplies + downloadable patterns.

Pet-training product + training program.

The physical product gives the customer something tangible.

The digital product adds value without adding much shipping or inventory cost.

It can also make the store harder for competitors to copy.

What I Wouldn't Do

I probably wouldn't open a store simply because I saw someone saying:

“This is the hottest product of 2026.”

By the time thousands of people are talking about the exact same product, you're often competing with thousands of people selling it.

I'd rather find a growing category and then go one level deeper.

That's where I think the more interesting opportunities are.

The Trend I’m Watching Most Isn't a Product

If I had to bet on one overall e-commerce trend in 2026, it wouldn't actually be supplements, pets, beauty, or sleep.

It would be:

niche specialization.

Technology has made it incredibly easy to open another general online store.

That also means general stores are increasingly difficult to differentiate.

What feels more valuable now is being extremely relevant to a smaller group of customers.

Build around their problem.

Create content for them.

Choose products for them.

Understand their language.

Then, instead of asking:

“How do I convince everyone to buy this?”

you can ask:

“How do I become the obvious store for this particular customer?”

As an entrepreneur, that's the direction I would be looking in if I were starting a new e-commerce business in 2026.

Shopify or WooCommerce? How I Chose My First E-Commerce Platform

Jess Riche — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 04:55:06 +0000

When I first started thinking about opening an e-commerce store, my first question was simple:

Shopify or WooCommerce?

At first, Shopify looked like the obvious choice.

It was easy to start, hosting was included, and I didn’t need to think much about the technical side. For a new entrepreneur, that is very attractive because there are already so many other things to worry about.

The basic Shopify plan is around US$29/month when billed annually, so roughly $348 per year before adding any extra apps.

That didn’t sound bad.

But then I started thinking about what I might need later.

Advanced shipping, marketing tools, subscriptions, product options, automation, or other custom features often require additional apps.

One app might be $10/month.

Another might be $20.

Another might be $30.

Suddenly, the monthly cost can grow quite quickly.

That was when I started looking more seriously at WooCommerce.

WooCommerce Is Free, but Running a Store Isn’t

WooCommerce itself is free, but of course that doesn’t mean the whole store is free.

You still need things like:

hosting
a domain
possibly a premium theme
paid plugins if you need extra features
maintenance and backups

So I don’t think it’s accurate to say:

Shopify costs money, WooCommerce is free.

A better way to think about it is:

Shopify bundles more things together. WooCommerce gives you more control over where you spend your money.

That difference mattered to me.

Why I Chose WooCommerce

In the end, cost was only part of the decision.

The bigger reason was control.

With WooCommerce, I can choose my hosting provider, change plugins, customize how the store works, and build integrations if I need something more specific later.

As an entrepreneur, I liked that flexibility.

Because a business rarely stays exactly the way you imagined it on day one.

At first, maybe you just want to sell a few products.

Later, you may need different shipping rules, multiple warehouses, custom checkout logic, subscriptions, or integrations with other systems.

I wanted a platform that could grow and change with the business.

For me, WooCommerce felt like the better fit.

But Shopify Still Makes a Lot of Sense

I can absolutely understand why someone would choose Shopify.

If your goal is to launch quickly, avoid technical maintenance, and focus mainly on products and marketing, Shopify may actually be the better choice.

WooCommerce gives you more flexibility, but that also means more responsibility.

You have to think about updates, hosting, security, compatibility, and performance.

So I don’t think there is one answer that works for everyone.

For me, the question eventually became:

Do I value simplicity more, or control more?

I chose control.

That’s why I went with WooCommerce.

And looking back, I think that was the right decision for the kind of business I wanted to build.