Site Logo

Parcel Insurance

Adding insurance to your shipments ensures you are financially protected against loss or damage that may occur while the shipment is in transit. While some carriers provide default loss/damage coverage, if you need to cover a shipment valued more than the default amount or your carrier provides no default coverage at all, ShipEngine allows you to do so.

There are two types of insurance you can apply to a shipment in ShipEngine:

  • ParcelGuard: ParcelGuard is ShipEngine’s official parcel insurance partner. The discounted insurance rates are available to all ShipEngine accounts once you have enabled ShipEngine Carriers. You can add ParcelGuard to insure shipments for any carrier.
  • Carrier: Carrier insurance is insurance available via the carrier selected for the shipment. You would select this option if you want to add the carrier-provided insurance to the shipment.
    Please note that not all carriers support adding carrier insurance. If you are unsure if your carrier supports carrier insurance, check the carrier guide or contact the carrier directly.

You can add insurance to a shipment when getting a rate, creating a shipment, or purchasing a label. You’ll set the insurance_provider property at the shipment level and the insured_value property at the package level (for multipackage shipments, you’ll need to do this for every package in the shipment).

Go to our Add Insurance to Shipments guide for details.

Enable ParcelGuard Insurance

If you wish to use ShipEngine’s discounted parcel insurance provider, ParcelGuard, you’ll need to enable ShipEngine Carriers in your account if you haven’t already.

  1. Log in to your ShipEngine account and make sure you are in the Production environment.
  2. Go to either the Carriers or Insurance page.
  3. Click the Enable ShipEngine Carriers button.
  4. Confirm you have read and agreed to the terms and conditions and click the Enable services button.