DDP or DDU, who should pay the customs duty, my brand or my customer?
The short answer
Choose DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) as your default, you collect the estimated duty at checkout and the customer never sees a surprise bill at delivery, which is the single biggest driver of refused parcels and 1-star reviews on international orders. DDU/DAP is cheaper to set up but pushes the surprise onto the customer, and international D2C buyers abandon or refuse delivery over unexpected charges more than almost anything else. Use your courier's or Shopify's duty calculator to quote DDP accurately per country rather than eating an unknown cost.
A quick summary to orient you. The real value is below: the resources worth your time, from people who've actually done it, not us.
Here are the resources
Hand-picked from around the web, each with a note on why it earns your time. India-specific ones carry a badge.
Why we picked it
The clearest breakdown of the two Incoterms that matter most for D2C checkout decisions, who pays duty, and what it means for customer experience and your margin.
Why we picked it
A concise, practitioner-written explainer of the full Incoterms set (not just DDP/DDU) from a global freight forwarder, useful once you're negotiating shipping terms with any partner, not just Shopify checkout.
Why we picked it
Pricing for a market only makes sense once you know the landed cost, this free calculator estimates product plus duty plus tax plus shipping by destination and HS code before you set a price.
