Service Cities — how they work and when to add one

A Service City is a pickup and delivery zone anchored to a city you choose. When a buyer's shipping ZIP falls inside one of your zones at checkout, they see local pickup options (Vendor Porch, Porch Pros Network, Vendor Delivery) instead of only shipping.

Service Cities are included with every plan. The number of zones, the radius around each one, and how many Porch Pros you can pick per zone scale with your tier.

The simple version

• You live in Denver. Denver is one of your zones, included free.
• A buyer in Austin wants your candle. Their ZIP is 78701.
• By default they pay $12 for shipping. You pay the shipping cost out of your margin.
• If Austin is one of your Service Cities, the Austin buyer now sees "Porch Pro pickup in Austin · $8" at checkout.
• You ship a batch of orders to the Austin Porch Pro once a week.
• Austin buyers pick up from the Porch Pro's porch. $5 goes to the Porch Pro, $3 goes to the platform.

You never drive to Austin. You never rent a booth in Austin. You just get to sell into Austin like you live there.

Why it exists

Shipping kills small-order economics. A $22 candle with $12 shipping plus 3% Stripe fees nets about $8 in margin. Nobody's building a business on 36% margins.

Local pickup flips the math. A $22 candle with $0 shipping (buyer pays the $8 pickup fee, you absorb none of it) nets about $20 in margin. That's a 91% margin. The difference between a hobby and a business.

Service Cities let you tap that economics in multiple metros without physically being in any of them.

What's included with each tier

| Tier | Zones | Radius per zone | Porch Pros per zone |

|---|---|---|---|

| Free Porch | 1 | 5 miles | 1 |

| The Shop (founding or standard) | 2 | 10 miles | 2 |

| The Anchor | 5 per store (up to 2 stores = 10) | 10 miles | 2 |

Need more? Add an extra zone for $29/mo at any tier. Same radius and Pro count as your tier's base zones.

The Porch Pro pickup fee

Every Porch Pro pickup is $8, paid by either the buyer or the vendor (you toggle which in your store settings):

• $3 goes to the platform (covers Porch Pro Network operations)
• $5 goes to the Porch Pro (the host)

You pick which Pros host your pickups inside each zone, up to your tier's per-zone Pro limit. Pros are surfaced by distance from your zone center, with their rating and completed-pickup count visible so you can pick deliberately.

Don't get clever — go where your buyers already are

The most common mistake: vendors pick a city because "I heard Seattle has a big maker scene" instead of picking the city where they already have 20+ repeat customers.

Look at your existing ship-to list. If 30 of your past 200 orders shipped to ZIP codes inside 10 miles of a single city, that's a zone worth claiming. You already have buyers there; now you're giving them cheaper fulfillment and nudging them toward repeat buys.

Picking zones speculatively is a waste. Picking them where your order history already clusters is a 15–25% margin bump on repeat orders.

What happens if there's no Porch Pro in a zone I pick?

You can still use Vendor Delivery (if you drive there yourself) or ship. The platform shows a coverage indicator on your Service Cities dashboard:

• 🟢 Covered — 1 or more Porch Pros hosting
• 🟡 Partial — limited coverage, some dates missing
• 🔴 No host yet — platform is recruiting

We actively recruit Porch Pros in high-demand areas. If you've added an extra zone ($29/mo) and it has no coverage for 45 consecutive days, we refund one month of the add-on fee on the next cycle automatically.

How to decide which zones to pick

Ask yourself:

1. Do I have at least 20–30 past orders shipping to buyers inside 10 miles of one city? Pick that city.
2. Am I paying for shipping out of my margin because my products are in the $15–$75 range? Use your included zones first, then add an extra if the math holds.
3. Do my customers cluster in one metro that isn't where I live? That's your highest-ROI zone.

If your order history is too thin to answer those, start with your home city as your first zone and come back in 3 months once you've shipped 100+ orders.

Add or change a zone from your dashboard

Dashboard → Porch Pro zones → Add zone.

We'll look up the city's lat/lng, apply your tier's radius, and let you pick Pros within range. Extra zones (beyond what your tier includes) charge $29/mo via Stripe; first month prorated to the signup date. Cancel anytime.