wise up, friends. only suckers pay retail for USPS
for the vast majority of packages, here's how you get the best rate:
- use a usps reseller that gives you commercial pricing (formerly called commercial base/plus pricing) without markup at a good price. what price is competitive? between $0 and $0.05 per package AND without monthly fee. also, they need to give you access to priority mail cubic!!
- try to get the package under 1lb so you can ship it first class package service. this will always be cheapest.
- if under 1lb is impossible, use priority mail cubic. there are some exceptions i explain below.
The Hot Pepper said:
If you get a USPS account you can use Regional Rate boxes (provided free) which usually end up being a lot cheaper than the Flat Rate scam. Flat Rate is great for super heavy stuff.
regional and flat rate are consumer/retail products... rise up and seize the savings, comrade
afaik, regional rate is never a good deal
https://www.pirateship.com/usps/priority-mail-regional-rate
flat rate is
almost never a good deal.
sometimes it's cheaper than priority cubic if it's quite heavy and fits in a flat rate envelope or SFRB. otherwise no.
https://www.pirateship.com/usps/priority-mail-flat-rate
The Hot Pepper said:
USPS Click-N-Ship is $17.99/mo. you don't need a 3rd party. If you sell on eBay it's free (basically you are using their Click-N-Ship account PLUS they discount the shipping).
Personally I'd look into FedEx. Been using it a lot and happy.
click-n-ship is a joke
last i looked, fedex and ups mostly made sense for international shipping, but usps is cheaper for the stuff i mail domestically.
however, i have not looked deeply into fedex and ups resellers. maybe it gets competitive with very good commercial pricing. hell, amazon must use them for a reason (especially ups). if anyone can recommend resellers or share pricing anecdotes, i'd be very curious. thanks in advance.
salsalady said:
I use ShippingEasy for USPS labels.
It probably wont help you for just looking up a regional rate, I haven't been to the USPS look up a rate thing in a while. I have used it periodically to give customers shipping quotes. I can type in the address and type of box and get rates from SE. I have a commercial account which is $30 month. Totally worth it when I was selling 2-5 pure evils daily on Amazon. Orders automatically uploaded, just click the print button and the labels spit out. Slap it on the pre-packed boxes, off to the PO.
I use it about once a month now, so it's really not worth it, but I keep it as it is convenient and a business expense.
i've used several usps resellers. i used to use shippingeasy, but their pricing is not competitive, especially for average joes.
in their free tier, they mark up the commercial pricing postage they resell:
https://shippingeasy.com/pricing/
they also don't give you access to priority cubic iirc (and neither does paypal btw).
also, you can't schedule pickups for first class packages because their integration with USPS' API is broken. to do a first class pickup, you have to login to usps.com. very stupid, and they just don't care about fixing it. priority pickup request works fine though.
who can i recommend?
for normal people (either non business users or business users with simpler needs), i suggest
pirateship. they have an easy to use UI, best possible rates, and no monthly fees. my main gripe with them is they don't have an address book feature, but supposedly they're working on one. i recommend this service to all my friends and family for everyday shipping because it's not possible to get better rates, it's easy to use, and you can schedule pickups -- no need to ever go to post office again.
if your needs are not met by pirateship, then i suggest
shippo. shippo has an inferior user experience imho. it's clunkier, but it provides more extensive e-commerce integration and customization tools. they charge $0.05 per package on their free tier.
personally, i use pirateship as a 'regular person' for everyday things and shippo for some special integrations that are all automated.
ance:...