jsull918 Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 I'm not really even sure how to ask this but we're ready to launch our site but have no idea how to go about the shipping. Should we use flat rate (already have the USPS Priority mail boxes), by weight (already have plain boxes we got from ULINE), or by number of items? We are using square to host our site and don't want to pay the price for the $80 plan yet to get the real time shipping info. The biggest question we have is figuring out how many boxes the customer will end up needing. We don't want to have to cover the shipping costs because we were wrong about something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted July 21, 2020 Share Posted July 21, 2020 This is the hardest part of any mail order business. Here are a few recent discussions compare free services Such as Pirate Ship, GoShippo and USPS to get you started. https://www.craftserver.com/topic/116141-priority-mail-cubic https://www.craftserver.com/topic/116079-shipping-service https://www.craftserver.com/topic/114946-shipping-advice/ https://www.craftserver.com/topic/113686-usps-shipping/ Once you get a feel for shipping terminology, look up “cubic rate” for discussion about box dimensions. Regional Rate is another that competes well with cubic rate and uses free boxes from usps. I use regional rate at least 90% of the time when the packed item is 16 oz or more. Go to usps.com and use the “calculate a price” tool to compare normal at the counter rates. Then do the same exercise to compare against a free service like pirate ship that applies discounts. Uline and similar corrugated boxes will cost money, so calculate that total cost into the shipping costs. The dunnage material inside the box also costs $. Make sure you use enough packing material to protect your fragile items from breakage in transit. It makes things more clear to visit the usps.com site for guidance on US DOT minimal packing requirements to ensure safe travels for the package. Thule in transit those boxes will be dropped into huge bins with other packages, and dropped onto concrete floors from several feet. Once I finally took the time to go through the motions of packing fake orders and pretending to ship them, I learned what works best in my shop. Every combination of products presents a unique challenge. Role playing sounds dumb, but is the best on the job type of learning for me. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candlefriends Posted July 23, 2020 Share Posted July 23, 2020 Hi - We going through this ourselves. My husband and I decided to use Pirate Ship because it's free and integrates well with Shopify. This site may help with cubic shipping questions. https://www.shippingschool.com/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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