Best Postage Solutions For Small E-Commerce Store Selling UK & Overseas

[ADC]

At the moment we use a combination of Royal Mail, Spring Global Mail and DHL. Generally you will find Spring Global Tracked Mail is cheapest for International Deliveries, but they do take a day longer to arrive than Royal Mail. This is because it's part of the PostNL, the Netherlands Postal Service, so everything is sent from the UK to the Netherlands overnight for sorting.

The only countries where Spring Global get beat on price are Germany by FutureProof and USA by e-tail to USA.

The only thing that slightly puts me off these 2 services is that you don't stick the tracking on the item at source. You send your parcels to them and they email you with the tracking numbers later that day (with e-tail USA) and the next day with FutureProof. This obviously causes a slight delay in uploading the tracking numbers to the various websites. You can overcome this by changing your dispatch time to 2 days on Amazon and eBay. But as far as I can tell you have to change the dispatch time for all orders on eBay (not just international ones), so you would lose the "Get It Fast" option from your UK listings.

 

[KevinRockett]

Just to clarify - with the eTail-USA service the tracking numbers are released to the users of the service the day BEFORE the physical parcels are received at the eTail-USA hub - so same day as orders taken and therefore no delay of more than a few hours and certainly not a day.

Tracking management software is also provided FREE which has an upload to Amazon/eBay facility built-in.

 

[Anon26357]

Yes, keep with Royal Mail.
I did use Hermes for a while, what a waste of time and money.

 

[cathreen7879]

I want to sell my product in African countries, anyone advise for the best and affordable courier services.

 

[webprojectuk]

Contact Royal Mail OBA - open a PPI account. They ask for a spend over 5k per year. If you are taking 40 packages to the post. You should cover this without any problems. Normally they don't ask for evidence that you will make this turnover. You can drop the packages at your local sorting office or certain post offices. However, post office can be a pain in the bum - as they don't like to be left with tons of bags. It's the best option on the market for the packages you send. I can't think of a much cheaper of easier option. Believe me I have looked!

 

[FuturePro]

FuturePro mail provide a valuable cost savings on all your International Mail, with daily collection via DPD available through out the UK.
Tracked or untracked, pay only for what you use, no up-front costs, using the best mail providers and valuable savings everyday.

PM me with your weekly volumes and email. I will email you back with the new 2017 price list.

 

[sahargull33]

IT is very informative post i have a question how i improve install of my business app

 

[Chocobiscuit]

i use a pay as you go e commerce fulfillment which has been so far so good, no minimum charge per month and they dispatch generally in 24h

 

[KevinRockett]

Royal Mail have slid an interim price increase in ahead of the annual RM price increase in April.

Details are here - http://www.royalmail.com/prices2017

New prices start today - 3rd Jan 2017

 

[RealDealHolidays]

parcelhub are really good my brother uses them..cheap too

 

[japancool]

Mmm. Can FuturePro beat £12 ro Ireland?

 

[FuturePro]

Well here are our new 2017. Tracked :
Ireland 250g £6.99
Ireland 500g £7.49
Ireland 750g £8.99
Ireland 1kg £8.99
Ireland 1.5kg £9.99
Ireland 2kg £9.99
Ireland 3Kg £10.99
Ireland 4Kg £11.99
Ireland 5Kg £12.99

If you would like the full International rates I would be delighted to provide them. PM me.

 

[KevinRockett]

You might like to know that eTail-USA are running an offer at the moment where you can send tracked parcels to USA through their Express service for the same price as their Standard service.

Delivery time for their Express service is a 3-4 working days regardless of US Mainland destination. They fly the parcels overnight into New York-JFK for East coast parcels and Los Angeles-LAX for the West Coast.

But the best thing is the price - £2.99 for a small/light parcel delivered via UPS/USPS and trackable all the way to recipient. No customs fees/import fees/surcharges are applied and they collect from your premises.

The offer runs until the end of April.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Parcel broker worked always well for me.

 

[KevinRockett]

Just a quick update to let you know that eTail-USA have extended the above offer until the end of June.

£2.99 for a small/ight parcel to USA via their tracked express service - delivery in 3-4 business days.

 

[FuturePro]

The FuturePro rate to Tracked Australia presents a real benefit, this is with a full track trace and most importantly customer signature. Yes, that correct before being asked, a actual customer signature is available on request.

Australia & New Zealand 250g £6.99

Australia & New Zealand 500g £7.99

 

[Alex Watkin]

RM for smallest parcels, and set up business account, as you set a slight discount on bulk orders. Parcel force or hermes for larger parcels.

 

[Justin Smith]

RM for smallest parcels, and set up business account, as you set a slight discount on bulk orders. Parcel force or hermes for larger parcels.

The problem with Parcelforce is they charge per item (and they have a 1.5m length limit, which I accept most propel wouldn`t find a problem) which means if the order has to be sent as two parts they charge you twice a s much. This is somewhat unreasonable in my view because the most expensive part of the collection and delivery operation is the journey at each end, and that is no more expensive for two parts as for one.

As for Hermes, we sometimes get a quote coming up for them on P4D but it was unclear whether the service was "signed for".

 

[DontAsk]

The problem with Parcelforce is they charge per item (and they have a 1.5m length limit, which I accept most propel wouldn`t find a problem) which means if the order has to be sent as two parts they charge you twice a s much

What? If the long item can be split into two parts, then package the two parts side-by-side in one shorter parcel.

 

[Edouard]

Hey Guys,

I'm looking for a cheap shipping solution to deliver Jewellery in Europe and the USA, with insurance to cover half of the jewellery value.

The average package would be around 12cm width and length and 8cm high, around 0.15kg and average retail value of £500

Less than 10 packages per week for starters

 

[Will Wright]

Royal mail, their new online portal is excellent and never had an issue with deliveries

 

[Justin Smith]

Royal mail, their new online portal is excellent and never had an issue with deliveries

Their customer service is no better than before privatisation, they don`t seem bothered about gaining any business, not if it means they actually have to put themselves out.

 

[synotio]

I use Yodel and when you set up an account you get assigned an account manager, I find that you can negotiate with these for a better rate especially for over seas

 

[Chris Salmon]

I'd do RM OBA and Click and Drop all day long. they've made the process really easy and intuitive. I ship both RM24 and RM48. If you send more than 20 parcels a day you'll get volume discounts.

 

[Alexander Sadlier]

We use royal mail 2nd class like you. £2.90 for a parcel does seem steep when you are sending multiple parcels to the same location. It's cheaper for us to send 4 parcels individually than to send them as 1 large parcel. That seems wrong to me ...

 

[Anders Jorgensen]

My supplier has developed a shipping solution with DPD in the UK. Maybe that can help you?

 

[Mixture]

As others have said for small volume international shipments at speed, a service like Parcelmonkey or similar would be best until you get volume. Our rates to the USA are cheaper with UPS on a 2 day service than with Royal Mail (signed) but we do have volume discounts.

 

[antropy]

In our experience there is no cheap way to send parcels overseas

I can't wait until autonomous drones do this haha!

 

[iDigLocal]

Set up a Royal mail OBA account. This is a very cheap option, prices are worked out on average weight. You simply frank them yourself and bag them up. It will take a bit of trial and error to find your way around it but it works well. If you use the Click and drop functionality then they also means to link to various common ecommerce CMS for easy import of order details.

Once you start getting to larger items, especially international shipping then you would probably want to use a different courier. Generally speaking for an ecommerce site you would set up accounts with several couriers to manage costs for different services.

 

[fallschirmjaeger]

Generally speaking for an ecommerce site you would set up accounts with several couriers to manage costs for different services.

Now this bit is good advice I need to start applying!

 

[Parcelhub]

Now this bit is good advice I need to start applying!

Or a single provider that will grant you access to discounted rates from a range of carriers, with a single monthly invoice

 

[AlexMDS]

Royal mail or hermes but hermes can be hard work sometimes

 

[Julie Knight]

Our customer base (we're an Order Management software solution provider) tend to use Royal Mail and Hermes. From the feedback we've received, these both seem to provide an excellent balance between price and service level. Check them out.

 

[ThePropertyServices]

nothing is wrong we use them now, however taking 40 parcels to the post office in one go is a pain so wondered if there was a better solution?

Ask for Discounts, DHL may also help if you set a certain minimum number of packages per day/week

 

[Julie Knight]

Interparcel are also a very popular broker for many different couriers. Worth a look.

 

[Pish_Pash]

Bearing in mind the OP asked his question back in 2015...he probably couldn't hang around for this latest input ;-)

 

[JudeN]

Parcel2Go is a really good parcel-broker service - covers all the major couriers and many I've never heard of. Used to use Hermes all the time now I always go to this site first. I usually go with whoever is offering the fastest and most economical service, always choose signed for and insured, and have never been let down yet

 

[Rob @ Love2night uk]

I use Royal mail tracked & signed for international (EU Only) mail, find them extremly fast and reliable getting the items to customers very quickly. I do have a business account with them and printer to print my own labels but find it a pain at times. Been let down by other so called couriers.

 

[Mixture]

UPS have been excellent for our international shipments, however, after speaking with Royal Mail the Tracked service is actually much faster than the Tracked and Signed service. We shipped a lot of items to the USA, and one major problem with Tracked and Signed was when the customers were out, so they had to leave a card (which I don't think they did) and the item was never collected so returned to sender.
We stopped using Tracked and Signed and switched to the International Tracked service, which resulted in more deliveries being made, less return to senders, and no item not received reports so win-win.

 

[ProjectOcto]

Take a look at Parcel2Go who aggregate their clients needs and get cheaper rates from the major providers