7 Best WooCommerce Shipping Plugins – Buying Guide

Shipping can be defined as the sum of all processes necessary to carry online purchased products to the customer’s destination. That makes it a crucial part of any eCommerce store.

The history of online shipping goes back to the late 1970s, but it was first demonstrated by Michael Aldrich in 1979. That system involves the connection of a consumer’s TV to a retailer through a telephone line. Since then, online shipping has evolved into a practical and extremely economical solution and is pivotal in a global eCommerce business.

Now that you have created your eCommerce store with WooCommerce, it is time to look for the best WooCommerce shipping plugins to smoothly carry out the shipping process.

The Shipping Process

Shipping is not a simple process; many things are happening behind the scenes; let’s look into those essential steps.

• Accurately calculating shipping charges.
• Printing shipping labels and packing of purchased products.
• Enable your customers to know the delivery time, along with order tracking.

Your WooCommerce platform needs a solid strategy to carry out all the above chores smoothly. You can choose a plugin that deals with all the processes or employ plugins that deal with each process individually. You can have separate plugins for calculating charges, printing labels, and optimizing user experience.

Selecting the best WooCommerce shipping plugin for your eCommerce store depends on your business’s nature; shipping costs vary greatly if your products are heavy. The plugin you choose must cater to the business type.

Let’s set the criteria to help you select the best WooCommerce shipping plugin.

Optimization

We integrate plugins into our eCommerce store to optimize our customers’ experience, from their visit to a smooth, successful exit from the store. This can be achieved by rendering effective strategy and automation of the process.

Plugins should ease the customers’ handling process and should allow your customer to have the confidence to receive the product they purchase with minimal hassle and charges.

Flexibility

The plugin should be flexible, like your WooCommerce platform, since shipping involves many processes which require close monitoring. It is essential to choose a shipping plugin that can provide a flexible solution to customers with multiple shipping rate methods, depending upon their needs, and can calculate rates for different weights, quantities, and product types.

Reach

Customers are coming from all over the world; it is essential to cater to all buyers’ requests; without this, you cannot survive the competitive eCommerce space. You need a plugin that has excellent domestic as well as global reach.

User Experience

It is defined as the ease of purchase and shipment. It includes shipment costs and purchased goods tracking. Shipment tracking is an essential process that every customer accepts from the get-go. The customer should be comfortable tracking the goods purchased as they move through the logistics. This will help develop customer confidence and increase lifetime value.

Now that we have set the criteria for the best WooCommerce shipping plugins, choosing from the many options is less challenging. Almost all reputable vendors have developed a plugin, and we will look into some of them and help you to choose the best.

1.     WooCommerce Shipstation Gateway

WooCommerce Shipstation Gateway is one of the best WooCommerce shipping plugins. It is an online retailer’s dream to handle everything from order to batch label creation and customer compliance and communication; it has top-of-the-line customization traits to fit any location or business.

Features

• Enables automation of import orders to WooCommerce.
• Provides the best USPS rates to save money despite shipping volumes.
• Renders customize shipping labels and packing slips.
• Supports IOS and Android devices
• Enables custom email notification
• Available for free but costs $9/ month for 50 shipments.

Downside

• You cannot use real-time shipping quotes during the checkout process

2.     WooCommerce Shipping Services

WooCommerce Shipping Services integrates flawlessly with your eCommerce store. You can accomplish all the chores, including printing labels and tracking shipments, within your WooCommerce dashboard.

Features

• Can print unrestricted shipping labels with just one click
• Offers support of more than 50 carriers and enables you to reach worldwide
• Tenders concurrent carrier calculated shipping rates worldwide.
• You can call for carrier pickups and print patents.
• Facilitates you with multiple packaging methods based on box packing, weight-based packing, and quantity-based packing.
• Permits you to operate domestically and globally.
• You have the flexibility to craft your own shipping rules concerning shipping class, shipping zone, and quantity.
• Offers multi-vendor shipping.
• It comes with the 14 days free trial; after the subscription, you handle 100 orders for $9/month.

3.     Flexible Shipping

Flexible Shipping is one of the best WooCommerce shipping plugins available. It offers multiple shipping methods and gives WooCommerce the power of table rate shipping. And it can suggest shipping rules based on various conditions. It gives you the power to configure the most complex shipping challenges easily.

Features

• Enables shipment by size/by price/quantity and by-products.
• You can hide or reveal shipping methods.
• You can set time and date and specific shipment costs, with control over displaying information on shipping methods.
• Offers shipping classes support; you can apply shipping costs to a specific group of products.
• It offers a free shipping threshold. You build more sales by offering no delivery charges on the first order.
• It also lets customers know how much more they need to spend to get free delivery through its “left to free info” feature.
• With it, you can charge a fixed rate or extra depending upon the percentage shipping cost.
• With its conditional logic feature, you can apply logic to your shipping cost depending on a specific scenario.
• You can set rules for shipment rate calculation by setting the highest and lowest rates or the maximum cost value.
• You can configure predefined scenarios.
• Supports multiple currencies.
• Provides one-to-one support with any issue with the plugin.

4.     WooCommerce Advanced Shipping

With WooCommerce Advanced Shipping, you can customize rates based on different scenarios. Thus, it is flexible and you can charge whatever you want. It offers you easy integration; you don’t need to code anything. Moreover, with an easy-to-use interface, you can easily maneuver between the features and create your own shipping method.

Features

• You can set table shipping rates with weight, volume, and state conditions.
• Allows you to create multiple shipping methods.
• You can apply conditional logic to a specific group of products.
• Shipping to any country with regards to state/city/zip.
• Offers volume base pricing
• Facilitates table rate shipping
• A little expensive; costs $23.

5.     ELEX WooCommerce USPS Shipping Plugin – Premium Version

USPS Shipping Plugin helps WooCommerce automate USPS shipping by viewing shipping rates on the cart and checkout page, thus optimizing the product delivery process. It also allows you to display real-time shipping rates depending on destination and cart content.

Features

• You can access USPS’s real-time shipping rates.
• Enables you to set fallback rates
• You can do label printing with postage using USPS e-VS electronic verification system.
• Offers box-based and weight-based packaging
• You can customize shipping by editing the name of the service and adding handling costs to shipping services.
• Provides support through timely updates and bug fixes.
• Costs $69

6.     Table Rate for WooCommerce

WooCommerce has a table rate add-on by default and is an easy-to-use extension. Compared to other plugins, table rate offers easy integration of the process and ease of configuring the panel settings, making shipping cost calculation easy. Table Rate offers advanced and flexible cart and product checkout page features. You can create various rates based on weight/ price/ location/no of items and shipping class and is, thus, considered one of the best WooCommerce shipping plugins.

Features

• Can handle two shipping methods.
• Allows shipping rate calculation based on total price/total volume/total number/total length and an item by class etc.
• You can choose the time of delivery.
• You can apply shipping costs for each unit of cost.
• You can set city-based shipping methods.
• You can create methods using multiple conditions and scenarios.
• Allows you to set minimum and maximum shipping costs.
• Enables you to incorporate free shipping and discounts.
• You can include or exclude taxes.
• The premium version can take all these features to the next level.

7.     Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce

As the name suggests, AST, or Advance Shipment Tracking, handles all tracking information and executes orders smoothly. With AST, you can automate the WooCommerce fulfillment workflow. AST keeps your customers well informed, thus, reducing the hassle of post-shipping inquiries and building your customers’ confidence.

Features

• Offers a “Tracking info” widget that lets you send your customers their shipping information.
• You can edit tracking information.
• Allows you to add multiple tracking numbers to the same order.
• You can rename the label of WooCommerce depending upon the order status, like completed/shipped and partially shipped.
• While implementing shipment tracking, you can fulfill the order and pass the shipment status to customers.
• You can select from more than 300 shipment providers.
• You can take the help of the shipment tracking API endpoint to change the tracking information generated by third-party services and fulfill orders through outside services.

Conclusion

It is up to the strategy and nature of your business that decides which best WooCommerce shipping plugin suits you. Your primary focus should be on optimizing your WooCommerce shipping experience. The eCommerce environment is extremely competitive, with many businesses offering free shipping; that makes your job challenging and makes it crucial to find the best WooCommerce shipping plugin. Hope this article helps you to find the right one.

GOOD LUCK!