Completing the Sale
You’ve done all the hard work of drawing customers to your WooCommerce store and inspiring them to click the Buy button. They’ve made it through the checkout gauntlet and their payment has been processed. Technically, you’ve just made a sale, right?
Wrong. No sale is truly complete until the purchased product is in your customer’s hands. To achieve that, you’re going to need a good WooCommerce shipping plugin.
What Makes a Good WooCommerce Shipping Plugin?
There are five things that you need to do to successfully ship any product:
- Calculate accurate shipping rates. This should occur during the checkout process.
- Print correct shipping labels and packing slips.
- Notify shoppers when their product(s) have shipped.
- Track shipments and give customers online access to this information.
- Handle shipment problems.
You may not get all of these functions in one plugin. But, one way or another, you’re going to need them for a complete system.
With that in mind, here is our list of the best WooCommerce Shipping Plugins for 2021.
#1 WooCommerce ShipStation Gateway
This is just a connector to the online fulfillment service, ShipStation. Among other things, this gateway/service combination:
- Automatically imports WooCommerce orders into ShipStation
- Saves you money by ensuring the best USPS rates in the U.S. regardless of shipping volumes
- Supports all the main carriers, including UPS, DHL, FedEx, and many others; also supports Canada Post and Purolator in Canada, and Sendle in Australia
- Allows for customized shipping labels and packing slips
- Provides custom email notification emails and a branded tracking page (currently U.S. only); customers can even link back to your store to see what’s inside the box
- Lets you do all of the above from mobile iOS and Android devices
ShipStation’s pricing starts at $9 per month for 50 monthly shipments, rising to $69 per month for up to 3,000 shipments. The WooCommerce Shipstation Gateway plugin itself is free.
The only thing that we don’t like about this plugin is that you can’t use real-time shipping quotes during the WooCommerce checkout process. You need to use either the built-in Flate-rate method or real-time shipping quote extensions for individual carriers.
#2 ELEX WooCommerce USPS Shipping Plugin
If you are shipping primarily in the U.S. and only through USPS, this plugin will give ShipStation stiff competition as the best all-around shipping solution for WooCommerce.
The free version displays real-time USPS shipping prices on your checkout/cart pages. This is done live through an API. If the API fails, you can make use of a fallback shipping rate so that you can still complete the sale.
To round out its impressive pricing capabilities, the plugin also allows you to display both normal and discounted shipping rates, where applicable, as well as retail or commercial rates.
Premium features include:
- Print shipping labels with e-VS postage and e-VS SCAN forms
- Packaging options including box packing and weight-based packing
- Tracking for admins and customers with estimated delivery times
- Custom services and handling costs
- Offer USPS shipping services outside of the U.S.
The premium version of this plugin costs $69.
One thing that we really like about Elex is that if you need something beyond the features included in this plugin, they have several other WooCommerce shipping plugins to address various shipping tasks, including the next plugin on this list.
#3 Elex EasyPost (FedEx, UPS, Canada Post & USPS) Shipping & Label Printing Plugin for WooCommerce
This plugin is very similar to the preceding plugin. The main distinction is that this plugin has far greater support for shipping outside the U.S. including support for carriers other than USPS. While there is no free version of this plugin, it does have the same $69 premium price tag as the preceding plugin.
If you’re only using USPS to ship your products then the WooCommerce USPS Shipping Plugin is the one for you. If you need to use other carriers in addition to the USPS, then we recommend this EasyPost plugin.
#4 Table Rate for WooCommerce by Flexible Shipping
The naming for this plugin is a little confusing. The official name for the free version on the WordPress plugin repository is “Table Rate for WooCommerce by Flexible Shipping”. The official name for the Pro version is "Flexible Shipping Pro by WPDesk".
Regardless, this is one of the most highly regarded WooCommerce shipping plugins, with 100,000+ active installs and a 5-star rating in over 97% of its reviews.
Its greatest strength is its flexibility, as it allows you to create almost unlimited shipping methods and cost-calculation rules, including shipping costs based on:
- Cart weight
- Cart total
- Product categories and tags
- Quantity and/or cart line item count
- Product dimensions and total cart volume
- Dimensional weight, with custom DIM Factors
- Maximum shipping costs
- Minimum and maximum values for cart total and weight
- Additional calculation methods and conditional logic
- Day of the week and time of day
Notice that we don’t differentiate here between the free and Pro versions of the plugin. Why? Because at $89 per year for a single site, we recommend buying the Pro version so that you have the flexibility to address any WooCommerce shipping scenario.
#5 Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce
As a rule, we tend to favor plugins in this list that either handle all aspects of WooCommerce shipping or are part of a family of plugins that specialize in the sales and/or shipping processes.
This plugin is a little bit of both. As the name implies, one of its prominent features is its ability to include advanced tracking information from over 300 shipping providers & carriers around the globe into WooCommerce order completion emails. It even provides a tracking info widget for customers in the order status emails and on the View Order page.
Other key features include the ability to:
- Add tracking information to orders in bulk via the view orders page
- Add multiple tracking numbers to the same order
- Fulfill orders when adding tracking numbers
- Import tracking info from CSV files
- Use the Shipment Tracking API endpoint to update tracking numbers generated by third-party services and to fulfill orders from external systems
The premium version of the plugin, which costs $129 per year, also allows you to:
- Add tracking numbers per item
- Customize email templates
- Create custom shipping providers
- White-label shipping providers
- Export tracking information to PayPal
This plugin also provides a fulfillment dashboard and built-in integration with ShipStation, WooCommerce Shipping, Ordoro, and others.
#6 AfterShip Order Tracking, WooCommerce Shipment Tracking Made Easy
AfterShip is a free WooCommerce shipping plugin that connects to a paid service. The service is free for up to 50 shipments per month, with a sliding scale running from $9/mo for up to 1,200 shipments per year to $999/mo for 300,000 shipments per year.
In addition to price differences, your level of subscription also dictates your features. The best way to understand all of this is to view AfterShip’s pricing page.
Some of the following features are only available in some of the more expensive tiers:
- Auto-import and track all your shipments using as many as 870 couriers including UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL
- Schedule deliveries and send delivery updates to customers
- Branded tracking pages including marketing assets and product recommendations
- Shipment dashboard to quickly identify and resolve shipment issues as they occur
- Advanced reporting capabilities to assess delivery performance and post-purchase engagement
Much as with ShipStation and its Gateway plugin, you are essentially outsourcing much of your WooCommerce shipping functionality to AfterShip, which means you will have to handle many things their way. However, on the upside, “their way” is shaped by the shipping activities of thousands of companies interacting with millions of customers, so you are benefiting from best practices.
Have a WooCommerce Shipping Plugin That Belongs on This List?
Don’t be shy. Contact us at inbox@soflyy.com and tell us why your product should be listed as one of the Best WooCommerce Shipping Plugins for 2021!
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