E-Commerce Shipping Tips for Squarespace Websites (and in General)
If you’re located in the United States, there are many great ways to save money and time while shipping. Here are our top tips for your e-commerce shipping needs.
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Shipping Options
There are many companies that you can ship with, but I personally use one of the three main ones; USPS, UPS, and FedEx. I’d say 90-95% of my packages are sent out with USPS, and the remaining is split between UPS and FedEx.
Discounted Shipping Rates
If you’re not on Squarespace or not using Shipstation, there are various programs you can use to get heavily discounted shipping options. You just plugin in your box size, the address, and weight, and it’ll give you all your options with prices, and you can pay for the label and print it out directly from their website.
PirateShip: Absolutely free to use and they give you the deepest discount level (Commercial Pricing) for USPS. You have to manually enter shipping details though.
Stamps: Subscription starts at $17.99 per month and it syncs with many platforms like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, etc to import orders automatically.
Shipping Supplies
When it comes to shipping supplies, I get my stuff from various places since no one place has the best price or quality for everything I need.
Label Printer
When it comes to shipping, most Squarespace websites use Shipstation so the orders are automatically imported. The labels can be printed once you purchase your label from Shipstation and the label prints in 4” x 6” format. You can easily use an inkjet or laser printer to print the label onto a piece of paper and then cut it out and use tape to stick it onto a box. I personally hate spending money on ink, paper, and wasting tape, so I use a thermal printer.
A thermal printer is nice because it doesn’t use ink, as the name suggests, it uses heat to print (just like receipts you get at the store for example).
The Rollo printer is the one that I personally use and recommend. It prints using heat so you don’t have to keep buying ink, and it prints very quickly, so you can print hundreds of labels in a few minutes. The printer costs $190 so it’s definitely not the cheapest thermal printer, but it’s great quality and will run for many years.
If you don’t want to invest so much upfront, you can call UPS at 1-800-742-5877 and ask them to rent a printer. They send out a really high-quality Zebra printer that you can rent for $3 per week. If you ship a lot with UPS, call them back after a month or two and ask them if they can waive the rental fee. You don't need to ship with UPS to rent their printer.
Shipping Labels
If you’re using a thermal printer like the one I recommended above, you can get shipping labels for free from UPS. I ship quite a few packages with them but anyone can sign up for a free account and order free labels. I believe I got a box of 9000 flat stack labels, but you can get rolls, and smaller quantities as well. You can create an account and make your order here. The labels have an adhesive back so you just need to peel the back off and stick it onto a box. You can use these labels to ship with any provider, it’s not limited to UPS.
Shipping Envelopes, Padded Bubble Mailers, and Poly Bags
I use padded bubble mailers for things that need protection, like CDs, DVDs and books and poly bags for clothing, and to go over shoe boxes and such to keep it dry. I purchase these from eBay as that’s the cheapest that I’ve been able to find, Amazon sells smaller quantities but they’re overpriced in my opinion. The seller on eBay that I use is called SupplyHut and you can find an example of the bubble mailer I use here. As an example, I get 5” x 10” mailers in a quantity of 250 for just under $40 which works out to about $0.16 each after taxes.
Free Shipping Boxes and Envelopes for USPS
If you need boxes or envelopes to ship with USPS, you can go to the USPS website and get free shipping boxes, envelopes. Their boxes can only be used to ship with USPS.
Other Shipping Supplies
I also use various other items depending on what I’m shipping, here are links to the best/cheapest that I’ve found online.
Bubble wrap with small bubbles to cover fragile items in boxes (eBay - 18” x 175’ for $22)
Bubble wrap with large bubbles to cover larger items in boxes (eBay - 18” x 125’ for $27)
Kraft paper to fill in empty space in boxes (Amazon - 30” x 720’ for $42)
“Fragile Handle with Care” stickers for fragile items (eBay - 500 stickers for $11)
Small cardboard boxes (eBay - 100 boxes of 8” x 6” x 6” for $57)
E-Commerce Shipping Tips
If you're shipping something under 16 oz (1 lb), then USPS First Class will always be the cheapest. (Size limit of 22” x 18” x 15”).
Anything over 1lb and under 5lbs is usually cheapest with USPS Ground or UPS Ground, but it also depends on the size.
Big and/or heavy boxes are usually cheaper with UPS or FedEx.
If you're selling books or media, make sure you pick Media Mail, it's SUPER cheap, even if the items are very heavy or large. (Books that have advertising cannot be shipped with Media Mail, i.e. magazines or comic books).
