thread Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈 in Online Store

Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

AdamB — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:22:50 GMT

Hi everyone!

We’re back with the next installment in our “get expert advice” series. This time, we’re focusing specifically on shipping. 📦 📦 📦

The holidays are right around the corner, and this is a great time to make sure you have your shipping rules, box sizes, and rates ready to go for all those holiday orders.

Not sure how to handle boxes when you have items of very different sizes? Unsure of how to set up rates to provide the best prices for yourself and customers? Our resident shipping expert @BernadetteA will be on hand to answer your questions between Today and Thursday, October 28th.

If you’d like advice on all things shipping with your online store, post your question below! 👇

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

sgf — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 04:24:50 GMT

I'm new to Square ecommerce. I'm not sure what the best way to set up my shipping rates is. Right now I have set up as Free Shipping and trying to incorporate each individual items shipping with the listed price. I have items of all different sizes and weights, from a single trading card to a full set of fine china dishes. How would you suggest setting up shipping rates for these types of items, and how do I charge different shipping rates for these items for international packages?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

TRC2020 — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 23:38:40 GMT

I'd like to know when Real Time Shipping is actually going to work. It doesn't take into consideration actual volume of your items, so it overcharges assuming larger boxes are required than actually are required. We are paying for RTS only for International, as there is no other option, but have chosen to use flat rate, where I control the rate by weight. Even then, your people have said my shipping is expertly set up, but I still have it glitch. The last was that it defaulted to a lower rate, when it clearly should have been in a higher weight category. Your team had not idea why it was doing that. They sent it to an internal team, and I never heard anything since.

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

BeadedLioness — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 23:46:52 GMT

I typically ship using bubble mailers and double bubble wrap if many items are purchased. To date, all items made it safely. My items are really small but I am considering using boxes due to increased holiday mail and chance of broken items. I already add insurance to first class items. I charge a flat rate for shipping but if I go to boxes, that may increase. I only ship in the US at this point.

Will insurance on first class and priority mail cover broken items? Will using boxes instead of bubble mailers prevent broken items?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

grovetealounge — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 00:47:20 GMT

What's the best/easiest way to get the best shipping rates? Is the Shippo master UPS account the best there is to offer? Or should I be looking somewhere else (either directly with UPS/FedEx or another shipping platform? I pass on all shipping costs to customers, but want to make sure I'm not only getting them their items as fast as possible, but also at a competitive rate. My understanding is that the Ship Master UPS account isn't able to be linked to our Square online store so we aren't able to make the most of it?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

grovetealounge — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 00:51:44 GMT

Grove Tea Lounge is a cafe in Midland, MI that I own. While we do ship lots of retail-type goods (shirts, hats, mugs, etc), we also have been testing out shipping of perishable goods where we include 1-time use freezer packs. When people order items from us, they typically are buying a few different items are varying weights and sizes. The extra cost of the freezer packs (and the extra weight they add) plus the faster shipping times (at minimum we only ship 3-day UPS or faster and only ship Mon-Wed to ensure goods arrive no later than Saturday) make for a lot of variables to take into account with efficient shipping. Any general recommendations for shipping perishable goods that need to be kept cold? More specifically, I'd love to hear pro tips on best practices for boxes and packaging multiple items of varying shapes/sizes/weights to keep the number of boxes to a minimum, shorten delivery time and reduce shipping costs

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

grovetealounge — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 00:53:27 GMT

How do people determine when to offer free shipping? I see lots of places offering free shipping if an order exceeds a certain dollar amount (I.e. Free shipping on orders of $50+ or $100+). Any tips on how to calculate a reasonable threshold where my customers are getting a good deal and are enticed to add that "one more thing" to their order to qualify for free shipping without cannibalizing all my profits by covering the shipping costs?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

grovetealounge — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 01:00:51 GMT

I've found you can get lots of free boxes and envelopes of various sizes from USPS for free. I had a post office employee tip me off to this and you can order them online! One day they just show up and drop a stack of flat boxes off at your doorstep 🙂 It's honestly super helpful in cutting down costs as we are just starting to figure out how to make shipping a reality for us and do it consistently (most orders are friends/family that live far away or local customers who moved away). But this is only true if we use the boxes to ship via UPS or FedEx

The issue I run into is that if I use those boxes to ship through USPS, I am REQUIRED to pay for whatever shipping is printed on the box. For example - if I have a box that is a flat rate box but someone pays for first class mail, I have to cover the difference because the post office won't accept my flat rate package with a first class shipping label on it.

So my question is this - what's the best source for durable and reliable boxes and other packaging materials that is also cost effective? ULINE? Or someplace else?

My own bonus tip for others: In addition to the free boxes from USPS, I was also able to snag a few free rolls of blank shipping labels from our local UPS store that are heat-transfer so I can use with a very solid Rollo printer that I bought! It never hurts to ask these shipping/logistics companies if they have a free roll or box of stuff you can use for shipping 🙂

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

keicollective — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 23:08:48 GMT

We use EcoEnclose for all our purchased shipping materials. The padded mailers are what we use most, but their boxes are also very nice, affordable, and they are all eco friendly! As you scale up, they also have customization options so you can brand your boxes too.

As part of our commitment to sustainability, we also reuse all the shipping materials we receive from vendors, including those pesky flat rate boxes. We wrap them in kraft paper before adding our shipping label to them so that we don't get charged the flat rate shipping fee.

Hope the info helps!

-Andrea

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

Candlestore — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 04:06:12 GMT

We ship a lot in boxes, depending on receivers location for some items we use regional rate boxes from the USPS, and compare Flat Rate USPS rates to UPS and FedEx for farther locations from where we ship. We compare the rates ourselves and was wonder which services like Shippo, Shipstation, PirateShip... etc everyone else uses.

We signed up for Business shipping with the USPS and use their Click-N-Ship program

Unishippers discounts for UPS shipments

FedEx gave us a Business discount but they usually are more expensive than USPS or UPS for us.

Since our packages can range in weight from 3 lbs for one candle to over 70 lbs (Multiple boxes) when people order 24 or more of our candles for the holidays, was wondering how to get the best shipping rates.

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

grovetealounge — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 18:50:28 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely give EcoEnclose a look

also - love the tip for wrapping the flat rate boxes in Kraft paper before shipping. That still ends up being cheaper than buying a plain box! I was able to get a large roll of Kraft paper from ULINE for a great price which helps

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

collinsandcoupe — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 20:33:13 GMT

I have been able to link my shippo account to UPS and FedEx by calling their customer service (i think?) and that lowered my rates a bit. Give it a try. It's either call shippo to link the accounts or call UPS/FedEx but I can't remember what I did. You do have to have an account set up with all the carriers though.

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

collinsandcoupe — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 20:36:38 GMT

When will Square have an option to add a "packaging weight" to the shipping settings? I spent weeks weighing everything in my shop and inputting that only to find that my packages always weigh more due to adding packing material, etc. If I can add custom box dimensions to my settings, why not a default "box weight" as well? I shouldn't have to pad the weight of my 1000+ items in order to allow for shipping materials that can weigh up to a few pounds.

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

keicollective — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 22:24:37 GMT

We range in the 1-5 lb shipments, so I know pricing scales differently, but we have loved using the Shippo integration with Square Online. We get the same discounted rates as in PirateShip (we used to manually check and they always were within pennies), but since we can do it all directly in Square Online and it updates the order as shipped & emails the tracking to the customer it's saved us so much time!!

We use USPS for most of our shipments, but they have some international locations temporarily removed so we've used UPS for those.

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

keicollective — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 22:40:59 GMT

We got around this by adjusting where our pricing cuts are for what we charge customers based on weight. That way the box weight isn't padded into every item, but just applied once. I agree that it would be much easier to have a box weight, but hoping this workaround might help in the meantime!

Example: USPS charges their rate for up to 0.57 lb. Our small item padded mailer weighs 0.2 lb so we charge our customers that rate for up to 0.37 lb and anything over goes into USPS' next rate category. That way someone buying a lot of small items like stickers isn't over charged because we added the 0.2 to every sticker, yet we don't lose out on under charging shipping costs.

I hope that made sense!

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

keicollective — Sat, 23 Oct 2021 22:48:46 GMT

Shipping providers often change rates or have disruptions in service. Like USPS holiday rate increases, or suspension of service to international locations during COVID-19. We unfortunately don't always notice these until after a customer has placed an order and we try to fulfill. Is there a way that Square Online could alert us when there is a major change to service with our connected shipping carriers? Or what's the best way to make sure we don't miss these kinds of changes?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

Selflove — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 01:48:52 GMT

Can I use my own shipping boxes that I purchase from online like amazon and that put an ups shipping label it. ?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

GourmetOnWheels — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 05:38:07 GMT

I get my orders to ship copy the full name and address and use PirateShip to get the same discounts on USPS and UPS as Endicia and Stamps without the monthly fee.

I use a Zebra LP284 Thermal Label Printer to print my 4X6" labels.

Very simple and no monthly fee and discounts on shipping

No need for Ship Station, Stamps, Endicia, or Shippo

René

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

Sweetmagnolias1 — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 19:26:09 GMT

I am a furniture store and looking and getting into shipping some of our larger furniture items beds, tables etc.. but am having trouble finding good carriers who will do this any suggestions?

Re: Get Expert Shipping Advice for Your Online Store 📦 👈

FLD57105 — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 16:52:56 GMT

We ship large items and have linked our Shippo account to use UPS Ground. Is there a better/cheaper way to ship larger items?

Also I'm curious how it works if someone orders 3 of the same item for shipping. I had someone order 3 items and it only charged shipping on the one item.