14 Best Shipping Plugins for WooCommerce
With WordPress, anyone can make a website, and launching an online store with WooCommerce is about equally easy. Keeping your customers satisfied is another matter altogether. Similarly, as easy as it is to set up shop and make a sale, your customers will expect their goods delivered.
Shipping is just one of the things your customers will expect you to have a handle on, and there is much to be considered. Will you charge for the shipping under any circumstances, or will you offer free shipping and cover the cost from the margin? Will you offer different rates based on weight and volume? Which carrier will you use? Some of these options are available in the basic version of WooCommerce, but what if you want more? More complexity, more choice, more flexibility? With a well chosen WooCommerce shipping plugin or extension you can have all the flexibility you need?
Of course, we have a selection of shipping plugins for WooCommerce for you to choose from. But let us first take a little time to discuss some features you‘d want to be on the lookout for when choosing a plugin for your shop.
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What to Look For in a WooCommerce Shipping Plugin
The first thing you should be considering is how flexible the plugin is in terms of options. The options you need depend on your shipping strategy. Free shipping? Discounts by weight? By number of items? Are you dead-set on a strategy or will you want to change it later? Not quite sure what you want? In that case, you‘ll want flexibility.
Another thing your customers might appreciate is knowing the delivery status of their goods. You‘ll want a shipping plugin which will make it easy for your customers to find out where their package is at all times, using a package tracking feature, especially if you are shipping internationally. Conversely, this feature might not be so important if you expect your goods to be delivered within a day or so, which will depend on the type of goods you offer and where your customer base is located geographically.
Finally, you‘ll notice that some of the plugins are carrier-specific, meaning that they are designed to get shipping done by a certain mail carrier. Again, depending on where your customer base is, you‘ll want to make sure that the carrier you prefer – if you decide to favour a carrier – can deliver.
With that in mind, let us go over our selection of WooCommerce shipping plugins:
Not at all surprisingly, WooCommerce endorses the Conditional Shipping and Payments extension. This premium extension allows you to offer free shipping for certain products or their categories, restrict rates and carrier methods, and prevent certain products from being shipped to certain locations. You can also create and allocate tailor-made shipping and payment options for specific customers and customer classes (members, wholesale buyers, returning customers…). Furthermore, you can disable or hide certain payment and shipping methods with regards to geographical location, currency, total billing amount, product, and so on. It comes as no surprise that a premium plugin should offer about as much flexibility in terms of payment and shipping conditions as you could ask for.
A free and simple plugin, WooCommerce Advanced Free Shipping will let you offer your shoppers free shipping and determine the conditions under which it applies. Once those are set, the plugin will offer the feature automatically. You can select weight, volume, country, user role, quantity, and value, among other criteria, and set up condition sets using OR and AND operators. You can even set up your own conditions and include them into condition sets.
WooCommerce Shipping is a free extension which integrates with WooCommerce to provide you with the option of printing your own shipping labels. Depending on the carrier you are using, this may mean discounts and short waiting times, as you deliver your prepared packages without having to stand in lines.
If you are running an online store using a dropshipping business model, you might want to give WooCommerce Dropshipping a go. This premium extension is designed to make dropshipping easy by providing automatic notifications of each purchase to suppliers, easy inventory import, and supplier inventory management. This extension, which also integrates with AliExpress at the click of a button, will more or less let your suppliers run the store – including printing shipping labels and packing slips – for you.
Flat Rate Shipping Plugin For WooCommerce allows you to set up multiple custom flat rate shipping prices based on conditions such as the type of product, quantity, category, tag, total price of cart items, country, and other criteria. You can even set user-specific shipping conditions, offering a discount to new shoppers or old customers, for instance.
The developer has offered a demo for the plugin if you wish to see it in action.
The plugin’s premium version expands on the above by adding diverse shipping options to customers, optimizing shipping by combining different rates, creating shipping zones and fixed methods for various geographical locations, and more.
If you are looking for a plugin which will allow you to formulate multiple rules for shipping payments, perhaps WooCommerce Advanced Shipping is the thing for you. This free plugin allows you to set up table rate or tiered shipping for any of your WooCommerce products. This plugin allows you to set up multiple tiers for different purchases, define shipping by cost or weight, and include or exclude tax for each purchase, as well as add handling fees as necessary.
The plugin‘s pro version adds even more nuance to your shipping methods, allowing you to customize, fine-tune, and export and import them.
Developed by WooCommerce, Table Rate Shipping is a shipping extension designed to expand upon WooCommerce‘s default shipping options. You can use this plugin to define multiple shipping rates specific to delivery location, weight, price, or number of items bought. You can also have multiple rates per shipping zone or cover multiple shipping zones with one table. The plugin boasts an intuitive interface which makes it simple for you to create even complex rules for shipping.
With Table Rate Shipping for WooCommerce, you get to set up conditions which govern the price your shoppers will pay in the end, based on shipping method, quantity, weight, size, date range and many, many more criteria which you can include or exclude at will. You can set up multiple rules for different shipping zones, and set as many criteria as you like. You also have a range of cost options at your disposal: percentage-based, weight-based, quantity-based, flat, and others.
This premium plugin also offers free add-ons which allow you to base your table rate upon city name and set price limitations.
Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce is a premium plugin which allows you to add tracking information to your customers’ orders. The plugin provides a list of more than 250 shipping providers and uses their tracking links to provide your shoppers with the delivery status of their packages and updates them with regularity. The plugin also supports bulk upload using CSV, custom order statuses to match your website style, and boasts compatibility with many shipping label plugins.
Shippo is a premium comprehensive solution for your shipping needs. It will automatically import any WooCommerce order and allow you to select the best possible carrier (out of 50+ supported ones) and rate. The plugin will also print out your label, sync the carrier’s tracking information and email all your shoppers their tracking codes. Shippo also fills out customs information for international orders.
A great all-in-one solution, ShipStation can be integrated with WooCommerce to provide you and your shoppers with advanced features such as order synchronization, shipment tracking and updates, and shipping label generation. On the customer side, this premium plugin allows your customers to choose their preferred carrier and method as well as special customer notes which automatically get imported with the order for you to take into account when handling their order. Also imported from WooCommerce is detailed information, such as weight, size, and other product data which makes packaging easier.
Depending on your preferred carrier, ELEX EasyPost may be just the thing for you. It integrates FedEx, UPS, and USPS with your online store and provides your shoppers with shipping rates for them to choose from, among those services selected by you from a comprehensive list of carrier services. You can use residential or commercial rates, and even select a fallback rate in case the plugin isn’t able to provide you with a service.
The pro version of the plugin also adds Canada Post to the mix, as well as shipment tracking, package insurance, and other features.
In case DHL is your carrier of preference, ELEX WooCommerce DHL Express could be just the plugin you need. The plugin calculates DHL’s rates in real time and displays them for your shoppers alongside an estimate of a delivery date. You can also break them down by items (weight charge, DHL handling charge, tax, and so on) for full transparency. Finally, as DHL is a worldwide carrier, you can use whichever conversion rate you choose, as well as adjust prices based on the service, either charging more for certain purchases, or offering a discount on DHL’s rates.
The plugin’s pro version also offers shipment tracking, package insurance, box packing facilities and more.
If you prefer the US Postal Service as your mail carrier, perhaps ELEX WooCommerce USPS Shipping Plugin With Label Printing is the thing for you. The main purpose of the plugin is to display shipping prices using a USPS app to calculate rates based on shipping addresses and cart content. The plugin will also offer your shoppers the chance to select among the services the USPS provides. And if the plugin cannot provide you with a quote, you can always set up a fallback rate and look for an alternative.
The plugin’s pro version offers shipment tracking, box packing facilities, per-service price adjustment and more advanced features.
In Conclusion
Whatever your WooCommerce shipping needs, we feel we have you covered. But how do you go about choosing which of the plugins you need? Well, if budget is a major concern, try a free plugin such as WooCommerce Shipping. WooCommerce Advanced Free Shipping is a great free choice if all you’re looking for is to offer free shipping if certain conditions are met. If you prefer using a particular carrier, a plugin from the developer ELEX might fit the bill. If not, ShipStation or Shippo might have the flexibility you need. Finally, if you are not ready to commit to a premium plugin, browse the developers’ websites for free trial offers and make sure that you don’t miss out on a good deal.
