ShippingEasy Launches 2021 Guide to E-Commerce Shipping Rate Changes

Free, One-of-a-Kind Guide is the Only Resource E-commerce Merchants
Need to Understand This Year’s Shipping Rate Changes

Check Out These Resources

• Do you need a business bank account for your online business? Take a look at our review of the five best bank accounts for sellers, some of which are free with no minimum balance or deposits. ^[sponsored]
• Boost your social media engagement with Publer. Learn how you can save time writing engaging content faster with AI. ^[sponsored]
• Could your online business use capital for growth? Here is a primer on revenue-based loans, and how they work.

ShippingEasy has released its E-commerce Seller’s Guide to 2021 Shipping Rate Changes. This free guide can help online merchants understand and adapt to the 2021 rate changes that have recently been rolled out by all major carriers. These rates went into effect on December 27, 2020 for UPS, January 4, 2021 for FedEx, and January 24, 2021 for USPS. The award-winning guide, now in its sixth year of publication, is one of the most popular assets ShippingEasy publishes throughout the year.

The ShippingEasy Rate Change Guide provides:

●  A Summary of the Rate Changes: A one-page, side-by-side comparison of each carrier’s changes, highlighting the most relevant takeaways related to each, and providing links to more detailed information on the carriers’ sites.

●  Tools for Determining the Most Cost-Effective Carrier for a Given Set of Shipping Parameters: The guide is the only publication available that provides easy-to-use comparison tables which allow shippers to quickly determine which carrier provides the best pricing for a package based on weight, dimensions, destination zone, and service level; it also points out where there may be alternative cost-saving services to consider (e.g. USPS First-Class Package Service®, USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate® or USPS Priority Mail Regional Rate® boxes).

●  Examples of How the Changes Impact Real-World E-commerce Businesses: Case studies show the changes’ impact on real-world shipment examples from online businesses in 5 different product categories, drawn from ShippingEasy’s proprietary (and anonymous) shipping data. These examples not only show the impact of rising rates, but also highlight (where possible) opportunities to save by considering alternative services and/or carriers.

●  An Updated Tutorial Section on Dimensional Pricing: Dimensional pricing—which can cause a shipping fee to be based on a package’s dimensions rather than weight for some large, light packages—has always been a critical concept for e-commerce sellers to understand in order to optimize packaging to achieve the lowest shipping costs possible. The guide’s dimensional pricing section clearly explains the rules and formulas each carrier uses to calculate dimensional pricing and provides examples using real products to show the impact this pricing model can have.

“The COVID-19 pandemic had a massive impact on eCommerce in 2020—especially when it came to shipping, where all the major carriers suspended delivery guarantees even while adding extra fees in an attempt to manage the deluge of additional shipments,”

“For all of us in the industry, the 2020 experience simply served to underscore the importance of shipping—and of ensuring shipping operations are optimized. Our annual Rate Change Guide will help eCommerce sellers optimize shipping by helping them fully understand the 2021 rate changes. Perhaps more importantly, it’s the only resource that can help them mitigate the impact of the changes, by clearly laying out examples of how switching to an alternative service can reduce the impact of the rate increases or even secure lower rates in 2021 than the rates paid in 2020.”

Rob Zaleski, Head of Brand, ShippingEasy

To better comprehend how the new rates will influence shipping operations, and to determine the best shipping solutions for your e-commerce business, download ShippingEasy’s free E-commerce Seller’s Guide to 2021 Shipping Rate Changes today.