Originally published at: Pirate Ship Reduces Shipping Cost and Complexity - TidBITS
If shipping packages via USPS or UPS frustrates you, check out Pirate Ship. It offers steeply discounted shipping rates, an elegant interface with many shortcuts, and bits of humor.
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If I’m reading the article right, their business model is that you get shipping rates that are better than individual retail, but not as good as if you were a big corporation. Pirate Ship pays the corporate rate.
Unfortunately, for me FedEx is usually the best option – but Pirate Ship doesn’t ship with them.
An aside… I used to get a company discount with FedEx: personal shipping at my employer’s corporate rate. The discount was phenomenal. I mean, a package that would normal be $20 - $30 would cost just a couple dollars.
What I didn’t know is that a) they ended the program for new subscribers, and b) your access would be cancelled for non-usage. Once they canceled me it was not possible to renew.
If I had known, I would have shipped an empty box once a year just to keep the discount active.
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I’ve been using their service for a few years now. I really like the ease of creating labels and the rates. If only they would package my stuff for me!
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Forget about using this if you are Canadian (or anybody else outside the US) - from their FAQs - “Pirate Ship only offers postage from the United States Postal Service® and UPS® originating from United States addresses. It won’t work in Canada or any country other than the U.S.! When we expand, Canada is first on our list for offering postage.”
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Yup, US-only.
I’m in the UK once Europe
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Forgive the “me, too!” here, but I have been using Pirate Ship for over a year and it’s as wonderful as Adam said!
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Pirate Ship also offers a fantastic Simple Export option. You have to chat with their customer support to activate it, in part because it does not automatically include insurance. If I remember correctly it’s limited to packages 4 pounds and under.
It’s MUCH cheaper than USPS for light international packages an worth looking into if you often ship internationally.
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A neighbor, who sells a lot on eBay, clued me in to Pirate Ship and I’ve used it many times. Good rates and a great interface! Easier to use than UPS or Fedex, and even USPS.
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I’ve used Pirate Ship for the past two years to mail few hundred small parcels. Excellent intuitive website, and topnotch customer service whenever needed.
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Our household has two Pirate Ship Accounts billing to the same cc. I had an issue tracking which account charged how much to the same cc. So we configured PS to charge at $50 dollar increments for one account, and bill-as-you-go for the other. In 4 years this has only required investigating once or twice when one account or the other has shipped a single package over $50.
I sometimes use Parcel To Go in the UK for cheaper shipping from shippers big and small.
Just don’t use their (typically a rip-off!) insurance, as it’s clearly where they make their money trying to entice users to pay loads to insure the item.
Is that the closest to Pirate Ship?
I’ve used Parcel To Go, Parcel Monkey, and more but they never seem to be “up to 88%” less expensive (Pirate Ship claim).
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In my (admittedly limited wrt the US) experience, shipping parcels using the carriers’ websites is more expensive in the US than the UK, so that might explain some of this. The USPS website was also insanely complicated when I used it years ago.
It’s worth checking out Royal Mail’s Click & Drop. Decent interface and it allows you to save addresses and integrate with eBay and others.
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What others are there, out of interest (may need to bookmark them, lol!)?
The only other I can think of is Interparcel for international stuff.
I’ve had a good experience using Parcelhero for international packages before where standard post wasn’t a good option (e.g. needing a letter tracked and signed for to South Africa, or shipping a 15kg box internationally).
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