10 WooCommerce Shipping Plugins for eCommerce Sites
With more than 159 billion packages shipped worldwide in 2021—and that number rising year over year—it’s clear that more customers than ever rely on ordering online. As such, a reliable, cost-effective, user-friendly shipping setup is essential for every business.
Unless you use your eCommerce storefront to sell digital goods or book appointments, you probably deal with shipping products to customers every day. And while you’ve no doubt devised a system that is working for you, there are countless plugins that can improve your experience—and that of your customers.
In this guide to WooCommerce shipping plugins, we’re exploring some of the best ways to upgrade your shipping and fulfillment processes.
What is a WooCommerce Shipping Plugin?
WooCommerce is one of the top-ranking eCommerce platforms—more than 26 million websites use it for online sales. One reason for WooCommerce’s widespread adoption is its marketplace of add-ons. These add-ons, called extensions or plugins, allow you to modify the function of your eCommerce store without diving into the program’s code.
Some plugins simplify marketing, some add payment method options, and others—shipping plugins—improve or facilitate all things shipping.
WooCommerce shipping plugins can enhance several parts of the pre- and post-purchase experience, including:
- Calculating shipping rates
- Printing labels
- Tracking
- Logistics
- Marketing
Using shipping plugins can save you time and money, improve customer satisfaction, and even reduce your carbon footprint by optimizing shipping and packaging.
The 10 Best WooCommerce Shipping Plugins (Organized by Category)
Whether you’re changing eCommerce platforms to WooCommerce or wanting to start off on the right foot as you build a new eCommerce site, it helps to know the different plugins offered. With more than 60 shipping extensions on the WooCommerce marketplace (and hundreds more available in the WordPress Plugin Directory), choosing the right ones can be challenging.
To that end, we’ve handpicked some of the best available options. To simplify your quest for the best shipping plugins, we’ve divided them into four categories: rate calculation, shipping label printing, customer experience, and all-in-one.
For Calculating Rates
By default, WooCommerce offers three shipping options:
- Flat rate shipping
- Free shipping
- Local pickup
While you can create “shipping zones” to charge different flat rates for different regions, you can’t develop a more flexible approach. What’s more, your customers may be in the dark about the details of your shipping methods and rates. That’s where these plugins come in.
1. FedEx Shipping Method
Designed by WooCommerce, FedEx Shipping Method is an add-on that uses the FedEx API to calculate rates for customers automatically. When you install this plugin, your customers will see a variable rate based on their location and the size and weight of their order.
By connecting directly to FedEx’s system, FedEx Shipping Method ensures you don’t over- or undercharge your customers. Best of all, you can calculate domestic and international rates.
There are also official “Shipping Method” plugins for other couriers, including:
The annual fee for each of these extensions is $99.00.
2. Table Rate Shipping
Another of WooCommerce’s proprietary plugins, Table Rate Shipping is an ultra-flexible tool that allows you to:
- Create multiple tables of shipping rates for each WooCommerce shipping zone
- Add rules for different weights and orders with multiple products
- Modify the way the system calculates rates
In short, the extension gives you full control over the way weight, locations, shipping class, item count, and cost influence your shipping rates. These advanced shipping options can save you thousands in shipping expenses.
WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping is available for $119.00/year.
3. Conditional Shipping and Payments
Conditional Shipping and Payments is yet another WooCommerce-built extension that gives each customer a customized journey through the shipping part of checkout.
Essentially, this plugin allows you to show and hide different shipping options for different scenarios. Depending on who is placing an order and what they have in their cart, WooCommerce Conditional Shipping and Payments can automatically modify rates based on parameters you set.
For example, let’s say you offer a membership that gives subscribers free express shipping. You can use this plugin to automatically show the “Free Express Shipping” option for members only.
At $99.00/year, this plugin is a worthwhile investment.
For Printing Labels
One of the most time-consuming parts of fulfilling online orders is creating and printing shipping labels. Luckily, these plugins can save you time and money.
4. WooCommerce Shipping
WooCommerce Shipping is the eCommerce platform’s shipping label solution. Because the plugin integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, your customers’ order details are ready to be turned into shipping labels—no copy-pasting required.
Plus, no matter where you are, you can print labels for DHL and USPS from your computer or mobile device—and you can even access a discounted rate.
Best of all, WooCommerce Shipping is 100% free.
5. Automatic Order Printing for WooCommerce
The Automatic Order Printing for WooCommerce plugin is a third-party extension from Procomltd. When you install this plugin and connect one or more printers, shipping labels will automatically print whenever a customer places an order. Thanks to PrintNode technology, you can connect an unlimited number of printers to your eCommerce store.
The extension can also print packing slips and invoices, and you can customize any document to include brand imagery and colors.
The subscription fee for this plugin is $79.00/year.
6. WooCommerce Print Invoices and Packing Lists
With the WooCommerce Print Invoices and Packing Lists from SkyVerge, you can print shipping labels and pick lists straight from your WooCommerce dashboard. Pick lists are one of the main draws here; these handy checklists help you ensure you’ve packed every item in the order, saving you a customer service call later on.
However, this extension’s best feature is the bulk printing option. You can either print orders one by one or perform a bulk action and generate hundreds of labels at once.
WooCommerce Print Invoices and Packing Lists will cost you $79.00/year.
For User Experience
For you, the shipping process ends when the courier picks up the package from your warehouse. But for the customer, the journey has just begun. These plugins aim to improve the post-purchase user experience.
7. Shipment Tracking
The Shipment Tracking plugin allows customers to effortlessly track their shipments. With this add-on installed, you can send customers tracking emails without leaving your WooCommerce dashboard.
Supported couriers include:
- Australia Post
- Canada Post
- DHL
- DPD
- Fastway South Africa
- FedEx
- Royal Mail
- UPS
- USPS
At $59.00/year, this affordable extension is well worth it.
8. AfterShip
AfterShip is a third-party solution that simplifies order tracking for you and your customers. Once you install the plugin and select a plan, you can start automatically importing your tracking numbers into AfterShip. Even if you ship with several couriers (AfterShip supports hundreds of them), you can keep all your tracking data in one place.
This handy extension also automates email and SMS notifications, helping you keep your customers up to speed without adding more to your plate. You can even embed a “Track my order” button on your website.
AfterShip has four pricing tiers:
- Essentials ($9/month)
- Pro ($99/month)
- Premium ($199/month)
- Custom (for enterprises with greater needs than a Premium plan can provide, AfterShip will help you customize the right plan)
All-in-One
Sometimes, you need a plugin that can do it all. If that’s what you’re looking for, these shipping extensions are for you.
9. Shipstation Integration
ShipStation is a third-party service with a dedicated WooCommerce plugin. It’s a comprehensive solution that allows you to fulfill all of your orders—whether they were placed through WooCommerce or another platform.
The service can print labels (with a discount), send customizable notification emails, print packing slips, help customers set up return labels, and much more.
The only feature that the plugin is missing is rate calculation.
ShipStation offers several pricing tiers that range from 50 shipments per month to 10,000:
- Starter ($9.99/month)
- Bronze ($29.99/month)
- Silver ($59.99/month)
- Gold ($99.99/month)
- Platinum ($149.99/month)
- Enterprise ($229.99/month)
- High-volume (ShipStation will quote a customized price point)
10. Shippo
Another all-in-one WooCommerce shipping option is Shippo, a third-party SaaS solution. Shippo gives you discounted shipping rates, automates your shipping and return labels, and syncs tracking numbers in the back-end to notify customers automatically.
Like ShipStation, Shippo’s only downside is a lack of shipping rate calculation features.
Conveniently, Shippo offers a free pay-as-you-go plan for low-volume sellers; shipping labels cost five cents each. Paid plans start at $10/month.
How to Choose the Best WooCommerce Shipping Plugin For You
Considering the hundreds of shipping plugins available, using them all would cost you thousands of dollars each year (not to mention slow down your website). And in reality, you don’t need twenty different extensions—you only need two or three options that suit your business needs.
So, how should you decide on the best WooCommerce shipping plugins? Consider the following factors when exploring all of WooCommerce’s plugin options:
- Your budget – With most paid plugins landing in the $59–$99 range, the costs can add up. If you can only afford one or two, weigh the pros and cons of each extension. Which feature would give you and your customers the biggest quality-of-life improvement?
- Your volume – If you don’t ship much, you probably don’t need to print your labels automatically. Instead, opt for tracking or shipping rate plugins. If you expect your volume to grow, all-in-one options like Shippo and ShipStation let you scale up without changing services.
- Your business – Of course, if you don’t ship internationally, you don’t need an expensive plugin that generates labels from 50 different couriers. Think about how you do business—both now and in the future—when choosing your extensions.
Pair the Best Plugins with the Best eCommerce Hosting
If you want to continue providing an exceptional shipping experience to your customers, you need more than shipping plugins—you need a fast, secure, and easily navigable eCommerce site.
When you host your eCommerce site with WP Engine, you can have all that and more. Our managed WooCommerce hosting plans speed up your site, helping you increase sales and customer satisfaction. Whether you want to learn more about WooCommerce hosting or learn how to build an eCommerce website from scratch, assistance is never far away with our 24/7/365 customer support.
For more information, contact our team of experts—we’d love to hear from you.
