Shipping with Royal Mail

When shipping within the UK, it is a better option than FedEx or UPS. Royal Mail ships domestically to Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Royal Mail relies on other national carriers to handle the last mile deliveries when shipping internationally. A typical Royal Mail domestic deliveries usually take 1 to 3 days and Royal Mail international delivery times are up to 2 weeks.

Royal Mail boasts a multitude of shipping options for various types of mail and parcels. The costs are affected by weight, volume, and compensation for loss or damage (for Special Delivery Guaranteed service), but there are other factors that affect the final price of delivery.

For deliveries within the UK, Royal Mail offers three main types of services:

Guaranteed options are Royal Mail's take on overnight deliveries, with available compensation up to £10.000 in the case of damages or losses. The service also includes full tracking and proof of delivery via a signature. With Royal Mail, the cost of next-day delivery varies depending on the package weight and the desired delivery time.

A more economical option that features proof of delivery and signature from the recipient. For Signed packages, compensation only covers up to £50, so it's unlikely the best choice for valuable items. Delivery typically takes one to three working days.

A standard shipping option that does not include tracking. You can only use online delivery confirmation for small and medium parcels. While the prices for packages are £1 higher than that of Signed services, the cost of postage with Royal Mail through UK Standard is up to 200% cheaper.

Royal Mail has three international shipping zones: Europe, which includes Russia and Greenland; World Zone 1, which encompasses the Americas, Asia, India, and Africa; and World Zone 2, which is reserved for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and several remote islands. International shipping costs with Royal Mail vary depending on the three types of services. One thing to keep in mind is that Royal Mail doesn't send parcels over 2 kg internationally and redirects customers to Parcelforce Worldwide for such services.

The rates for all three services are the same, with up to a 20% increase in cost when shipping to an EU country.

This option does not have tracking or delivery confirmation, but it is a cost-effective option with a time frame of up to seven working days.

For those who seek the lowest international shipping cost, Royal Mail offers the Economy option that strips away all the additional services and provides the most competitive prices in the UK's market. However, this option only suits those who are in no hurry, as orders can take up to six weeks to deliver.

If you represent the e-commerce industry, you can open an online business account (OBA) with Royal Mail to take advantage of better rates, billing and invoice management tools, and personalized reports. Some rates offer considerable savings of up to 70% per item, but they are available only to businesses with significant order volumes (over 1,000 items per shipment).

Royal Mail offers to redirect your packages when you are moving to a different address or are temporarily away. If you are relocating, this service will automatically forward to you all of the mail typically sent to your old address. It gives you time to inform everyone on your contact list about the address change. This service is available for individuals and for businesses. The cost of redirecting with Royal Mail depends on where you move and for how long.

You can track your delivery with Royal Mail's Track & Trace service. It is only available on select shipping options domestically, namely Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed and Royal Mail Tracked (24 and 48). Internationally, Royal Mail tracking is available on all the services except for International Economy and UK Standard.

While Royal Mail provides full tracking details on limited services, you can still get a delivery confirmation with almost all the company's shipping options, excluding letters and economy deliveries.

If you ship frequently, you probably often look up postal codes for various addresses. For those who need to find a UK postcode, Royal Mail created Postcode Finder, a web tool that allows anyone to check the postal code for any address in the country. It also works the other way: you can fetch a list of addresses for any postcode you enter.
If you need to look up more than 50 addresses per day and Royal Mail's Postcode Finder does not suffice, you can use some of the Address Management Tools, which can automate some of the tasks.

You can expect your letter to be delivered in 1 to 3 days when shipping domestically. Although there are no deliveries on Sunday, Royal Mail does operate on Saturdays, albeit for an extra charge. Royal Mail International delivery times are up to 2 weeks.

There is no integration of Royal Mail on Magento. If you want to ship with Royal Mail you need to use shipping software. One of the solutions is to use Calcurates shipping software where Royal Mail is offered as one of the shipping carriers.

There is no built-in integration of Royal Mail in Magento. That means you can't offer Royal Mail as a shipping option to your customers unless you install an appropriate third-party extension. This is where Calcurates comes in. Calcurates seamlessly integrates with Royal Mail. When activated, Calcurates automatically computes the best shipping rates, optimizes the number of origins for multi-item orders, and provides you with all the tracking details if they are available.