What Is the Cheapest Way to Ship Internationally?

One of the best ways of expanding your client base and boosting sales in 2022 is to offer worldwide shipping for your products. Maintaining the quality and speed comparable to those of domestic shipping, while not overspending, can be challenging. The best way to ship internationally depends on your average volume order, delivery speed, and destination.

While there are inexpensive carriers, like USPS, one cannot tell how long international delivery will take them. In turn, paying extra will provide better service, faster shipping, and more precise delivery times, but the cost may be too high.

If you want to find out how to ship in a cost-effective way, check out our international shipping feature for e-commerce owners.

When shipping internationally from the US, there are three principal options: FedEx, UPS, and USPS. USPS is the answer to the question of which international shipping carrier is the cheapest; FedEx provides the fastest shipping time, and UPS has the broadest coverage.

Besides those crucial selling points, there are also shipping restrictions, surcharges, service-specific rates, discounts, and other details to be taken into account.

USPS international delivery rates are kept low by compromising on some other features. Nevertheless, the carrier offers a wide variety of services for international shipping:

• Global Express Guaranteed — 1–3 business days
  
• Priority Mail Express International — 3–5 business days
  
• Priority Mail International — 6–10 business days
  
• First-Class Mail International — a low-cost option for parcels under 16 oz
  
• First-Class Package International Service — a low-cost option for packages under 4 lbs
  
• Airmail M-Bags — the cheapest way to send printed materials (max. 66 lbs)
  
  

USPS offers free shipping supplies for its international deliveries. Search for a global express guaranteed kit which includes mailing labels, envelopes, stickers, and custom forms.

UPS Worldwide Saver might be one of the best options to ship internationally conditioned that you need guaranteed afternoon delivery within 1-3 days. There are three major shipping zones that influence the duration of delivery. The first one is the next business day delivery to Canada by the end of the day. Second business day delivery to Mexico by the end of the day and third business day delivery worldwide depending on destination. The delivery is door-to-door with 3 delivery attempts.

What about international shipping costs? How much does international shipping cost? We've compared international shipping rates from three carriers side by side to find out which is the best for international shipping from USA. Considering worldwide shipping rates depend on size and weight, let's look at the price for delivery of a 5 lb package in a standard medium box from New York City to London.

It's possible to get good deals even with no international shipping discounts like we managed to do with FedEx. Because of coinciding factors, the cheaper International Economy option appears to secure faster delivery than International Priority and International First (the latter two are also more expensive).

UPS looks like the ultimate solution for time-sensitive packages, while USPS remains faithful to itself with the lowest rates.

Also, if you want to obtain the cheapest rates on international shipping for WooCommerce have a look at our shipping calculator for WooCommerce.

To summarize, USPS seems like the best solution for the cheapest shipping according to the price comparison between UPS, USPS and FedEx in the table displayed above.

Monitoring and managing international delivery options may be critical for the success of your online store, but when it is done manually, it consumes much time. Fortunately, there are automated eCommerce international shipping solutions like Calcurates that relieve you from these routines and allow you to focus on strategic decisions. Calcurates is a ship ping software that checks for the best rates, services, and options for every order; it helps you make both domestic and international shipping transparent and easy to manage. Calcurates is available for e-commerce stores on WooCommerce and Magento.

This entirely depends on the shipping services you choose. The cheapest international shipping options can take up to 10 days, but international shipments using faster courier services can be as little as 1 day shipping.

The choices you have will depend on the destination as well as the size and weight of the package and choosing the right shipping services is about balancing cost and speed of delivery to suit your specific needs.

International shipping services allow the flexibility that means whether you need to get packages delivers as fast as possible or as economically as possible, you have a selection of international carriers available for any particular country.

Calcurates provides real-time international shipping costs for your customers within the checkout process. No more spending time trying to calculate the right option for your customers, let them choose. Not only that, but with automated label printing and even alerting the carrier of the parcel, Calcurates also streamlines fulfilment management too.

For international delivery services in particular, there is often more than one carrier involved in the process. Calculate takes the hassle out of that, avoiding the complexity of managing such shipping solutions, again lowering the workload of managing your fulfilment needs.

These are the 4 main steps on how to ship internationally. All the shipping features are available at Calcurates.