The big guys have flooded the industry include Canada Post, DHL, UPS, USPS, Purolator, and FedEx. They charge a hefty amount even if you use them directly and might not advertise all of their options—much like Rogers. I heard a horror story from a friend: he was getting charged $100/month with his Blackberry. His friend found a deal from Rogers that was not advertised and now he pays $60/month and gets more features. Now back to shipping. There are some websites that will help you compare different companies, with different options such as overnight or 2-day. This will help you easily save money on shipping, which is usually pretty pricey. They also make it easy find a rate, as they usually don’t initially ask for too much information. I remember that UPS had a huge form for me to fill out that would have taken at least ten minutes.
For all of the websites I tried to ship from Markham, ON to Stamford, CT to keep the competition even as well as using the same package, a t-shirt from Xpress’d that was 200g.
ShipGooder
ShipGooder makes it pretty easy to find a rate, only asking for the start and end postal/zip code as well as the weight and number of packages. What I love about this form is that as soon as you’ve entered the postal/zip code, it will verify with you approximately what city it’s from. It’s a nice little touch that goes a long way. Once you’ve entered the information, a neat table will appear. It sorts things by cost and time frame. This is much better than other sites where they sort by companies, since it doesn’t make any sense at all if you’re just trying to save money.
- ShipGooder Results
One thing I dislike about ShipGooder, which also happens to be a huge damper, is the fact that when you’ve made a selection, it will take you to the respective shipping company and you’ll have to fill out the information again with more details.
Shipping Sidekick
This site has a good tool, but it lacks in design. I initially thought the link to the shipping calculator was an ad because it was buried within more ads.
As you can see, even the link is pretty indescript, and doesn’t make you feel comfortable. The tool is not that bad and is lengthier than ShipGooder. The one problem is that it can only calculate a rate for within the U.S. but it gives you a link to a website that lets you ship internationally. For this site, to make it as accurate as possible, I chose to ship the package from Stamford, CT to Jacksonville, NC. ShippingSidekick has the same kind of setup as ShipGooder with a table to show the different rates. The difference between the two tables is ShippingSidekick colour codes the companies. One cool thing is that it sorts things by the date of delivery, though I’m not sure how accurate this is.
As you can see, it’s pretty ad heavy, which can get annoying—especially when you’re filling out the form. The great thing about this website is that there’s an option to print off the label directly on this site, as well as organize a pick-up location. The horrible thing is you’ll have to register as a user with its affiliate whom you’ll have to pay called eShipper. You’ll also have to input all the information again which is horrible.
Which Ones Better?
They have their benefits but they both make you input the information again and go through getting a new quote. It’s something so simple and should be implemented on these sites. I like the fact that ShipGooder is much simpler and works well for any country. It is quicker, cleaner, and possibly more reliable. In terms of price I believe ShipGooder wins because of the fact that ShippingSidekick package did not have to go through customs and is in US dollars. Therefore, those extra costs would probably put it over the $12.70 that ShipGooder charges.
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