Singapore Cheap Shipping Ratings
Going to be starting a series of reviews for merch manufacturing 'n stuff from Singapore. Tag is #merch hell.
As always, I go into detail on my process in my newsletter, which comes with free bird facts, so check it out if you haven't.
Introducing: Singapore Couriers
Shipping is expensive, especially overseas to the other side of the world. If you're in Southeast Asia, trying to get a half decent shipping rate for your international buyers is...painful. So, without further ado, here are my reviews:
Singpost
Go-to government mailing service.
Recommended:
- Local: Yes
- International: No
Pros:
- You can use stamps on these, and if you have a grandparent who left behind their huge collection or some free handouts, you can subsidize shipping to be pretty cheap.
- Post offices are everywhere, so it's usually a 5 minute walk to drop off your stuff.
Cons:
- You still have to drop your parcels off since there's no door to door pick up
- International tracking disappears off the face of the earth the moment it hits the destination country, which is not ideal. I sent two acrylic charms to the US, and one to Canada....
One caused my friend to go through the effort of calling his post office and dealing with a lot of customer service hell. Another one went missing. That is a pretty bad failure rate. This awful tracking is also well-documented.
Conclusion: If you love your customers, please don't use Singpost as a tracked service. Put disclaimers if you really want discounted tracking.
Justship
Newer shipping startup with competitive prices.
Recommended:
Local: Haven't tried, but there are more well known services (like Ninjavan).
International: Yes! Absolutely! But for smaller parcels, only US/UK is supported at the moment.
Pros:
- Really damn good customer service. Quick responses, friendly, and most importantly, *transparent*.
- Lets you set up a spreadsheet for bulk shipping, and provides integrations with storefronts like Shopify (sadly not BigCartel)
- Tracking in the destination country instead of disappearing
- Door to door pickup
- Parcels don't seem to be tampered with much? At least from what I've seen.
Cons:
- At the moment, there is no tracking while the parcels are being delivered to the destination country. So the opposite of Singpost, but still preferable. (However, they have told me they will be looking into it.)
- For smaller parcels like acrylic charms, cheap shipping only works for the US/UK. For everything else, it automatically defaults to the pricing of a higher volumetric weight, which is way more pricey than Qxpress. (Same as previous bullet point, they have told me they will try to support other countries in the future.)
- Door to door pickup is only for 5 or more deliveries. Otherwise, they expect you to drop it off at their warehouse, which for me is pretty far away.
Conclusion: Easily the best service here. Unfortunately they're a bit limited since they're a smaller company, and bulk orders are better, but the consistent quality is good, especially if you want to provide a good service to your customers (who are already paying 11USD minimum).
Qxpress
Cheap mailing service with a lot of existing big boi infrastructure in place.
Recommended:
- Local: There's better, there's worse. Eh.
- International: Yes for smaller batches (<5) or non US/UK countries
Pros:
- Ships damn near everywhere
- Door to door pickup regardless of order size, parcels, etc. They have dropoff stations too.
Cons:
- Tampers with your packages.
Smaller envelopes are safe, but they also paste a shitton of shipping labels over your stuff, some which may have truncated addresses.
Others have reported that they might open and repack larger parcels. Not exactly the best thing for privacy, or stuff in the parcels remaining intact.
- Door to door pickup takes their sweet time. Again, there are also reports of them missing the pickup.
- Doesn't appear to have a convenient option for bulk shipping, but I may not have noticed it?
Conclusion: Comparable prices to the other two, more flexible, but comes with standard shittiness of a large company cutting costs. Only use this for smaller shipments if Justship won't cut it. Your packages won't get lost, but they sure will get fucked with.
Tl;dr Justship is the GOAT.
