The Best Shipping Extensions for Your Magento 2 Store
Shipping is a vital and irreplaceable part of the fulfillment cycle for any retail business. In many ways, it affects the merchant’s reputation and defines their customers’ experience. 60% of shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if presented with unexpected shipping costs.
Same-day shipping, multiple delivery options, 1-click tracking, drop shipping, shipping rates, and restrictions are vital for any retailer in 2020, especially at this critical time. With so many competitive features, you can’t afford to give your customers the best possible experience. They deserve every shipping perk and opportunity available on the market.
Magento 2 comes with seven shipping methods out of the box:
- Free Shipping
- Table Rates
- UPS
- USPS
- FedEx
- DHL
- Flat Rate
While these options provide a solid base for building your logistics operations, they are US-centric and come with significant limitations. Regardless of your location, the following best-of-class extensions provide flexibility and extensibility to meet your needs, and more importantly, your customers’ needs. If your business is all based out of the United States, you’re set. However, if you’re looking for a choice with international use, this isn’t the option for you.
You might find the above features lacking customization or options that are important for your particular business. To help you set up the perfect shipping strategy, we’re going to review some of the top shipping extensions you can use for your Magento online shop.
1. Shipping Rules by Amasty
Link: https://amasty.com/shipping-rules-for-magento-2.html
Pricing: $89-289
Depending on your business specifics, you may need flexible shipping rules that are not present in default Magento settings. This extension from Amasty equips online shops with a variety of pre-sets and conditions. You can use the selected parameters individually or in custom combinations, making it easy to tailor the rules to your needs. This also works great for businesses on different budgets. If you’re only looking for a few key features, you don’t have to pay the same as a business maximizing their use of the extension.
Key features include, but are not limited to:
- Adjusting the shipping price according to the weight of the parcel
- Visibility of shipping rules according to store views and customer groups
- Advanced conditions to set the shipping price based on customer or product attributes, as well as order information
- Adjusting shipping rules based on the product, day of the week, and time of the day
- Modifying the shipping price using coupons
- Generating unrestricted numbers of rules
2. Shipping Table Rates by Magestore
Link: https://www.mageplaza.com/magento-2-table-rate-shipping/
Pricing: $179
While Magento 2 also provides a Table Rate shipping option, store owners can choose only one of 3 conditions to customize: product weight, price, and several items against a customer’s destination. Table Rate Shipping allows you to configure all your shipping rules inside a single table. It’s easy to understand and manage your shipping costs, especially if you sell a large variety of products. This is an excellent feature for competitive eCommerce. Plenty of people are getting products shipped multiple times a week (or even a day). It’s not worth it to lose money repeatedly with preliminary calculations. It’s also not worth it to rip off customers who would otherwise qualify for cheaper shipping.
The Shipping Table Rates extension by Magestore provides several additional features such as:
- Support for volumetric weight
- Additional conditions for shipping methods
- Multiple rate-setting types
- Unlimited table rate shipping methods
- Import/Export via CSV
- Estimated delivery time
3. UPS & USPS Address Validation by Azaleasoft
Link: https://marketplace.magento.com/azaleasoft-address-validation.html
Pricing: $99-149
Misspelling, wrong zip codes, and incomplete addresses are quite common mistakes consumers make when placing an order. All of which cause delivery delays and higher shipping costs, which of course, impact customer experience, store reputation, and profits over the long term.
Address Validation is a solution to that. When a customer types in their address and shipping info, this extension from IWD Agency immediately checks the UPS and USPS databases to ensure the address is valid. If the input data doesn’t match any address in the database, the extension fetches the most suitable one via API and offers a customer the chance to change the address to the correct one. Address validation is a must in today’s eCommerce environment.
4. Dropshipping Module by Amasty
Link: https://amasty.com/dropshipping-for-magento-2.html
Pricing: $399-699
Dropshipping is a popular shipping method that doesn’t require a merchant to keep products in stock. Instead, it allows a store to sell a product and redirect it to a third-party supplier who takes care of order fulfillment.
Some argue that drop shipping is easy and profitable, while others say it’s highly competitive and risky. We believe that despite a few flaws, dropshipping is an excellent add-on to an existing eCommerce store.
The Dropshipping extension from Amasty makes it easy to implement this method in your Magento 2 store with the following features:
- Creation of drop shippers base & multiple warehouses
- Assigning products to specific warehouses
- Calculating shipping costs based on warehouse location
- Communicating with suppliers
- Allocate ordered products between vendors
5. Shipping Suite by Mageworx
Link: https://www.mageworx.com/magento-2-shipping-suite.html
Pricing: $299
This extension from Mageworx is another useful tool for regulating and customizing your store’s shipping rules. Shipping Suite combines a few different solutions in one module that can be easily implemented in Magento 2. While on the expensive side, this extension ensures that you won’t have to worry about getting many more. It has so many features, which means you won’t have to go between extensions constantly.
The main benefits of this module are:
- No limit to the number of rules you can create
- Provide standard and custom delivery methods, such as Local Delivery’, ‘ECO-delivery,’ ‘Pick Up in Store, etc.
- Has a ZIP code validation built-in
- Allows to import and export files via CSV
- Advanced shipping carriers that both customers and vendors benefit from
- Provides an option to establish specific shopping zones based on the customer’s country or region.
- Multi-store support.
Getting a Magento shipping extension is essential, but it’s only a tiny step towards a successful eCommerce store. To learn more about developing a successful eCommerce business, we suggest you check out these ten must-have solutions for the Magento website and other helpful articles in our blog.
