The e-Commerce shipping calculator offers realistic shipping estimates for online purchases. Unlike the conventional crude method of estimating shipping based on volume or weight, the calculator uses dimension as well to calculate packaging and shipping. This yields more accurate estimates than before.

For example, a pair of skis and a pair of skates may both have similar weights but very different dimensions. The cost to ship large items is likely more than to ship smaller items. The calculator always tries to find the best packaging arrangement for items based on their dimension and weight and the containers available.

The calculator is a cost effective shipping tool for many reasons. First, realistic shipping estimates enable you better control over pricing and profits. There is less chance of undercharging shipping that may cut into your profit. Similarly, there is less chance of overcharging shipping that may cause cart abandoment and loss sales. More accurate shipping estimates means you can now price your merchandise effectively without needing to cover for uncertainty in postage. Second, you can now offer customers more economical choices of packaging methods such as flat-fee envelopes and boxes offered by post office while being able to charge accurately.

The calculator enables retailers to offer customers accurate and fair product pricing that are not obscured by the coverage of shipping costs. It gives customers a sense of trust knowing that the seller is not manipulating product prices with shipping. At the same time, it offers consumers more choices by being able to compare prices between sellers clearly.

By using dimension to estimate shipping, the calculator opens up new packaging and shipping possibilities that weren't possible before. For example, retailers can now offer envelopes as a packaging and shipping choice for small items. Before, it was difficult to know whether the items will fit into one or more envelopes at time of purchase and be able to charge accurately for shipping. With the calculator, this is no longer a problem. Envelopes carry much less environmental footprint than boxes. They are cheaper to manufacture and lighter to send than parcels thus consume less natural resources.

Shipping estimates are computed in a matter of seconds or less using our cloud computing infrastructure with fast parallel processing. The results are much more realistic and accurate than estimating postage by weight or volume alone. To get a better feel for the performance, we recommend you to try the demo or sign up for an application programming interface (API) key for evaluation.

There are calculator-enabled modules available for certain shopping cart systems. If your site uses one of these cart systems, then the easiest way would be to install such module. Alternatively, we offer an application programming interface (API) for integration with any website or application. For more technical information regarding API integration, please refer to the documentation.

The basic information required by the calculator are:

• Product name/identifier, dimension, weight, quantity
• Container name, weight, dimension, shipping rates (optional)

Product dimension and weight can be padded with cushioning estimates if needed. The shipping rates for containers include handling fee plus postage. Couriers typically publish a price table which lists postage based on the weight of letters and parcels. For example, postage for a 10x10x7 parcel may cost $4 for the first kilogram, $6 for the next kilogram and so forth.

Even if some of your products are missing dimension, you can still use the calculator to get a baseline postage estimate for the items with dimension. You can then compare the baseline to the postage estimated by the combined weight of all cart items. The highest of the two is then quoted to customer. While this doesn't fully protect you from underestimation, you will still get better results than relying only on the traditional weight based method. To improve estimation, you can gradually measure each product in the catalog over time starting from the odd and big pieces down to the smaller pieces.

The calculator returns a packaging arrangement with information on which items should be packed into which containers. The packaging arrangement is chosen to minimize the number of containers required. In the case of multiple arrangements requiring the same number of containers, the one with the cheapest postage or volume is returned.

The calculator supports up to 2 dimensions per item. This is useful for items such as fabrics and clothing that can be folded and packed in more than one way. For liquid merchandise such as wine which requires special handling, the calculator supports "this side up" directive so that the item is always packaged upright into a container.

While the calculator can handle many items and containers, to distribute our resources fairly across all users, you can have up to 30 containers and 60 items. Each item may have at most 2 choices of packaging dimensions and the items must require no more than 3 containers to pack. If your application requires higher limits, please contact us for other possibilities.