Having the right shipping plugin is essential for any WooCommerce site. This is because it helps businesses communicate shipping times better which leads to an increase in customer satisfaction. On top of this, you also reduce the chances of customers issuing refunding or canceling their order due to late delivery times.
Ensuring quick and accurate shipping times on your ecommerce store makes it more likely for your business to make sales and push out more orders. While the default WooCommerce shipping options are pretty good, there are WooCommerce plugins that you can use to enhance them further. There are many categories of shipping plugins for WooCommerce that cover most things such as choosing a delivery slot, displaying product lead times, and taking more control over the shipping costs you charge customers.
Check out our Complete Guide to WooCommerce shipping for more information on WooCommerce as a shipping solution!
In this article, we’re going to go over some of the best shipping plugins for WooCommerce from each category.
#1: WooCommerce Delivery Slots
The WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin lets you enable delivery and pickup time slots on your online store.
The robust plugin offers features that let you increase customer satisfaction on your WooCommerce site by allowing your shoppers to select their own desired pickup or delivery time slot from the checkout page. For instance, a shopper can choose to have their order shipped overnight and expect to pay an extra shipping fee premium in exchange for speedy delivery.
WooCommerce Delivery Slots key features
The plugin comes pre-built with a fully responsive date and time picker that’s easy to use and understand for your shoppers. This way, you don’t have to worry about adding clutter or ruining the performance of your WooCommerce site when adding delivery time and date slot functionality.
While the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin is fully optimized for the front-end of your online store, it is also very easy to use in the back-end for admins and store managers. For starters, you can create a unique shipping schedule for your online store and let customers select their desired shipping time and date slots. This gives you full control over how the “Delivery slots” are displayed on your WooCommerce site.
In addition to this, the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin lets you put a limit on shipping or delivery slots for your online store. You can specify a maximum number of orders, set the desired time frame for your custom-created delivery slots, and set a same-day delivery expiry time so users don’t end up ordering after the same-day delivery time period ends.
Similarly, you can also specify a fee for same-day delivery shipping slots so customers who want their order delivered as soon as possible are charged an extra fee. You can even charge extra fees depending on the day or time of the shipping slot. For instance, you can set it up so customers have to pay extra if they want their orders to be shipped on the weekends or during the holidays.
The plugin also lets you manage your WooCommerce orders. This way, you can accurately see the total “upcoming” deliveries or orders that have to be shipped to customers by their selected delivery slot time and date.
#2: WooCommerce Lead Time
The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin offers an all-in-one solution for creating and displaying order lead times on your WooCommerce site.
Whether you sell custom products or made-to-order products, it’s important to give your customers the right shipping information before they checkout from your online store. A great way to do this is by displaying order lead times on single product pages so customers can form realistic shipping expectations when buying from your ecommerce site.
WooCommerce Lead Time key features
The WooCommerce Lead Time plugin lets you showcase lead times anywhere on your WooCommerce site including the main shop page, product category pages, the single product page, the cart page, checkout, and order confirmation emails. It makes it easy for store owners to keep their shoppers informed before they go on to make the purchase. This not only helps improve customer satisfaction but is a great way to enhance the shopping experience on your online store.
The robust plugin is very easy to configure, even if you’re not very tech-savvy. You can set product lead times either globally, by product category, or by specific products or variations. This gives you full control over how lead times are displayed for different products on your online store. For instance, if you sell multiple custom products but some require more time than others to be processed, you can showcase different lead times for different products.
While the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin lets you set static lead times for products, you can also let the plugin calculate wait times for products that are out of stock. For example, if a product is going to be back in stock after 7 days, you can set the back-in-stock date and let the plugin automatically calculate and display the lead time on the front-end.
In addition to this, the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin seamlessly integrates with the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin to automatically calculate and display lead times on your online store. This will display an additional “Product handling” time when customers select their delivery time or delivery slot.
#3: Table Rate Shipping
Table Rate Shipping is a powerful shipping plugin for WooCommerce sites that is designed to let you extend the default WooCommerce shipping options.
While the default WooCommerce shipping options let you charge users flat rate shipping, Table Rate Shipping takes it to another level and lets you specify shipping charges based on the item count or the weight of the order.
Table Rate Shipping key features
You can set multiple shipping rates according to the shipping zone, price, the total number of items, or the total weight of the order (i.e. weight based shipping).
For example, if an order exceeds a certain weight, the logistics company, shipping service provider, or shipping carrier (like USPS Shipping, FedEx, or DHL) will charge your business extra for shipping out that order. For this reason, you’d want to offer shipping rates based on the weight or the total number of items the customer adds to their shopping cart. Similarly, you might want to charge customers a shipping fee according to the destination the order is being shipped to. This helps your business remain profitable.
The WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping plugin lets you create a shipping rate table and assign it to specific geographical zones. This is the perfect solution for big stores or wholesale stores that have a lot of products in their catalog. You can use it to offer accurate shipping rates based on products customers add to their shopping carts.
#4: WooCommerce Wholesale Pro
WooCommerce Wholesale Pro is a dedicated wholesale plugin that lets you create a full-fledged WooCommerce site.
WooCommerce Wholesale Pro key features
While the plugin is designed to let you create a wholesale area on your ordinary WooCommerce site, it also lets you offer multiple shipping methods based on the user role. This way, you can offer different shipping rates to different types of customers. For example, if you sell to wholesale customers and retail customers, you might want to charge wholesale customers extra shipping fees (for larger orders) while retail customers pay the normal shipping rate.
Using the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin you can assign specific user roles on your WooCommerce site their own shipping methods. This way, you can set up multiple shipping methods and charge extra fees accordingly.
The plugin lets you create and assign unlimited custom user roles so you can create special shipping methods according to the customer’s user role on your WooCommerce site. This is an easy way to charge customers a fair shipping rate.
Wholesale customers who order in larger quantities will have to pay extra shipping fees while retail customers won’t be forced to pay the same shipping rates for smaller orders. This is the perfect solution if you’re looking to assign and manage shipping costs to different customer groups on your WooCommerce site.
#5: Per Product Shipping
Per Product Shipping, as the name suggests, is a plugin designed to let you offer shipping rates according to the product.
Per Product Shipping key features
The Per Product Shipping plugin is a simple yet powerful WooCommerce extension that enables shipping per product based on the geographical location of customers. For example, if you sell furniture products such as beds or chairs on the same online store that you sell apparel products, it can be useful to assign different shipping costs to different product groups.
This way, you can set unique shipping rates for each product or group of products on your WooCommerce site. This makes it easy to set up and manage shipping costs for different products in your product catalog.
You can also use the Per Product Shipping plugin to assign different shipping rates to specific products. This allows businesses to continue selling “regular” items as well as products or product variations that have special shipping needs.
For example, you can sell fragile glassware products but charge customers a higher shipping fee than other, non-fragile products on your online store.
#6: WooCommerce Dropshipping
WooCommerce Dropshipping is a WooCommerce shipping plugin that allows you to automate the fulfillment process of your WooCommerce dropshipping store.
WooCommerce Dropshipping key features
With the robust plugin, store owners can easily connect their WooCommerce site with some of the most popular dropshipping services such as AliExpress. The plugin also comes with Amazon Affiliate support. This is a great option if you’re looking to create your AliExpress dropshipping store on WooCommerce.
Once you set up your dropshipping store, you can start revising orders right away and view all order data from the dropshipping dashboard. This gives you access to important metrics such as the total number of orders, profit, out-of-stock product information, pending orders, as well as the best-performing or best-selling products on your store. As a result, it makes it easy to run and manage your brand's dropshipping store on WooCommerce, even if you’re not very tech-savvy.
Another great feature of the WooCommerce Dropshipping plugin is that it lets you bulk import products directly from AliExpress. This can be a huge time saver especially for ecommerce businesses that are setting up their first dropshipping store. The plugin automatically processes all product data including the product images, price, description, and even the comments along with images present on AliExpress and displays it on your WooCommerce site.
In addition to all of these great features, you can use the WooCommerce Dropshipping plugin to add local dropshipping suppliers and quickly add products from the supplier to your online store. This is a great way to reduce the time and cost involved in shipping products to customers from your WooCommerce dropshipping store.
#7: Shipping Multiple Addresses
Shipping Multiple Addresses is another shipping plugin for WooCommerce that lets your customers ship cart items to multiple addresses.
Shipping Multiple Addresses key features
Using the plugin, you can give customers the option to enter multiple addresses for their cart items in an intuitive user interface. In simple words, customers can have each cart item shipped to a different address if they’d like. This makes the shipping process smooth on your end.
For example, a customer might want to purchase multiple items for different family members at once but want to ship them to different addresses. With the Shipping Multiple Addresses plugin, they can do all of that at once and select the address for each cart item or product they want to purchase before checking out from your WooCommerce site.
Giving your customers the option to select whether they want to ship all cart items to one address or multiple ones is a great way to enhance the shopping experience and improve customer satisfaction. This makes shopping from your online store more convenient and helps boost sales for your brand.
What is the best shipping plugin for WooCommerce?
As an online store owner, you want to make sure the shipping experience on your online store is top-notch. This is because the shipping experience is directly related to customer satisfaction and the user experience your store delivers.
Ideally, you want to let your customers select their desired shipping time and date when ordering from your online store. This makes the shopping experience much more convenient and helps improve customer satisfaction. Similarly, you can also display product handling time everywhere on your online store to ensure customers are fully aware of the shipping timelines before they checkout from your online store.
In addition to this, you can also set shipping charges based on the user role of the customer. This way, it’s easier to charge wholesale customers extra shipping fees since they order in larger quantities than retail customers who place comparatively smaller orders.
Recap
To extend the default shipping options you get with WooCommerce, you will need to use a shipping plugin for WooCommerce. Let’s go over some of the best WooCommerce shipping plugins in each category:
- If you need to display delivery slots on your online store, you can use the WooCommerce Delivery Slots plugin.
- With displaying delivery date and time, it’s also important to showcase product lead or handling times using the WooCommerce Lead Time plugin.
- If you’re looking for a more complex plugin that allows you to set flexible shipping rates based on factors such as the shipping class, weight, or shipping destination, Table Rate Shipping is the right plugin for you.
- For wholesale stores that want to offer special shipping rates for wholesale customers than retail customers, they can use the WooCommerce Wholesale Pro plugin.
- If you’re looking for a shipping plugin that specifically lets you set shipping rates per product or group of products, the Per Product Shipping plugin is your best option.
- Brands that are looking to set up a dropshipping store on their WooCommerce site and manage shipping costs effectively can use the WooCommerce Dropshipping plugin.
- If you want to let shoppers specify shipping addresses for each item in their cart, you can use the Shipping Multiple Addresses for this.
Which of these WooCommerce advanced shipping options you're thinking of adding to your store? Let us know in the comments section below.