Real Time Shipping Quotes

Site URL: https://littleanvil.com

I'm sure this has been asked a million times...

I am based in Australia and sell globally - varying weighted items, from 100g parcels to 100kg shipments. Shipping alone in Australia varies greatly as the country is so large so there could easily be a $30 / $40 / $50 difference in a package going 10 minutes away or 4 hours away. 

I need domestic customers to be able to able to choose from a selection of domestic carriers (who deal with different weights and dimensions) at the checkout and then need international customers to have the option of choosing shipping prices from a different international carriers I use.

I have my own accounts with each carrier and they all have their own API's etc.

Is my only way to achieve this the underwhelming thought of moving to Shopify or another platform where this doesn't seem to be such a headache?

I see real time shipping is available in the US - but that's useless for the rest of the planet who don't live there.

Any suggestions? Isn't this just a standard ecommerce option?!

On 8/3/2021 at 1:56 PM, Neilshy said:

I am based in Australia and sell globally. I need...international customers to have the option of choosing shipping prices from a different international carriers I use. Is my only way to achieve this the underwhelming thought of moving to Shopify or another platform where this doesn't seem to be such a headache?

Unfortunately you're right. Squarespace only offers carrier-calculated shipping in the US. The rest of us must either ask customers to enquire about shipping costs before ordering, or manually calculate (guess?) shipping costs and enter them in advance. 

Squarespace have a number of shipping 'extensions' available but these can only calculate shipping after an order has been placed, rather than beforehand (when you need it!). This is because they don't have an API (yet) that can calculate shipping weight and send it to a carrier before the order is placed. I have not been shy in encouraging them to do something about this, but nothing has happened yet. 

Shopify is top of their game on this one, but it is an entirely different platform to manage. You may want to start off by trying Shopify Buy Buttons on your Squarespace site to see how you get on.