Updated
Shipping through ShipStation already gives you discounted rates with most of the major carriers.
This post is about the decision: which of the three ways to rate shop is worth setting up, what each returns, and where rate shopping stops paying. If you have already decided and want the feature itself — what Rate Shopper does, every setting, and how to configure it so it finds the cheap answer — that is how Rate Shopper works and how to configure it well.
But, just because you’re getting a discount on retail rates doesn’t mean you should choose the default option every time. To save even more money on your shipments, rate-shopping can help you identify the best rates across carriers in real-time.
Years ago, the only way you could do this was to manually check the most cost-effective or fastest option based on your shipment’s details (weight, dimensions, destination).
Rate Shopping without automation was and is incredibly time-consuming. At any real volume the time it costs is more than the saving it finds.
Now, there are tools that let you automate Rate Shopping in ShipStation to save you both time and money.
Within ShipStation, there are a couple different features that help with automation:
You can use ShipStation’s automation rules.
Automation rules are static, so they won’t be able to factor in everything real-time. ShipStation’s automation rules work in an “if this, then that” manner. For example, “IF a package weighs more than 1 pound and less than 5 pounds, THEN use Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes through USPS.”
Setting up automation rules will generally help you with your margins, though its static nature may result in missed savings. If you want to purchase no other feature to help you save time/money on your shipments, determining automation rules is well worth it.
Rate Shopper is the feature built for this. It fetches live rates from your connected carriers and applies the winner, using one of three standard strategies — Cheapest, Fastest, or Best Value. It is a rule you apply the way you apply a service: ShipStation documents applying it from an automation rule, from the Service drop-down on a single order, or in bulk across a selection of orders. Depending on the plan the account is on, you may also be able to build a custom rate shopper instead, around your own service collection and your own transit time thresholds, domestic and international set separately. Custom rate shoppers are not available at every tier, so check the account’s Settings against ShipStation’s plan comparison before planning around one.
For most operations, yes, and the gap between Rate Shopper and static automation rules is wider than the gap between Rate Shopper and anything else. Rules apply an answer you decided in advance; Rate Shopper prices the actual parcel against the actual carriers on the day. If you are currently choosing services with rules, this is the upgrade.
What you get out of it depends almost entirely on how you configure it, and two settings do most of the work:
What’s in the collection. Rate Shopper only chooses from services you made eligible. A narrow collection is the most common reason people conclude the feature isn’t saving them much. Put in everything you would accept and let the transit filter decide per order.
Whether the package is right. Rate Shopper takes the package as an input, and rates whatever box it’s handed. If your dimensions are wrong, the answer will be confidently wrong. ShipStation’s setup documentation puts the dimensions rule before the Rate Shopper rule for exactly this reason.
How Rate Shopper works and how to configure it well goes through both in detail. ShipStation’s own documentation is here.
Rate shopping optimises the service for a package that has already been decided. That covers most volume, and for single-item orders with stable packaging it covers essentially all of it.
It doesn’t cover the case where the box and the rate are one decision rather than two: multi-item orders where the right package isn’t knowable until you work out what fits, or volume where a carrier flat-rate program would often win if anyone had priced it. Those need the packing and the rating solved together, which no sequential tool does. Why that’s structural rather than a setting.
If that’s your operation, we build that logic alongside ShipStation. If it isn’t, configure Rate Shopper properly and you’re done.
Knowing how a carrier prices a parcel is useful. The harder question is which parcel to make — because the packing decision sets the dimensional weight and the cubic tier, and the cheapest box changes with the contents, the destination and the rate card.
There are eight situations where that decision has grown past what a rule can express. Most operations are in two or three of them.
