Pirate Ship
Pirate Ship is a shipping platform with an elegant interface that allows users to access discounted shipping rates from USPS and UPS with no subscription fee. I’ve used it a handful of times for mailing packages, and it has been brilliant.
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And, oh, what a lovely interface!
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Pirate Ship has negotiated corporate-level discounted shipping rates of up to 89% off retail and passes most of those savings on to customers. For shipping something heavy, Glenn has seen international shipping prices that run about $200 on UPS’s site, while Pirate Ship’s rate was about $60.
That slight arbitrage allows Pirate Ship to avoid the monthly subscriptions that make no sense for all but high-volume shippers—Stamps.com charges $19.99 per month plus postage, for example.
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Pirate Ship’s support pages are also outstanding.
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I've been a happy Pirate Ship customer for many years and happily recommend them to everyone.
While it's US only you can use it international shipping outside the USA where it's super helpful because the fees and process around that kind of thing are a real hassle to navigate on your own.
A little plug, but if you ARE going to use a subscription for USPS postage, we still have our Mac client (still pre-ARC ObjC going strong since 2003, admittedly we're not quite up to date UI wise but it gets the job done):
https://endiciaformac.com/shipping-software/
works with thermal printers (EPL and ZPL-compatible and DYMO as well, with no unnecessary print dialog box) and HID-compatible USB scales for a little extra bonus hardware features that a website couldn't offer.
It's still Stamps.com underneath but hopefully a little bit nicer to use.
They have some pretty creepy “security” policies whereby they require photo ID and all that. They’ll just randomly decide to shutdown your account, or in a couple cases, not activate a new signup. I get the need for KYC stuff, but shipping with UPS shouldn’t require KYC. If I walk in to a UPS Store, they don’t demand that info. They’re cute and all, but their experience hasn’t been up to parrrrr.
There’s also Shippo (goshippo.com).
Last time I checked it had identical rates and no creepy KYC you mention.
