Feature Request: Low-Cost Envelope Shipping with Tracking (Like eBay Standard Envelope)

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
1

Can we get a low cost envelope shipping with tracking?

I sell a very small thin item on Shopify and the shipping situation is brutal. the best I can do now is $1.50 ish.

If I use a plain envelope, print out the address label and use a stamp, the buyer states it never showed up. If I use ground advantage, it’s $4+ to ship a $5 item. And not many people are paying that, they get mad, “it so light, why do I have to pay $5 to ship” etc.

eBay figured this out a few years ago. Their Standard Envelope is 74 cents for 1 oz, has tracking, and includes $20 protection if it gets lost. You just drop it in a mailbox. Mercari has the same thing now too.

Why doesn’t Shopify have this? It’s the same USPS infrastructure. They use Informed Visibility barcodes that get scanned automatically.

Anyone else selling holiday cards, baseball cards, coins, stickers, or other flat lightweight stuff running into this? Would love to see Shopify add something similar.

2

I sell low cost /small items and ship ground advangtage so this would be a great feature

3

Ebay’s ESE isn’t standard on USPS, it’s part of the deal Ebay made with USPS like 20 years ago, and isn’t available anywhere else. Why Shopify hasn’t done something like that? Well Shopify is just a web platform and Ebay is an established marketplace (the difference can be blurry but they are distinct).

4

I don’t believe they made that deal 20 years ago, it may have been like 3 years ago. Shopify has enough leverage/clout/whatever to say hey, why don’t you make this available to us? I believe Etsy has something similar

5

I think it just comes down to Shopify not being a marketplace like ebay and etsy… They’re not really in the business of providing that kind of service. Sure it’d be nice but I doubt they are even thinking about that.

In reference to what I said about how long ago, they’ve had a relationship since 2004 but is was already in the works the year before. eBay Field Information Publicity Kit (continued)"

6

Shopify offers a tool, a work surface, they aren’t here to run your business for you.
Anything like this is a value add not a requirement.

For actual feature requests contact a support advisor directly, the forums aren’t petitionDOTorg
https://help.shopify.com

Does seems like the ESE was a few years ago on quick looks and not decades ago.

Read your own post back to yourself and look in the mirror:
“why do I have to pay $5 to ship”
Why can’t you just ship everything free and do all the work for your customers.
Is there some reason you get to have business considerations but shopify isn’t allowed to have their own considerations.
Your a customer of shopify, not a board member.

Because ebay has enough clout that shopify’s clout doesn’t exist on the chart of clout.
And that’s before even counting them as competing platforms that would loooove to eat one another.
So even if shopify wanted to compete with ebay in this way, they’d be paying pay a heavy toll do so against an 800lb incumbent.

Your business is your own don’t be so shopify-conditioned it’s the only way you can think of solving your own business problems.

7

Wow, that escalated quickly :rofl: Geez, is it really that hard to implement a shipping parameter that is already setup for other platforms? Shopify already extends the discounts on shipping through USPS, the same rates eBay receives. I just find it a bit odd, that it couldn’t be a simple add on to shopify shipping options. But, hey haters going to hate…

8

So, eBay, couldn’t just ask USPS to extend the same plan to Shopify? Give me a break, it’s not really that hard. Do you see all of the other Shopify Shipping Options there are???

Also, the Shopify sidekick recommended to post this on the forum for discussion. Enough views and maybe someone from Shopify, will see it.

9

I read it wrong, “As of Nov 2023, four additional categories are now eligible to use eBay standard envelope, expanding the service to eight categories.”
|The low-cost way to ship
eBay standard envelope services are competitively priced and include seller benefits like integrated tracking and shipment protections at no additional cost.

Send 1 oz. packages for $0.74

Send 2 oz. packages for $1.03

Send 3 oz. packages for **$1.32
**
Just saying, I am sure eBay doesn’t pay for this program. But why not stay competitive and bring on more sellers to the selling interface.

11

You can use lettertrack pro. It works just like ebay ese except you put a stamp on the envelope, but the envelope prints with a barcode for tracking just like Ebay ese. it’s a 3rd party service so there’s a fee added to the cost of your stamp. you can get 1,000 barcodes prepaid for $180.00 that’s the top tier and cheapest per mailing. You can also buy less barcodes for slightly higher prices, so that’s $0.78 for your stamp and $.18 per barcode. $.96 total to mail. Supposedly you can select other in Shopify as the carrier and copy the tracking link from Lettertrack Pro and paste that into shopify’s tracking number area, If anyone emails you for an INR you can get the tracking on the lettertrack pro site and copy and paste it in an email back to the customer and they should be able to access it as well with the tracking url you sent them before. Just an option if you do want tracking on your side for a much cheaper price. It even gives you 5 free shipments to try it out first to see how it works. I sent out a test mailer to a family member in Florida and it showed as delivered. I would recommend to also send out a few empty envelopes to family maybe in other states to test it out and see how the tracking works for yourself. I’m setting my shopify store up now to use it here shortly.