How to handle crazy high shipping costs for small business
Postage fees like $50 for small domestic packages or international shipping rates eat up most of the profit margin. At the same time, fulfillment partners require minimums and monthly fees that do not fit low sales volumes, making it difficult to stay profitable.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from October 2026.
- This comes up 80.3× more often in r/ecommerce than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1keep shipping international and absorb the costDid this help you?
- 2raise prices for that countryDid this help you?
- 3set a higher free-shipping thresholdDid this help you?
- 4stop selling in that countryDid this help you?
- 5Trying to pay the fees independently to avoid courier collection chargesDid this help you?
- 6Manually checking shipping cost history to find hidden fees and disputing them through the third-party postage providerDid this help you?
- 7Switching from fixed-rate shipping to calculated shippingDid this help you?
- 8Raising item prices across the board by a percentageDid this help you?
- 9Absorbing minor rate increases temporarilyDid this help you?
- 10Creating shipping labels using external third-party services like Pirate Ship to find cheaper ratesDid this help you?
- 11Reselling items sourced from ChinaDid this help you?
- 12Finding great deals to resell on eBayDid this help you?
- 13Using discounted shipping platforms like Pirate Ship or Amazon Buy ShippingDid this help you?
- 14Searching for alternative cheaper delivery services or appsDid this help you?
- 15Considering delivering to a different country and then shipping from thereDid this help you?
- 16trying to sell on local marketplaces to avoid shipping costs and platform feesDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“By the time a customer buys online and pays shipping, even if it's free shipping, the cost is just too high to compete with big ecommerce players like Amazon or Walmart who carry basically everything you could want.”source ↗
“Now, USPS, Fed ex, UPS all have as much as doubled their rates and just eats my customers alive.”source ↗
“Launching a clothing brand where I’m trying to figure out how to get low cost shipping.”source ↗
“Was thinking of using Canada post but shipping seams very expensive, how can I reduce this?”source ↗
“Thing is that delivery cost has quadrupled in the past year.”source ↗
“How do I get delivery from china cheaper is there some service or app that I am missing.”source ↗
“I've paid 3 euro as new duties for the product category and 16 for DHL collecting taxes fee.”source ↗
“I mean, I made IOSS to avoid this 16 euro overprice on VAT but these are somehow outside IOSS. How can I remove this fee by pay by myself this fees?”source ↗
“Otherwise this thing is crazy.”source ↗
“I was going over my costs and looking through PirateShip and I found an instance where I was charged an additional $14 for an item.”source ↗
“Since PirateShip has your payment method, they just charge you the extra fee. You have to go looking for it in the list of shipped items to find that it happened.”source ↗
“We're trying to decide if we just need to raise all of our prices again (which is an absolute pain) or take the risk and break the $5.99 threshold.”source ↗
“Is anyone else experiencing these crazy shipping costs? I’ve only sold two things this past week, (assumed now because of shipping costs) and they both have shipping costs at $16.95?”source ↗
“Neither are international orders, the first weights 6 ounces - packaged in 9x6x5, the second weighs 2 ounces - packaged in 9x6x1.”source ↗
“I created a label using Pirateships labels and the same shipping was only $6.25 for both of these. Why is Etsys charging buyers so much?”source ↗
“So I had it on Facebook marketplace for a while but no one is interested so took a shot on posting it to Etsy”source ↗
“I’m wanting to sell it for 160 but shipping is gonna be roughly 50$ or more and I feel like that’s a bit too expensive to list especially when it’s hand crafted and not in any means perfect quality”source ↗
“the thing I’m worried about is making the jump of creating my account and listing it and having no one purchase it”source ↗
“international postage eats most of the margin on those, and a fulfilment partner in that country wants minimums and a monthly fee that does not fit the volume.”source ↗
“how do you work around nz's crazy shipping costs? I've been on nz post and it costs around $50 to ship even the smallest packages 😥”source ↗
“Right now we're shipping items under 1 lb and getting killed on 2-day shipping. Using Pirate Ship and Amazon Buy Shipping, UPS 2nd Day Air ends up costing us around $14.”source ↗
“Competitors selling $20 items somehow offer free 2-day shipping, so I'm clearly missing something.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 7Why are food delivery apps so expensive?
- 4Why does return shipping cost more than the item?
- 19Why am I paying extra customs fees on international packages?
- 5Why do identical listings have different shipping estimates?
- 3Why do short-haul domestic flights cost $900?
- 7Are full service moving quotes really this expensive?