What Is a Flat Rate Shipping Label and How to Print One?
The shipping cost is calculated based on a number of factors, including the weight of the items you intend to ship. When you ship from a post office, a post office employee would weigh your parcel and charge you accordingly. But a lot of people prefer to print shipping labels at home to save time and money. Do they all have a scale to weigh their parcels? Not at all! Most people simply print flat rate shipping labels.
According to Wikipedia, a flat rate is “a pricing structure that charges a single fee for a service, regardless of usage.” Postal companies use flat-rate pricing to avoid having to weigh items, making it easier for consumers to identify the cost of delivery beforehand. They offer a range of envelopes and boxes in various sizes and shapes, and the shipping rate depends on the envelope or box you choose, regardless of the weight of your package or the distance it is traveling.
For example, the United States Postal Service (USPS) offers the following Priority Mail flat rate options for packages up to 70 lbs: Flat Rate Envelope, Gift Card Flat Rate Envelope, Window Flat Rate Envelope, Small Flat Rate Envelope, Padded Flat Rate Envelope, Legal Flat Rate Envelope, Small Flat Rate Box, Medium Flat Rate Box (top-loading or side-loading), Large Flat Rate Box, APO/FPO/DPO Flat Rate Box, and Large Flat Rate Board Game Box.
Of course, flat rate shipping has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it makes things much easier for consumers. All you need to do is fit the items you want to ship into one of the envelopes or boxes offered by the postal service, and you’ll immediately know how much you have to pay for shipping. A lot of online stores use flat rate shipping because it allows them to set clear shipping rates for their customers and encourages customers to buy additional items since it may not affect their shipping costs.
On the other hand, flat rate shipping isn’t always the cheapest option, especially when you need to ship a single small, lightweight item that doesn’t fit in a flat rate envelope. You’ll have to ship such item in a flat rate box, but the shipping cost may turn out too high.
Despite having certain drawbacks, flat rate shipping remains an easy-to-use and, in most cases, cost-effective shipping option. The trick is to correctly pick a box or envelope at your local shipping carrier’s office, pack your items in it and then print a flat rate shipping label to go with it.
But how do you print a flat rate shipping label? You can create a flat rate label online using either the official website of the postal service or one of the many shipping label generators, such as PostageMaker. Some people don’t trust third-party shipping label services, but there is nothing to worry about.
Such services officially cooperate with postal companies, so their shipping labels are perfectly valid. Moreover, they often receive huge discounts from shipping carrier because of the large volume of shipping labels they generate, and many services choose to share these discounts with their customers, offering discounted shipping labels. Therefore, using a shipping label generator will allow you to save money on flat rate shipping.
Different services have a slightly different interface, but the process of creating a flat rate label online is usually more or less the same. You sign in to your account, enter the recipient’s address and your address, choose the postal service (many label generators work with several carriers at once, for example, the USPS, FedEx and UPS) and flat rate shipping option, and pay for the shipping label with a card, PayPal or some other available payment option. Once your label is generated, you need to print it out (no special printer or paper usually required), attach it to the package and drop it off at a post office or schedule a pickup.
It is important that your shipping label matches the flat rate box you’ve chosen. For example, if you attach a Priority Mail Small Flat Rate Label to a Priority Mail Medium Flat Rate Box, the package will be returned to you. So don’t try to cheat the system, it won’t work.
