Download our free social media marketing guide to get savvy and grow your small business.
The email you entered is invalid.
Thank you for subscribing.
By entering your email, you indicate that you have read and understood our Privacy Policy and agree to receive marketing from Squarespace.
Squarespace’s ecommerce tools offer robust capabilities to help your business ship products and serve customers in any location, locally or internationally. But as your business continues to grow and change over time, your needs may too. Because of that, Squarespace partners with several third-party businesses to offer plugins, known as Squarespace Extensions, to expand its shipping capabilities for you and your customers.
Whether it’s condensing the number of tools you’ll need to use, automating a previously manual process to maximize efficiency, or finding the most affordable shipping options for your clients, shipping extensions can greatly expand the scope of what’s possible in Squarespace.
What is a Squarespace Extension and what does it cost?
In short, Squarespace Extensions are plugins that add features to your site or account that can supplement built-in options. Extensions make it easy to integrate other third-party services into your site without the need for deep web design knowledge or managing accounts on different platforms.
Pricing for extensions vary based on the tool. Many extensions can be used on a free tier and have the option to subscribe for additional access and features.
See the full catalog of Squarespace Extensions
When does it make sense to use shipping plugins?
The best time to add plugins varies from business to business. A common use case would be when you’re ready to expand your normal shipping radius, inventory, or offerings to a wider area or audience. Using extensions ensures that your website continues to offer the best experience for your customers while keeping your tools in one, easy-to-manage toolbox.
For example, you can use an extension to add dropshipped print on demand products to your site. Your customers get more product options and you don’t need to hunt for third-party tools that would require manual integration.
6 shipping extensions to simplify your workflow
Choosing the right plugin is a matter of your shipping needs and budget. Consider your top priorities—are you hoping to have a third-party take over order fulfillment, ship internationally, or simply save on costs?
Before delving into the available extensions, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve set up shipping rates within your site. Shipping rates are required regardless of whether you’re using Squarespace’s built-in options, or a third-party extension, so set yourself up for success by creating these first.
Get tips for setting your shipping rates
1. AfterShip
The AfterShip extension allows you to trace shipments across more than 600 carriers worldwide from one central dashboard.
This also gives you and your customers a branded tracking page to follow the most up-to-date order status. You can add marketing banners to the page to drive additional sales. You can also add a personalized touch with automated custom emails and push notifications on order status.
Returns Center by AfterShip is a returns management portal. It allows customers to submit returns through a branded page, print labels, and ship products back to you, taking those steps off of your plate. You’ll also be able to inform customers of updates, such as the status of a refund, automatically, set advanced routing rules and return methods, and see all returns requests in a single place, allowing simpler returns tracking for you and customers.
2. EasyShip
EasyShip is an end-to-end shipping platform that allows you to minimize shipping costs using pre-negotiated, discounted shipping rates. You can compare rates across hundreds of carriers, fulfill international orders, automate certain required paperwork, and more. With lower shipping rates, you may be able to offer lower or free shipping to your customers or expand where you’re able to ship.
You can start using this extension for free or pay for access to additional features.
3. Sendcloud
Sendcloud is a good tool if you’re looking to speed up your shipping process while keeping order fulfillment in your hands. The process to sync your Squarespace account to Sendcloud is quick, and will streamline your order processing. You can use the extension to connect to a wide array of shipping carriers across the world, offer tracking and returns, and print shipping labels.
This is a great option if you’re not quite ready to hand order management to a third party, but want to save time that you can spend focusing on other business tasks.
4. ShipBob
ShipBob is a third-party logistics (3PL) provider focusing on hands-off shipping, inventory management, and fulfillment.
ShipBob’s integration can help you condense fulfillment into a single track across all sales channels—meaning they’ll manage receiving your products, inventory, customizations, orders, and shipments. ShipBob also offers real-time analytics and can sync orders from multiple platforms, from your website to social media.
With their proprietary warehouse management system, you’ll be able to outsource fulfillment operations entirely, or use a hybrid solution across ShipBob’s fulfillment center network in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.
5. Shippo
Like EasyShip and Sendcloud, Shippo’s extension simplifies the shipping process to save you time and money.
Shippo allows your business to take advantage of discounted shipping rates, print pre-filled shipping labels, send tracking info, and manage returns. Their automations can also help reduce shipping errors caused by manual processes, so your customers get a better experience.
6. ShipStation
ShipStation helps you import, organize, and ship orders seamlessly regardless of what areas your business serves or what platforms you use to sell.
This extension allows you to sync orderse with over 180 marketplaces, selling channels, carriers, and fulfillment providers. You’ll also have access to features like auto-selecting shipping preferences, customizable automation rules, multi-carrier rate calculators and shipping.
Once you’ve decided on an extension, you can follow our steps to connect it to your site. The finer details can vary by plugin, but generally you’ll initiate the connection from the Extensions panel of your site.
Built-in shipping options
While plugins are a big help for expanding your site’s capabilities, Squarespace features plenty of native tools that you can use to take your business to the next level, too.
Custom delivery options: Customize fulfillment options by product to offer customers flexibility. For example, you might want to limit fragile items to in-person pickup or delivery, but offer both in-person and shipping options for hardier products.
Local pickup and delivery: You can create a local pickup or delivery option for nearby customers to pick up orders in person for free, or get them via a courier or hand-delivery. Add custom choices at checkout so customers can select a date and time that works best for them.
Buying and printing shipping labels: Buy and print UPS and USPS shipping labels through Squarespace for shipping within certain countries.
Carrier calculated shipping: Carrier calculated shipping allows you to automatically calculate shipping fees based on FedEx, UPS, and USPS rates using package weight, dimensions, and addresses.
Depending on weight shipping: Set up shipping charges based on the total order weight. This is generally used if your store sells items that fit in the same size box, but vary in weight.
Shipping zones: Limit where you can ship, or set shipping fees based on location.