Postage options for e-commerce

I have a sports collectible e-commerce site and I'm looking for an integrated method of automated my shipping and postage process.

Currently we take our packages and stand in line at the post office.

All our ship-to information is in an Access database. We would desire a solution were the address can be downloaded into a stand-alone or web based application that would determine the correct postage. A scale would be connected to a PC to automatically transfer the weight for calculating the postage. The final shipping cost would be transferred back into the database so the true cost of the order can be determined.

We have looked at USPS Click-N-Ship, PayPal and Pitney Bowes. Each of these solutions requires some manual typing or cutting and pasting of the ship-to address into their application. The rest of the applications work pretty much as desired.

Can anyone offer any suggestions for a more integrated shipping solution?

 

UPS WorldShip

 

Harold,
Let me know if you find someone with an intigrated shipping software that works with your database or whole new software set up.... I would like to see what may be available also.

 

checkout endicia.com - if you ship a lot via USPS, its a great service. XML will let you automatically send orders to the printer, you can just assign weights and make it a no brainer. Plus, if you buy USPS tracking thru endicia, it only costs 13 cents instead of 55 (or whatever) - so thats a huge savings too.

If you have a UPS account, get worldship. You can use mySQL to import orders from a database and print out labels without having to type in any information (besides weight of course). A real time saver.

You can make the endicia shipping labels print out on the printer that UPS rents you so all labels print out at the same spot.

I use an endicia/UPS combo and printing out labels each morning takes less than 5 minutes.

 

UPS, airborne express (maybe)
After .post becomes functional, you can just search for "siteost shipping" and most results will be relevant.

 

Thanks to everyone who replied. We evaluated all suggestions and decided to try Endicia.com. This company's service seem to be everything we were looking for in a web based postage process

 

One more thing Harold. I am not sure how many packages you ship "blindly" (without calling the buyer to confirm), but shipping via the USPS can be more headache than it is worth if you ship a lot. The delivery confirmation that the USPS uses is not going to help you in a situation where you need to actually know and confirm to your merchant bank that the buyer actually received the shipment. In this situation UPS, DHL/Airborne or FedEx will be the only carriers that can get you a real signature proof of delivery. I know that in addition to UPS, DHL/Airborne has an API for you to integrate with their back end.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.

 

A simple solution to your USPS shipping delima can be found at: http://freshsoftware.net/scripts_for_sale/usps/xml_labels/delivery_confirmation/

 

USPS delivery confirmation is a complete waste of money. If they lose your package, delivery confirmation gives you nothing other than confirmation that, indeed, the package is lost. Unless you insure it, confirmation is pretty pointless. I do it on all our outgoing USPS packages, simply to have a number to email customers (customers love getting a tracking number then complaining about how many digits it has - why? who knows), but it is a lot cheaper thru endicia than it is normally.

 

This thread is older than I am.

 

Again. I hate getting sucked into year old threads LOL

 

No one at a post office explained to you about confirmed delivery?
You can get signature confirmed delivery...someone has to sign for delivery.
You can also sign up at usps.com to get automatic email notifications on your confirmed delivery.