Canada Post Shipping – All You Need To Know

Canada Post is the country’s largest shipper. Despite a season of up and downs, Canada Post has re-established itself as an authentic courier with efficient shipping services.

One con of Canada Post is that it usually doesn’t deliver on weekends. Other carriers like FedEx and DHL, can deliver evenings, early mornings, and weekends.

Canada Post will most often attempt to deliver multiple times before requiring a customer to pick up from the closest post office; usually within a few blocks radius. On the other hand, UPS doesn’t normally deliver to every residential home or P.O. Box on a daily or even weekly basis. Besides, costs for delivery can oftentimes be higher; especially for rural areas.

Canada Post and Purolator Express are actually quite close. However, Canada Post offers a smaller price range and more features such as three attempts at delivery instead of two.

Canada Post shipping rates are competitive and affordable depending on your budget and timeline. You can decide which one works for your business and your customers by reading up on their costs and traits.

Canada Post Regular Parcel

Regular Parcel provides an estimated shipping time from up to 2 business days (local shipments) to nine business days for national shipments if the shipment is coming from a Major Urban Centre. Non-Major and Remote/Northern Centres can see a shipment time of up to 14 business days. Regular Parcels do not have an on-time delivery guarantee.

Canada Post XpressPost

Canada Post Priority

Priority shipping is the fastest shipping available with Canada Post and is usually at its destination by the next day – even for national shipments. If packages are being shipped from Non-Major or Northern/Remote Centres, then the package can arrive anywhere from two to eight business days later.
The cost of Canada Post Priority shipping within Canada depends on where the package is heading. Fees start at about $14.73 and can go upwards to $230.35. 

Canada Post Shipping to the USA

Canada Post Priority Worldwide delivers to both the USA and foreign destinations and has an on-time delivery guarantee. While all other USA options (other than letter mail) have the option to pick up at a post office, Priority Worldwide does not.

XpressPost USA, Expedited Parcel USA, Tracked Packet USA, and Small Packet USA each offer various features for shipments. Only XpressPost and Expedited Parcel offer on-time guarantees, although most shipments are delivered on time without any hiccups. Tracking is available too on all but Small Packet USA shipments  Tracking means that customers and other parties with the number can easily check in on their package in real-time.

Canada Post Shipping to other International destinations

Sending a 2.2-pound package to the Bahamas, for example, by Priority International, using the rate code 5 as assigned, would cost approximately $147.64. Sending that same package to the USA would be about $71.33. This is the fastest shipping available to international locations.

Canada Post XpressPost will also ship internationally. The same package that’s going to the Bahamas would cost $59.65 to send by XpressPost.

International Parcel – Air, which is another option for international shipments, would cost $49.36 to ship to Bermuda (the Bahamas is unavailable for this option). Other shipping options include International Parcel -Surface, Tracked Packet, Small Packet (no tracking available), Letter-post (no tracking available), all of which come with their own costs and take their own timeline to make it to their destination.

You can check out the guide on Canada Post International shipping to learn more.

• Packages must not include any items in Section 7 Dangerous Goods.
• All forms must be filled out in English or French (only English if being sent Priority).
• All items must have the proper service label affixed.
• A hard copy of the required documents must be included in the shipment regardless of using online data or being electronically transmitted.

Canada Post does not deliver on weekends. However, many Canadians claim to have gotten packages left in their mailbox or at their doorstep on a Saturday or Sunday. It’s almost impossible to have a package picked up for delivery from the shipper on the weekend. Canada Post’s typical office hours are for 8 hours a day and all deliveries for residential homes are from 8 am to 8 pm from Monday to Friday (8 am to 5 pm for commercial addresses).

Most Canadians are aware of this typical Monday to Friday mail delivery process, however, there are other options available. If a Canada Post office is private-sector owned, such as those within Shoppers Drug Mart’s in Alberta and Ontario, there is a chance that the location can be open for shipments and deliveries on both Saturdays and/or Sundays. Post office hours can be searched easily online through Google.

During Canada Post’s peak season (from November to Christmas), most postal deliveries are extended to Saturday to keep up with the sometimes two million delivery per day demand.

With the growing need for on-demand and fast delivery of online products, many eCommerce businesses stress over the entire shipping process. Minimizing the time and cost of sending packages across the country and beyond can seem daunting, but Canada Post (as well as other shipping carriers) tries to make it as streamlined as possible.

They offer many Web Services for eCommerce brands to utilize on their website to simplify the shipping process. One of these services is known as Contract Shipping, which means you’ve entered a partnership of sorts with Canada Post to efficiently send packages. The choice of Canada Post contract or non-contract shipping offers an even more customizable opportunity for eCommerce brands.

When signing up with Canada Post small business, you have the choice whether you want to incur contract or non-contract shipping.

Whether you require a commercial Contract Shipping option for your business, or you prefer to sign up for Small Business Solutions and use Non-Contract Shipping, be sure to make the best decision for your business needs.

You can partner with a certified Shopify Canada Post shipping application or WooCommerce shipping plugin that can speed up the shipping and delivery process by automatically generating shipping labels while utilizing the benefits of offering multiple carriers for your customers. Reach out for a conversation with PluginHive to learn more.

Is your eCommerce business hosted by another platform such as Magento or BigCommerce? PluginHive’s dedicated team of experts on almost every shipping company can provide you with an app or service to meet any of your business’ shipping needs. Whether you want to optimize the services offered by Canada Post or any other shipping company, our support team is here and ready to discuss your shipping needs even if you don’t think you see what you need from your eCommerce platform app catalog.
Learn more about the shipping service apps available from PluginHive by reaching out to our shipping experts now!