Shipping is one of the main aspects of an eCommerce business which helps you grab your customer’s attention and have them coming back to you. You can provide a great shopping experience to your customers by providing hassle-free and quick product deliveries. This is easily possible when you have the right shipping solution. Now, to help you with this, we have compared the two widely used shipping solutions: Pirate Ship and PluginHive.
A complete shipping solution
The main objective of a shipping solution is to give an effortless shipping experience to online store owners. With PluginHive you can display real-time shipping rates at checkout and compare the rates while processing your orders. You can print 100s of shipping labels in a single click, schedule carrier pickup, print manifest for pickup agents, and send tracking notifications to the customers via emails.
Pirate Ship allows you to print labels, request carrier pickup, print manifest, and send tracking information. However, it does not show real-time shipping rates at checkout and does not have the facility to automatically print shipping labels.
| Shipping Process | PluginHive | Pirateship |
|---|---|---|
| Real-Time Shipping Rates At Checkout Page | ✓ | ☓ |
| One-Click Shipping Label Printing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Request Carrier Pickups From Your Store | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live Shipment Tracking With Notifications | ✓ | ✓ |
A plug-in app or an external application?
PluginHive is completely integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Big Commerce, and Prestashop. The entire order fulfillment is carried out seamlessly within the eCommerce platform dashboard saving you lots of time and effort.
On the other hand, Pirate Ship is an external shipping solution, where the order fulfillment process is carried out outside the eCommerce store dashboard. To complete the order fulfillment process you need to switch between multiple windows. This makes the process complex and time-consuming.
Quality product with reasonable price
PluginHive’s subscription plan starts at $9 for 100 shipments. The popular plan costs $29 for up to 1000 shipments. The premium plan costs $49 for 3000 shipments. The enterprise plan costs $99 for unlimited shipments. All these plans support the top shipping carriers like UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, Canada Post, Australia Post, and many more.
Pirate Ship is a free shipping solution and it only supports USPS.
Shipping solution with committed customer support
Customer support becomes the most important factor while choosing a shipping solution.
With the objective of helping customers through issues and queries, PluginHive provides 24*7 customer support via zoom call, telephone, email support, and chat support.
Whereas Pirate Ship provides email and live chat support from 8 am to 10 pm across the US.
Need for own shipping carrier account
Pirate Ship supports only USPS carrier services and you need to enter their account credentials to ship from the United States.
With PluginHive you can use your own shipping carrier accounts, and even configure multiple carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, Canada Post, Australia Post, and so on. Since PluginHive is certified in UPS, FedEx, Stamps, Canada Post, Australia Post, Purolator, and Parcelforce Worldwide, you can get their assistance in getting your own account with these carriers.
It is recommended to use your own carrier accounts for more control over your shipments. In case of a delay or any other issue in shipping packages, you can directly contact the carrier service and get the issue resolved at a faster pace ensuring your customer is not waiting for too long for the package to arrive.
Looking for a specific feature for your shipping needs?
The shipping process comprises several aspects. If you need to compare all the main features and attributes of PluginHive and Pirate Ship shipping solutions, the table below will help you:
| Specific Features | PluginHive | PirateShip |
|---|---|---|
| Integrated Platform Specific Solution | ✓ | ☓ |
| Global Coverage with Shipping Carriers | ✓ | ☓ |
| Live Carrier Calculated Shipping Rates at Checkout | ✓ | ☓ |
| Carrier Calculated Shipping Rates for Merchants | ✓ | ☓ |
| Automatic Shiping Label Printing | ✓ | ☓ |
| One-Click Shipping Label Printing in Bulk | ✓ | ✓ |
| Merchant’s Carrier Account is required | ✓ | ☓ |
| Live Shipment Tracking For Merchants | ✓ | ☓ |
| Live Shipment Tracking Notifications for Customers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shipment Tracking Email Customization | ✓ | ✓ |
| Request Carrier Pickups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi Carrier Shipping | ✓ | ☓ |
| Customer Support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Support via Email | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Support via Live Chat | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Support via Call | ✓ | ☓ |
| Customer Support via Zoom Call | ✓ | ☓ |
Conclusion
Pirate Ship and PluginHive both could be the right fit for your business. If you are operating globally and are using carriers other than USPS or if you are using USPS and could potentially use multiple carriers to ship, PluginHive is the perfect solution for your online store. It gives all the features at an affordable price and operates all over the world. However, if you are looking specifically for a USPS shipping solution with features like generating labels and tracking, Pirate Ship can be a good option.
We hope our research made it easy to select between the shipping solutions according to your business requirement.
