Searching for a top-notch shipping plugin to list Australia Post rates on your WooCommerces store?
Australia Post is one of the leading shipping services which provide domestic and international shipping services. You can incorporate these services into your WooCommerce store by adding the best plugin which is ideal for your requirements. Let us look through two foremost Australia Post plugins which will give you the insight to choose the ideal one for your store.
- ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking (previously XAdapter Australia Post Shipping Plugin)
- WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method
Both plugins offer a number of Australia Post shipping services, but some features are different in each plugin. ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugin has more advanced features like label printing and tracking options for you and your customers. And when it comes to Australia Post services, ELEX Australia Post plugin offers eParcel and StarTrack services.
If you have a registered account of Australia Post, you can enable the ‘contracted account’. The contracted account will get additional handy shipping services on letter and parcel services, postage meter resets and pre-paid envelopes and satchels (including Express Post), etc. And also if you want to use StarTrack services, you must hold a contracted account.
ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking also offers eParcel services of Australia Post. If your online store is shipping more than 1000 parcels in a year, you can use this service to streamline the shipment of products. It offers flexible pricing for products, fast delivery, tracking services, and barcoded printing labels.
This eParcel service is not available in WooCommrce Australia Post Shipping Method plugin.
Now let us take up an analysis of their features.
Features
Both are best WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugins, offer basic Australia Post shipping features. And both plugins fetch the shipping rates from Australia Post and calculate the shipping orders. And they require your shop to be located in Australia and use the Australian dollar as currency. These are the basic common features of these two plugins.
As we have discussed, the WooCommerce Australia Post plugin offers the basic Australia Post shipping features such as displaying Australia Post rates, the option to choose the packing method and adjusting tax rates. But when it comes to ELEX WooCommerce Australia Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking, it is rich in advanced features. You can maybe replace one or more shipping plugins that you use with this single plugin. That is because, with the help of this plugin, you can display Australia Post service rates, choose packaging, print labels, offer tracking details, etc..
Now, let us go through the features one by one,
- Shipping Services
- Weight Based Packing
- Print Shipping Labels
- Shipment Tracking
- Australia Post StarTrack Services
- Updates
Shipping Service
ELEX WooCommerce Australia Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking helps to list live shipping rates of Australia Post shipping services based on the weight, dimension and delivery location of the package. Compared to the WooCommerce Australia Post shipping plugin, the ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugin offers more shipping services of Australia Post.
These are the domestic & international services provided by ELEX WooCommerce Australia Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking plugin. Have a look!
Domestic Services
- Regular / Parcel Post: In this, product delivery is based on normal business days for prepaid satchels and parcels. You can enable the required Satchels in this service. They are,
- Regular Satchel 500G
- Regular Satchel 1KG
- Regular Satchel 3KG
- Regular Satchel 5KG
- Regular Letter Small
- Regular Letter Medium
- Regular Letter Large
- Regular Letter Large 125
- Regular Letter Large 250
- Regular Letter Large 500
- Express Post: It is a cost-effective shipping method, which delivers the product on the next business day. In addition to that, it is available in 7 satchels. They are,
- Express Satchel 500G
- Express Satchel 1KG
- Express Satchel 3KG
- Express Satchel 5KG
- Express Letter Small
- Express Letter Medium
- Express Letter Large
- Courier Post
- EXPRESS POST
- PARCEL POST W/SIGNATURE
- EXPRESS POST W/SIGNATURE
- PARCEL POST + SIGNATURE
- EXPRESS POST + SIGNATURE
- NATIONAL FULL RATE
- EXPRESS NATIONAL FULL RATE
International Services
- PACK & TRACK INT’L 8
- International Post Courier
- International Post Express
- International Post Standard
- International Post Economy Air
- International Letter Courier
- International Letter Express
- International Letter Registered Post DL
- International Letter Registered Post B4
- International Letter Economy Air
- REGISTERED POST INT’L 8
- EXPRESS COURIER INT’L MERCH 8Z
- INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL 8Z
- EXPRESS COURIER INT’L DOC 8
WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method offers 3 domestic and 7 international Australia Post shipping services. They are,
Domestic
- Regular/ Parcel Post
- Express Post
- Courier Post
International
- Express Post International
- Express Courier International Platinum
- Express Courier International
- Registered Post International
- Pack and Track International
- Air Mail
- Sea Mail
Weight Based Packing
In both WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method and ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugins, it takes the total weight of all items in the cart. You can add the maximum weight, and if the weight is too high the package will be split. There are three options for packing. The default packing method is packing items individually. The next one is, pack into boxes with weights and dimensions. If you choose this, there will be a number of predefined boxes. You can enable which are required for your product shipping. Have a look.
You can add new boxes and set custom boxes and dimensions. The units are in ‘kg’ and ‘cm’.
If you choose packing based on total weight, you have to enter the maximum weight. The features of packing are the same in both plugins.
Print Shipping Labels
WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method does not offer label printing options. If you want to print shipping labels while using this plugin, you can install additional label printing plugins. But if you need a complete package of shipping and label printing, you can go for ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin.
You can enable ‘Direct Download’ to download the shipping label and order summary in the Label & Tracking page. If you want to save the label into the wp-content folder for future reference, you can enable ‘Save shipping labels’. You can also generate bulk shipment labels using this feature of ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin. You can choose the label layout for different shipping services such as Parcel Layout, Express Post and Australia Post International.
ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Label Printing
You can use Australia Post Bulk Label Printing Add-On to generate bulk labels and print them into one single PDF file. In addition to that, if you want to automate the label generation much more smoothly and fast, you can use ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Auto-Generate & Email Labels Add-On. This Add-on will automate the process of shipment creation, label and generation and sending email notification with a shipping label to you and your customers.
Shipment Tracking
WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method plugin does not offer the shipment tracking option. But ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugin offers an option to track the shipment. If you enable the ‘Email Tracking’ option, the Australia Post Shipping API will return the label to you after the order placement. Using the tracking ID returned by Australia Post, you can track the shipment of your products.
If you are a contracted account holder of Australia Post, it will automatically pay the postage on these labels using your Australia Post account and it will print shipping labels with a tracking barcode for eParcel.
When it comes to international eParcel shipping, it will contain four labels such as labels attached to the product, Australia Post copy, Customs copy and the label for the sender. And you can create an Order Summary/ Shipping Manifest for particular orders. The advantage in this is that you can generate a single manifest of a group of shipments that happened on a single day.
Australia Post StarTrack Services
StarTrack is an Australia based shipping and logistics company owned by Australia Post. It mainly deals with domestic shipping services in Australia. ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugin incorporates StarTrack service to offer an on-demand courier service. If you are a contracted account holder, and you have a StarTrack account also, you can enable and add the credentials in the general settings.
It is an on-demand courier service, which offers fast delivery of your products ranging from immediate to 3 hours. You will get 3 StarTrack services when you enable this option. They are,
- PREMIUM
- 1,3 & 5KG FIXED PRICE PREMIUM
- EXPRESS
It offers real-time tracking and offers electronic proof of delivery. While using this, you can simply relax without worrying about whether your shipment will reach the right place at the right time. And you can also generate StarTrack Shipping Labels with barcodes using this plugin.
This service is not available in WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method.
Updates
ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugin frequently updates its features in accordance with the changing trends and requirements of WooCommerce shipping. And also it assures the compatibility with upgrading the WordPress-WooCommerce-platform. It always adds new features according to the rising requirements of WooCommerce customers.
WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method also keeps updating its features as it is a part of WooCommerce.
Now, let us wrap up.
Wrap Up
Both are best WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugins that are highly efficient in offering the basic features of Australia post shipping services. But still, ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking offers more additional and advanced features compared to WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method. As we have discussed, the ELEX Australia Post plugin offers eParcel and StarTrack services of Australia Post, which is not currently available in the WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method. And ELEX Australia Post plugin offers label printing and shipment tracking options.
If you want a single Australia Post shipping plugin with additional features rather than using a number of plugins for each feature, ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking plugin is the right option.
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