What is a Third-Party Postage Provider?

A third-party postage provider is a company that provides USPS postage at discounted rates. Typically, these discounted rates are only available for big companies that ship out more than 50,000 packages per year. However, third-party postage providers allow consumers and small businesses to access these same discounted rates.

To speak frankly, the only shot your small businesses has at competing with the big guys is taking advantage of postage discounts. Fortunately, third-party postage providers make it easy for you to do just that.

Why You Should Use a Third-Party Postage Provider

If you’re an eCommerce business owner, shipping costs can be your biggest expense outside of cost of goods sold. And guess what? As your business grows and scales, the cost of postage only increases. Paying full retail price for postage adds up FAST. It can even sink your small business if you’re not careful! Therefore, every small business owner should buy postage with shipping software from third-party postage providers that lets users access Commercial Plus Pricing rates. If you don’t, you’re basically flushing money down the toilet (not literally, but you get the point).

What’s Commercial Plus Pricing?

Commercial Plus Pricing (or “CPP”) is the most deeply discounted pricing tier that USPS has to offer. Here’s the thing, though: consumers can’t kick down the doors of the Post Office and demand to ship at the CPP rate. The only way to qualify for this level of deep discounts is to enter into a direct contract with USPS. Those contracts have requirements, like shipping at least 50,000 packages a year. However, a third-party postage provider allows everyday consumers to access CPP rates! There’s literally no reason NOT to take advantage of that if you’re an E-commerce business owner, especially when there are free USPS shipping software options out there.