As we have recently mentioned, Australia Post could use a bit of improvement so it’s good to see the ambitious start-up Sendle come in and apply a bit of pressure. Sendle has teamed up with Toll to offer door-to-door parcel delivery for small businesses, providing an alternative to our postal incumbent. Here’s how the prices stack up.
Delivery lady picture from Shutterstock
The start-up has partnered with courier companies Fastway, Couriers Please and now Toll, borrowing on their large national delivery network to offer the parcel service across Australia. Door-to-door also means time is not wasted lining up at the post office.
In terms of pricing, this is how Sendle compares to Australia Post according to the start-up:
Size | Australia Post pricing | Sendle pricing |
---|---|---|
National 2kg/8L | $12.15 – $23.95 (1-2kg) | $10.75 |
National 5kg/20L | $15.30 – $40.60 (4-5kg) | $14.75 |
National 10kg/40L | $20.55 – $68.35 (9-10kg) | $18.75 |
National 2kg/100L | $33.15 – $134.95 (21-22kg) | $24.75 |
It’s worth noting that Australia Post doesn’t do a flat rate for standard parcels. The basic charge for parcels over 500g and up to 22kg is $10.05 for destinations in the same state and $12.85 for interstate destinations. On top of that, there is a distance charge per kilogram which can range from $0 to $6.
If you’re an enterprise sending out a ton of parcels everyday, you’re probably getting a better deal through Australia Posts’ special business contracts but if you’re an SMB or just an average consumer looking to send the odd parcel here and there, Sendle is an option that could be worth trying.
Comments
13 responses to “How Does Australia Post Challenger Sendle Compare In Price?”
I must be missing something because from the table, all I’m seeing is that Auspost is cheaper on all categories…
Sorry about that. Yes, the table categories were switched. Fixed now!
Fastways? I’m out. Consistently the worst experience of any courier in the country. If I see a seller uses fastways now, I don’t care how cheap they are, I’ll buy somewhere else.
From my experience Toll is even worse.
So I guess I will be giving Sendle a miss.
I’ve had fastways couriers pull up in my driveway and try to leave after carding me with four car tyres loaded up, had to chase them down the driveway. They also partnered with some little local corner store supermarket here and “drop off your package” if you’re not home, except the drivers are so goddamned lazy it can take 2-3 days for them to leave the package with the shop, definitely not the “after 4pm” they card. Never again.
A lot of courier companies are franchises (particularly in regional areas), so quality/service can vary a lot.
In Melbourne I used to have lots of trouble with Fastways, and still more than enough trouble with the others. Since moving to the country I’ve rarely had an issue with any courier company (or at least rarely had an issue with the local end of the company).
Australia Post however is terrible. Letters and parcels seems to spend days sitting at distribution centres before finally making their way to me.
As a recipient, I would prefer AusPost as I can divert them to a parcel locker and collect them whenever is most convenient for me. The last time I dealt with DHL and Toll, it was a pain.
Are Toll the ones who ‘pretend’ to deliver but leave a ‘sorry we missed you’ card while you’re sitting inside waiting for them?
Toll and TNT both do that. I was in fact sitting outside and went inside for a couple of minutes and when I came back out the TNT courier had been and gone. No knock just left a note.
The home delivery business is as shonky as concretors and patio installers… Bad.
The problem with Australia Post is that they have waited far too long to change their business model to keep up with the times. In the meantime, as they bleed money on decreased regular post and greatly increased incoming international post, they’ve been trying to claw their money back with greatly overpriced (and under-delivered) postal services.
With a distribution and retail network that reaches as far and wide as there’s, they have been perfectly positioned to ‘pivot’ and make inroads into new business ventures. Instead, they’ve just been trying to ‘innovate’ by offering similar services to new competitors at worse prices (e.g. US freight forwarding).
Australia Post usually arrive late to a party (eg Digital Mailbox) and then wonder why nobody wants to dance with them – everyone has a dancing partner already. Parcel lockers are an exception though, great idea.
Well my parcel via Sendle is now 10 days overdue and they wont even get back to the company I bought the item from!!! Not good business Sendle!!
I have been waiting for Sendle/Toll to pick up my parcel for 3days with my grandchildren’s Christmas presents now it is the weekend. On Monday I will be going to Australia Post at least I will know that they will receive their presents in time. I will never trust this company again.
I’ve been using this company since March 2016. It was good and the price is cheap compared to others, however, they don’t offer insurance and I’ve been having issues with them lately. Very bad customer service if you need to raise an issue because the only way to contact them is via email. Also, they are very slow to respond because they consign some deliveries to a third party and this causes more delays. At this stage from a small business point of view, I need to provide my customers with a fast efficient reliable service and Sendle has jeopardise my business. If you don’t want to be frustrated, than I would recommend to stay away from this company, and pay a few extra dollars with a company that offers insurance protection.
We are an SME and send 250-350 parcels a year. We’ve been using Sendle for 14 months now and here’s how it all stacks up.
Price is the primary consideration for us.
We’ve now found that we are using Sendle for around 70% of our orders. The criteria are
~ it has to be over 500g (otherwise Aus Post is cheaper, taking packaging into account);
~ we’ll cancel the order with Sendle if the carrier is Fastways and send Aus Post. We’ve had consistently disastrous experiences with Fastways, without exception.
~ it has to be in the areas that Sendle classifies as metro (otherwise AusPost parcel post is cheaper).
For us, Sendle have been much more pleasurable to deal with.
~ in the past 12 months we’ve had issues with 2 deliveries from Sendle (once we stopped bothering with Fastways).
~ compared to 8 mis-directed, lost, delayed deliveries with Aus Post.
~ One of the two problems we had with Sendle was a lost item. They promptly secured a refund and cost of goods from the courier.
~ Compared with Aus Post who don’t even get back to us half the time.
And of course, the time saved by not having to drop parcels at the post office makes Sendle the overall winner – but we’ll still reluctantly use Aus Post where we have to.
Don’t trust Sendle. Organised a suitcase to be picked up. Courier refused to carry down stairs said would come back didn’t. Now I’m stuck retrieving a case. Their email support is hopeless. They just sub the work out to cheapo couriers.