EasyParcel vs Shippop vs MyParcel: Which Shipping Aggregator in Malaysia is Best for Your E-commerce Business?

Shipping is an important aspect of any e-commerce business. It's the final part of an online shopping experience, and usually the most crucial one.

A fast and problem free shipping experience will give your customer a good impression of your business while one late delivery may mean losing a customer forever.

Even if you've done a five star job of designing your site and packing up your parcel for delivery, making a mistake on the shipping part may mean having all your previous effort will go down the drain.

This is what makes choosing the right shipping company for your business so important. Other than your suppliers and team mates, your shipping company is one of your most important partners.

As a business, you not only want to use the most reliable shipping company, but to have the benefit of lowered shipping rates and the convenience of having someone pick up your orders from your office or warehouse.

In the past, the only way you can have these benefits is by signing up with a business account. The only drawback with business accounts is that they often have a contract period and a minimum monthly spend.

So even if you have a bad experience with a shipping company, you won't be able to switch around easily.

Luckily for you though, nowadays, you can have both benefits of a bulk discount price and pick-up service without opening a business account. 

You can get the same benefits by using what is known as a courier service aggregator.

These aggregators are websites that offer two main benefits:

1. Option of using any of their partner courier companies
2. Price and delivery time comparisons between courier companies
3. Pick up services

These are also useful for you if you're a new e-commerce business owner and simply can't afford a business account with a courier company but still would like the benefits that come along with them.

In Malaysia, there is not just one but a few courier service aggregators websites. The most popular ones are EasyParcel, Shippop and MyParcel.Asia.

With so many choices, which one should you use?

Today, we’ll be stacking the shipping aggregators side by side to help you pick the best one for your business.

Let’s get started!

First, let's take a quick look at the comparison between the most important features of each shipping aggregator in the table below:

Now, let's take a closer look and pick a winner for each feature:

For ease of comparison, we will use Poslaju's 1kg parcel rates for this comparison.

Cost probably the biggest factor when deciding which aggregator to use. Lower costs per kg means higher profit margins for your business.

While all three couriers have the same rate for WM-WM and EM-EM delivers (RM6.50), EasyParcel offers the cheapest rate of RM14.10 per kg for delivers between WM and EM.

If you have even a few orders from outside EM or WM where you are based, you'll have better savings when using EasyParcel to make deliveries.

Most shipping aggregators have a credit top-up system as a way of locking you in to their service. While all of the aggregators provide the option of paying for your orders without using credits, they often charge a much higher rate for customers who choose this option.

While e-commerce business owners who frequently ship out at least a few parcels a day will easily spend above the minimum top-up, for e-commerce entrepreneurs just starting out, however, having to top-up just to use the service for a few parcels a month can mean a capital sink and cause a lock up in their cash flow.

For entrepreneurs like this, a better option would be to still have access to cheaper shipping rates without having to top-up for credits.

If this is you, your best choice will be Shippop as you'll be able to pay for your orders ala carte, without having to pay for a hefty top-up upfront.

For EasyParcel, you'll need to shell out RM100 before you can access their member shipping rates and for MyParcel, that fee is RM50.

Having more courier options means you can switch from a bad shipping company and try out a new one without having to pay a fine or have your money locked up with one courier company.

The winner in this case is EasyParcel with the highest number of courier companies under its wings.

Another big benefit of using EasyParcel is the option of using EasyParcel's own Pgeon Delivery which offers an even cheaper rate for areas covered.

Having many options for payment gives you the flexibility to choose a payment option that best fits with your financial capabilities or preferences.

This is yet another area where EasyParcel finishes first by having the most number of payment options. Not only can you pay with FPX bank transfer and credit card, EasyParcel can also accept Boost payments and even cash payments via 7-Eleven. How cool is that?

It's worth mentioning that MyParcel fares the worst in this category thanks to having just one option for payment by bank transfer. If you don't have enough cash, you won't be able to leverage on credit cards to ship your orders first with MyParcel.

One of the most important aspects of any shipping experience is its customer support. As Malaysians would know, customer service and support in Malaysia is still very much far behind compared with developed countries.

Having done claims with both EasyParcel and Shippop before for missing parcels, I'd say that the process was much easier with Shippop compared with EasyParcel.

You only need to initiate a live chat with a Shippop to initiate claims for missing parcels. With EasyParcel, however, you'll need to fill in forms and jump through a few hoops before being able to initiate claims. 

For the aspect of customer support, Shippop is the winner.

Being able to integrate your aggregator with your website can makes things much more convenient.

Once you have successfully integrated the aggregator to your website, you will be able to easily sync your order details with the aggregator. This way, you won't need to prepare the consignment note details twice, saving you tons of time.

Out of the three aggregators, EasyParcel has the most number of platforms that it can integrate it, making it the clear winner.

Regardless of whether you decide to use Shopify, EasyStore, SiteGiant or Opencart to build your e-commerce website, you'll be able to integrate EasyParcel into your site.

While not without fault, EasyParcel is the better choice if you are looking for an all-in-one shipping aggregator solution for your e-commerce business.

It has the cheapest WM-EM or EM-WM pricing, the most variety of courier partners, the most number of payment methods and outnumbers the other two aggregators in terms of the platforms it can integrate with.

If you don't mind having to top-up at least RM100 before you can take advantage of the discounted courier rate and an at times lacklustre customer service, EasyParcel could be the best choice shipping aggregator for you.

Whether you're a new e-commerce entrepreneur wanting a ton of benefits without having to commit to a business account, or if you are a seasoned e-commerce business owner wanting more shipping options, I recommend getting started with EasyParcel.

Shipping aggregator websites like EasyParcel, Shippop and MyParcel Asia can be the best solution for you if you aren't sure which shipping company to pick and want to the flexibility to try different shipping companies instead of committing to just one.

While each website offers their own benefits, EasyParcel stands out as the site offering the best shipping rates, flexibility to choose between the most number of courier companies as well as having the ability to integrate with almost all the most popular e-commerce platforms in Malaysia.

Over to you: which of these shipping aggregator sites have you used and which one is your favorite? Let me know in the comments below!