After stock, postage is probably your biggest cost per order — and it's one most new shops set once, badly, and never look at again. The honest answer to "Royal Mail or a courier?" is usually both, for different parcels. Here's how to decide, with current prices (April 2026 tariff, checked June 2026).
The numbers that matter
For the bread-and-butter parcel — under 2kg, posted online — Royal Mail Tracked 48 costs £3.65 (£4.65 for Tracked 24), with £75 of compensation included. Evri undercuts that at £2.62 flat up to 5kg if you drop it at a ParcelShop, and InPost lockers start at £1.99 for a small box. DPD's shop-to-shop starts around £3, with its famous one-hour delivery window on next-day services.
So the courier is always cheaper? Not quite — the gaps close fast once you look at what's included, and one Royal Mail format changes the maths entirely.
The Large Letter trick
If your product fits through a letterbox — under 2.5cm thick, up to 35.3 × 25cm — it ships as a Large Letter: £2.85 Tracked 48, £1.55 untracked 2nd Class. No courier matches that, and the customer doesn't have to be in, trek to a locker, or chase a "sorry we missed you" card. It just arrives.
This is why prints, cards, jewellery, cosmetics and clothing basics get packaging designed to the format: rigid Large Letter boxes exist precisely to keep a £3.65 parcel a £2.85 letter. If you sell anything slim, design your packaging around the 2.5cm line — it's the highest-return packaging decision you'll make.
When Royal Mail wins
Letterbox-able items, obviously. Low volumes, because there's no account or minimum — Click & Drop gives you the online rates from parcel one. Returns, because 11,500 Post Offices beat any locker network, and Parcel Collect will take parcels from your doorstep for 30p each. And trust: Royal Mail topped the Citizens Advice parcels league table in 2025 — although "topped" means 3.25 out of 5, which tells you everything about the industry's bar. Worth knowing both ways: Ofcom is currently investigating Royal Mail's next-day performance, so "most trusted" is relative, not absolute.
When a courier wins
Weight, mostly. Past 2kg, Royal Mail's Medium Parcel prices climb quickly while Evri stays flat to 5kg and InPost prices by box size up to 15kg. Speed guarantees: if your customers pay for next-day, DPD's tracked one-hour window is the industry's best experience, and Royal Mail's only true guarantee is Special Delivery from £9.45. And hours: InPost lockers are 24/7, which matters if Post Office opening times don't fit around the day job your shop hasn't replaced yet.
The flip side is the doorstep experience. In Ofcom's 2025 research, satisfaction with how problems were handled dropped to 38% for Yodel and 31% for Evri — the two cheapest names. A £1 saving per parcel is no saving if a damaged-parcel claim eats an afternoon and the customer never comes back.
Read the compensation small print before you need it
Standard Royal Mail services include £20 of cover; Tracked includes £75; Special Delivery £750+. Evri includes £20. InPost includes £50 — but pays nothing on glass, ceramics or jewellery, which sit on its excluded list regardless of what you paid. If you sell fragile or high-value items, pick the service for its cover, not its price, or insure separately.
One more trap: booking through comparison sites (Parcel2Go and friends) gets you 20–40% off courier direct rates, but claims go through the reseller, not the courier — a recurring sore point on seller forums. Cheap label, slower claim.
Never pay the counter price
Royal Mail's online prices run roughly 30p–£1 below the Post Office counter for identical services — Tracked 48 small parcel is £3.65 online against £4.45 over the counter. Buy postage through Click & Drop (or your platform), print at home, and either drop off or book the 30p collection. Same parcel, same service, less money.
When volume kicks in
At 40+ parcels a month, Evri's free Frequent Seller account discounts up to 50%. Royal Mail's business Tracked rates want roughly 1,000 parcels a year — about 20 a week — and come with surcharges that the consumer rates don't carry, so do the comparison on your real mix before switching. Under those volumes, online consumer rates are genuinely fine; don't let anyone sell you an account you don't need.
The playbook
Weigh and measure honestly — Royal Mail surcharges underpaid parcels, and a £2 correction charge on a £3 label hurts. Default to Tracked 48 over 2nd Class Signed For (£3.65 vs £5.55, with more cover — it isn't close). Design slim products into Large Letter packaging. Use a courier for anything heavy and for customers who pay for speed. Put your dispatch cut-off time on your shipping page, and revisit your rates every April when the tariffs change — this year's rise took Tracked 48 Large Letter up 35p, and nobody sent your shop a memo.
In Orbit, shipping zones, rates and classes are included on every plan — so once you've picked your services, the right price reaches the right customer at checkout, and changing it next April takes a minute rather than a rebuild.