vPost, comGateway, Borderlinx, Aramex Shop and Ship, MyUS and many more…. Which are the best companies for buying from overseas, especially the USA, UK or Europe, with a virtual address, and then have your purchased packages shipped back to your country via their mail forwarding service?
One popular way for people to shop internationally, instead of buying direct from an online shop that will ship direct to you overseas, is to use a company who will supply you with a domestic shipping address for the country you wish to buy from.
What is a package forwarder?
A package, mail or freight forwarder is a company that will forward on mail or parcels to your address. They work by giving you a mailing address in another location. This is usually used by shoppers wanting a USA shopping address so they can shop stores from the US and have the items delivered to their address in another country.
Popular package forwarders include:
- vPost.com – USA to Singapore
- comGateway.com – USA to worldwide
- Borderlinx.com – USA and UK to worldwide
- Aramex ShopandShip.com – worldwide to worldwide (80 locations globally)
- Shipito.com – USA to worldwide
- MyUS.com – USA to worldwide
- Stackry.com – USA to worldwide
How do I find the cheapest forwarder?
A good website to use to find the cheapest shipping rates for package forwarders is ForwardersCompare.com. Here you are able to compare different couriers as used by the package forwarders.
The comparisons include fees and other costs.
How does a package forwarder work?
- Sign up to a package forwarder
- Enter your delivery address and payment information into their system.
- They give you a US (or overseas address)
- Go shopping! – When you buy something, use the package forwarders address as your delivery address.
- The package forwarder will bundle up your purchases, if you have bought from multiple stores
- They will forward your packages on to your home address.
Some shops in the USA will only accept a USA credit card or will only ship to USA addresses, so this gets around this problem as they will often buy the product for you, as long as you have deposited the funds first. They can also be used to buy stuff from the UK and Europe with addresses in those countries.
Once the products you have bought are safely in their warehouse then they will forward the packages on to you wherever you are in the world.
Before you commit to using one, it is best to compare overseas address and mail forwarding companies, as they all have slightly different service levels and charges for all their services.
When considering one to use consider the services you will need. Often package consolidation will save you money, but you may also want to consider if being sent photos of your purchases before they forward them is important. Some may also charge for storage while they wait to combine your packages.
Of course this method may not be as cheap as buying direct from the shop yourself, but it opens up more possibilities and if the products you are buying are cheaper anyway, then it might well be worth doing.
Which are the best freight forwarders?
Well, the answer is not simple. All the different freight forwarding companies have different fees and charges, plus some will sort out import duties for you and others will not. It also depends if you want your packages repackaged or consolidated and how often and how many packages you buy.
Some only offer addresses in the USA, some have addresses in many more countries including South Africa, Japan and China. Likewise some will only ship to a few countries others will ship to over 200!
It can be quite a bewildering choice for the uninitiated! The best address and forwarding shipping company might be different for each person and many different occasions.
Update
We have now added many more forwarders and reshippers to the directory and we also have a quick comparison tool that you can use to give you an idea of costs for each provider based upon set weights. We have tried to include every fee and cost that you might encounter when signing up and using each of the package forwarders listed.
As ever we are very happy to hear your experiences and reviews so we can share them with other international shoppers! Thanks.
It means we now have many MyUS alternatives for you to compare and contrast to find the best reshipper for you.
