Why your shipping should run on your own carrier contracts

There are two ways to pay for a parcel. You can buy the label on someone else's carrier account - a shipping platform, a reseller, your e-commerce platform - at the price they set. Or you can sign with the carrier yourself, and have it invoice you at a price you agreed. The cost comparison puts numbers on both and finds the answer depends on the lane. This article is about everything else that comes with the contract, and why, for a shop that ships every week, it is the better foundation.

The price is yours to negotiate

On borrowed rates, the price is the platform's. It buys from the carrier at whatever it negotiated and sells to you at whatever it decides, and none of the platforms checked for the cost comparison publishes the margin in between. On your own contract, the carrier quotes you, and the first thing it asks is how much you send.

• DPD Lietuva invites business senders to “get an individual offer”, through a form whose required field is your monthly parcels. ^S1
• Smartposti in Estonia promises “affordable contract rates” and asks you to “describe your parcels volumes per month”. ^S2
• LP EXPRESS advertises “Nuolaidos verslo klientams siunčiant didesnius siuntų kiekius” - discounts for business customers sending larger volumes - and suggests a business account from 50 parcels a month. ^S3
• Lietuvos paštas prepares its offer “pagal Jūsų pateiktą poreikį” - according to the needs you state. ^S11

The distance between what a carrier charges the public and what it charges a business account is large. Smartposti charges €8.13 including VAT to send a small (S) parcel from Estonia to a locker in Lithuania over the counter ^S4; its price list for contractual clients puts the same size and destination at €3.58 plus VAT. ^S5 And a published contract list is the carrier's opening position, not its last word - which is the point of a form that asks your volume.

What changes over time matters more than the first quote. On your own contract, every parcel you send is volume the carrier sees against your name, and the next negotiation starts from it. On borrowed rates, your growth improves the platform's position with the carrier, not yours. That is reasoning about how volume pricing works rather than a measured result, but it is the reason the gap between the two routes tends to move one way as a shop grows.

When a parcel goes missing, you deal with the carrier

The clearest statement of how claims split comes from a shipping platform. Sendcloud tells its users that “for any incidents related to shipments made with your own rates (your own contract), you must contact the carrier directly” ^S6, and that “if you ship with your own carrier contract, the claim has to be opened directly with the carrier, not with Sendcloud.” ^S7 On its own rates, Sendcloud files the claim with the carrier for you, and notes that “Sendcloud has no direct control over how quickly they respond.” ^S7

Either way the carrier decides. The difference is whether you are its customer when it does. On a contract you have a named relationship, terms you signed and, at most carriers, more cover to buy. DPD Lietuva insures parcels automatically to a goods value of €520 in Lithuania, and adds that “business customers have the additional possibility of arranging for higher insurance.” ^S12 LP EXPRESS's business self-service includes €500 of goods insurance. ^S3 UPS's Lithuanian terms - a 2017 revision - cap liability at “proven damages of EUR 85 per shipment” where no international convention applies, unless you declare a higher value. ^S13

The invoice, the terms and the cash are yours

A contract sets how you pay, and the carrier writes it down. Lietuvos paštas lets business customers “atsiskaityti laikotarpio pabaigoje pagal vieną sąskaitą-faktūrą” - pay at the end of the period against one invoice. ^S11 UPS's Lithuanian terms make charges due within seven days of receiving the invoice. ^S13 A platform bills on its own cycle instead: Sendcloud invoices shipping on its rates every two weeks, with 14 days to pay. ^S14

Cash on delivery follows the contract too. On your own account the carrier collects and remits to you under terms you can read; UPS's Lithuanian terms, for example, give you 45 days from delivery to report a missing COD remittance. ^S13

Watch the software layer as well. A direct contract stops the carrier's price being resold, but some platforms still charge per label on top: Sendcloud does not invoice shipping costs on a direct contract, but “a label fee will still apply for label creation” ^S14 - €0.07 to €0.10 a label on top of a €28–€639 monthly plan. ^S9 Count that line separately from the carrier's rate.

Your rates survive a change of software

This one is structural rather than sourced. A contract is between you and the carrier, and the software that prints your labels only borrows your credentials - an API key or a login the carrier issues to your account. Lietuvos paštas, for one, gives contract customers access to its open API. ^S11 Change your label software, your shop platform or your warehouse, and the rate, the account history and the claims process stay where they were.

Borrowed rates do not travel. They belong to the platform, which is why, for example, Sendcloud's free plan lets you “only ship using Sendcloud's rates”. ^S9 Leave the platform and the rates stay behind, along with anything built on them, such as return labels issued on its account. You start the conversation with the carrier from zero, holding your order history rather than your shipping history.

In the Baltics, it is the main road to the local carriers

For a shop in Western Europe the choice between borrowed rates and a contract is a real one. From the Baltics it is narrower. Shopify Shipping's carrier accounts cover ten countries, none of them Baltic; in Poland the option is DHL eCommerce Poland. ^S8 Sendcloud “fully supports shipping from 8 European nations”, none of them Baltic, and lets you ship from Poland only “if you have an invoice address” in one of them “and a direct contract with a supported courier”. ^S9 Local resellers exist, but the two names most shops start with do not sell labels from Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia.

So Baltic shops mostly ship on their own contracts already. In OrderKrab's October 2026 data, 97.7% of the carrier labels created by a few dozen Lithuanian shops went out on a contract directly with the carrier, and the rest through a reseller's account. ^S10 That is a tool built around own contracts, so read it as what its users do rather than as a market figure; the multi-carrier side of the same data is in what a month of shipping labels says about running more than one carrier.

When borrowed rates are the right call

Often enough that the case for a contract is not “always”. On published prices an aggregator is sometimes simply cheaper per parcel: the cost comparison's one fully public lane, Smartposti lockers within Estonia, comes out in the aggregator's favour at list prices. Borrowed rates are the right call when:

• You ship a few dozen parcels a month. Sendcloud's free plan covers up to 20 parcels a month “with no courier contract and no subscription fee” ^S9, and LP EXPRESS itself pitches a business account at 50 or more. ^S3 Below that, a contract is paperwork for a rate you may not get.
• You ship a lane you have no volume on. An occasional parcel to a far destination is where a reseller's pooled volume is most likely to beat a quote you could get alone - reasoning, so price the lane first.
• You need to ship tomorrow. Borrowed rates work on day one; a contract takes a form, a call and a signature.
• You want one invoice and one support desk more than you want the lowest rate, which for a team of one is a fair trade.

Nothing forces one route for every parcel. A shop can run its own contracts for the lanes that carry its volume and keep a reseller for the odd parcel to somewhere new. The case for the contract gets stronger as volume grows and lanes concentrate; the cost comparison shows how to find where that happens for your parcels.

Getting your first contract

1. 1

   Know your numbers

   Parcels a month, size mix and destinations. Monthly volume is the one shipping question DPD Lietuva's and Smartposti's forms ask. ^S1,S2

2. 2

   Ask two or three carriers, in writing

   Base rate per size and lane, every surcharge and what it applies to, the COD fee, payment terms, liability per parcel and the cost of higher cover.

3. 3

   Ask for API credentials with the contract

   Label software connects with credentials issued to your account, not your web login. Lietuvos paštas, for example, offers contract customers API access. ^S11

4. 4

   Print a test label before the first real one

   Check the label format, the sender address and the service code on a test parcel. What each carrier asks for, carrier by carrier, is in how to open a business account with a carrier.