Lighter and flatter packaging: how to keep your shipping costs in check
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
5 min reading time
Shipping costs revolve around height, weight, and volume. This is how you keep your package below the letterbox limit and save on every shipment without compromising on protection.
Two webshops sell the same piece of jewellery for the same price. One ships it in a cardboard box with bubble wrap inside a shipping box, the other in a letterbox-friendly box 28 millimetres high. The first pays for parcel post, the second pays the rate for a letterbox parcel. Over a thousand shipments per year, that difference is greater than the entire margin on that piece of jewellery.
Shipping costs are rarely a matter of negotiation. They are a matter of staying below a certain limit – and those limits are about height, weight, and volume. Below is what you can do about it without your packages arriving damaged.
The limit that saves the most money: thickness
With PostNL, a letterbox parcel can be a maximum of 38 x 26.5 x 3.2 cm and weigh a maximum of 2 kg (source: postnl.nl, consulted in August 2026). Other carriers use their own dimensions, so always check the current conditions of the party you ship with.
What stands out about these numbers: weight is rarely the problem. Two kilograms is ample for most small products. Thickness, however, is. That 3.2 cm includes everything — box, filling, product, and tape. A package 28 mm high, such as the Recycled Letterbox Box A6 180 x 115 x 28 mm (bundle of 100, € 17.95) or the A5+-variant 255 x 160 x 28 mm (bundle of 100, € 24.00), still leaves a few millimetres. That's exactly the clearance you need for a sticker and a double layer of tape.
Therefore, don't measure your box, but your filled package. Lay it flat on a table and hold a ruler alongside it. What fits on paper sometimes just doesn't fit in practice because the box bulges from the filling.
Where the weight comes from
The product itself is fixed. The packaging is not. For light items, the packaging material can make up a significant part of the total weight, and that determines whether you fall into one tariff step or another.
Roughly from light to heavy:
Paper envelope. Lightest. A C6 Envelope 114 x 162 mm (50 pieces, € 4.00) weighs almost nothing but offers no protection.
Cardboard letterbox box. Heavier than an envelope, but holds its shape and protects the edges.
Shipping box with loose filling. Heaviest, and usually also the tallest. Necessary as soon as the product is not flat.
An often-overlooked middle ground: a cardboard box with a bubble envelope around it instead of a box in a box. You maintain the presentation and save on height. For small, flat products, Mini Pizza Boxes 85 x 85 x 20 mm (100 pieces, € 10.00) can also serve — 20 mm high leaves room within the letterbox dimensions.
Filling: less is often more
There's a misconception that "a lot of filling means safe packaging." What protects a product is not the amount of material but the fact that it cannot move. A product that fits snugly in a precisely sized box hardly needs any filling. A product that rattles in an oversized box won't always survive a thick layer of film.
Practically, this means:
Choose the box size based on the product, not on what you happen to have on hand. Two or three sizes in stock are enough to cover the vast majority of your shipments.
Wrap tightly once instead of loosely three times. From a roll like the Bubble Wrap Roll 500 mm x 500 m (€ 12.95) you take exactly what you need, instead of a fixed amount per package. For smaller volumes, there's the Bubble Wrap Roll 50 x 500 cm (€ 5.00).
Fill the corners, not the middle. That's where the impact occurs.
Tape sparingly but well. One strip over the seam plus the sides holds better than a box that is completely taped shut. A value pack like Tape Rolls 6 pieces 48 x 66 mm (€ 21.00) lowers your cost per shipment.
If you want to make it visible that a package has not been opened during transit, you can use a Security Seal VOID (60 pieces, € 9.95). It weighs almost nothing and doesn't add to the height.
Calculate it once for your own package
Take your best-selling product and fill this in:
Step
What you measure
Why
1
Weight of the product alone
This is fixed
2
Weight of your current packaging
Box, filling, tape, and label combined
3
Height of the filled package
Determines if it can be letterbox post
4
Shipping rate you currently pay
Compare with the tariff step below
5
Difference multiplied by number of shipments per year
This is what an adjustment yields
If step 3 shows you're a few millimetres over, it can almost always be solved: a thinner box, less film, or reorienting the product in the packaging. If you're significantly over, it's not a letterbox shipment and you'd better choose a box that's sturdy enough — you won't save anything there.
Also, be aware that carriers may charge by volumetric weight for larger packages: a light but bulky box will then be charged based on volume. Check this in your carrier's terms and conditions before switching to larger boxes on a large scale.
What you can do today
Pack three packages ready for shipment and measure them. If one of them is just over 3.2 cm, you've already made your first saving. Then buy in bundles — a bundle of one hundred letterbox boxes costs significantly less per piece than individual boxes — and stick to two to three sizes instead of five.
Are you unsure which box size fits your product, or would you like advice on buying in bundles? Email the dimensions of your product to info@verpakkingdeals.nl — and we'll help you find the best packaging.
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