Ecommerce Shipping in Switzerland — Swiss Post Prices and Volumetric Weight

Ask what "ecommerce shipping" costs in Switzerland, and most of the answer comes from a single published source: Swiss Post's price list for business customers. Other couriers' prices are not covered here, so a Swiss store comparing options ends up setting that one public list against quotes it requests itself.

This article sets out Swiss Post's current business prices, the pickup networks that sit alongside home delivery, volumetric weight as the mechanism that decides what a bulky parcel really costs, and a framework for choosing a carrier that doesn't depend on numbers we can't confirm.

Swiss Post's business prices, valid from 1 January 2026

Swiss Post publishes a price list for business customers "valid from 1 January 2026," with two service levels — PostPac Priority and PostPac Economy — priced by weight bracket, all prices including VAT:

For time-critical shipments, the Swiss-Express "Moon" service is priced at CHF 17 / 23 / 29 / 38 depending on tier. Two discounts apply on top of the list price: an online discount of CHF 1.50 per parcel (incl. VAT), and a sales discount tied to monthly revenue excluding VAT — 2% from CHF 500, 4% from CHF 1,000, 6% from CHF 1,500, and 8% from CHF 2,000 per month. A business reply label, used for prepaid returns, costs CHF 0.50.

This article does not cover the prices of other Swiss couriers such as Planzer, DPD or DHL. If your store uses one of them, ask for a quote on your own parcel profile rather than assuming it tracks Swiss Post's list.

Pickup networks: My Post 24 and PickPost

Swiss Post runs two separate pickup networks. My Post 24, its self-service parcel locker network, covers "over 320 locations". PickPost, its staffed pickup-point network, covers "over 2,700 service points". The two numbers describe different kinds of location — unattended lockers versus staffed counters — so don't add them together as a single "pickup point" count.

On returns, Swiss Post's own page states that a "free return shipment with business reply label" is available: the retailer pays for the return through the reply-label mechanism rather than the customer paying upfront. How Swiss returns law actually differs from the EU's — notably, Switzerland has no statutory right of withdrawal for online purchases — is covered in full in returns and warranty in Switzerland; this article only covers the shipping side of a return.

Volumetric weight: the mechanism that can double your bill

Volumetric weight (dimensional weight) is a weight calculated from a parcel's dimensions rather than a scale: length × width × height, divided by a carrier-specific divisor. If the result is higher than the parcel's actual weight, the carrier can charge based on the calculated figure instead. The carrier terms we checked use divisors of 5,000 or 6,000, but the exact value and the weight threshold above which it kicks in depend on each carrier's own terms — check your own carrier's current contract rather than assume a figure.

A currency-free worked example shows why this matters: a box measuring 60 × 40 × 40 cm has a volume of 96,000 cm³. At a divisor of 6,000, that's a volumetric weight of 16 kg; at 5,000, 19.2 kg — regardless of what's actually inside. A 1 kg product shipped in that box can be billed as if it weighed 16 to 19.2 kg. Trimming a box by a few centimetres, or switching to a tighter-fitting size, can move a shipment into a materially cheaper bracket even when the product hasn't changed.

One EU rule is worth knowing about precisely because it does not apply within Switzerland: the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which caps empty space in ecommerce packaging at 50% from 1 January 2030 at the earliest. Switzerland is not an EU member, so the PPWR does not cover parcels sent within Switzerland. The PPWR does, however, treat a seller outside the EU that makes packaging available directly to end users in a member state as a producer, so check its rules for the parcels you ship to EU customers.

Own warehouse, or outsourced fulfillment?

Outsourced fulfillment means a third party receives your stock, stores it, and picks, packs and ships your orders, billed per unit of service rather than run as your own warehouse operation. It tends to make sense once packing time starts limiting how much you can sell, or when seasonal volume spikes beyond what your own team can absorb.

Before comparing any fulfillment provider's quote, work out your own cost per parcel — labour, packaging, storage space and the shipping line itself. We don't have Swiss fulfillment pricing we're confident enough in to publish here, so treat a provider's quote as the number to benchmark against your own cost, not against a figure in this article.

Choosing a carrier: six questions, not six prices

1. Profile your shipments. Volume per month, the share that fits a locker-size parcel versus needs a courier, the share heavy enough to trigger volumetric pricing, the share involving returns.
2. Measure your boxes against volumetric weight. Confirm your carrier's current divisor and threshold, and check whether a smaller box moves you into a cheaper bracket.
3. Start from the one public list you have. Swiss Post's business tariff is the clearest public reference point; get comparable quotes from any other courier you're considering, for the same weight and size.
4. Add the ancillary fees. Business reply labels for returns, cash-on-delivery handling where it applies, address correction — these sit outside the headline price.
5. Check platform integration. Whether your ecommerce platform has a ready connector for the carrier, whether tracking flows back into the order automatically, and whether return labels generate the same way.
6. Revisit the comparison regularly. Swiss Post's own list is dated "valid from 1 January 2026" — price lists change, so a quote from last year isn't a current one.

Shipping and returns cost is a recurring monthly line; add it to our ecommerce TCO calculator alongside your platform subscription and payment fees, and estimate the cost of launching a store with carrier integrations in our online store cost calculator. How all these cost lines add up is covered in how much an ecommerce website costs, cross-border shipping between Switzerland and the EU in cross-border ecommerce, and payment-side costs in online payment methods.