What are the postal rates for inland mail?

Domestic postage refers to the costs of sending a letter or package from your own country. In the Netherlands you can send a letter for €0,96. Depending on the weight of the letter you'll need to add more stamps above 20 grams. The maximum weight is 2KG for letters. When you choose for online franking of packages you can save €0,50 to €1,00 depending on the provider. A faster delivery often costs more money. You can check this with the provider too. But you can also make agreements about this if you are a business customer.

Why are there differences in domestic postal rates?

Most postal companies use different postal rates for business and private customers when sending items domestically. If you send more than 50 shipments per year, you can often enter into a contract with such a postal company. This way you can save a lot of money. A letterbox package is cheaper than sending a package. Check with the provider what rates they use. You also pay a bit more for a fast delivery than a normal delivery. This is quite logical since they might have to hire extra staff for this.

What are the postal rates for sending a parcel domestically?

The postal rates for sending a parcel inland start at €3.95 for a letterbox parcel. And at €4.50 for sending a parcel to a collection point. But you can also have a package delivered to someone's home from €5.75. Note that these rates are based on online shipping. When you do this at a parcel point the costs can be higher. There are also options from € 2.95 extra per package to send it registered or while insured up to 500 euros. This can be useful for a valuable product. With the track and trace code you can track the package. So you always know if and when it is delivered.

Who sets domestic postal rates?

Once or twice a year, the postal companies publish the postal rates for sending letters or packages. They base these prices on the performance of the past year. If many packages are sent, the price does not increase that much. If too few packages are sent, you can expect a steep price increase. In the Netherlands we see that DHL is taking over much of the parcel service. They currently offer these services at much lower prices, which means there is a lot of competition. POST NL tries to respond to this competition by adjusting its rates for business customers.

How can you save on inland postal rates?

The postal rates for domestic mail are always the same for private customers. However, you can save up to 1 euro by making a label online and printing it out. For business customers, there are options to buy x number of packages in advance. This way you can save a lot on sending letters or products. When it varies a lot they also offer a slightly more expensive but still advantageous rate. This applies to more than 50 letters or parcels per year and is therefore also intended for the small businessman.

Weight and postal rates domestic

Weight plays one of the biggest roles in domestic postal rates. This also makes pretty good sense because more weight means more space. But more space also means less room in the van they use to pick it up. And that results in more fuel and possibly more vans to maintain. That's why they make a distinction in the rates for a higher weight. It also costs the deliverer more energy to deliver it. And more time automatically means more money. So it's a combination of transport costs and wages which makes it more expensive. Always check the website of the sender for an overview of these costs.

Sending letters and parcels in the Netherlands

The postal rates for inland while within the Dutch border have risen sharply in recent years. This is because we are doing more and more digitally and the sending of mail is therefore decreasing by millions of kilos. However, we also see that the prices of parcels do not increase as much. This is because we are ordering them more and more. And especially during the corona crisis this was one of the few possibilities to get your stuff. This is why these prices have only increased a little bit. The reason why they have gone up anyway is that there is more and more competition on sending parcels. Not only postal companies but also courier services transport these. This also provides in more costs to still get those orders. And that will again be charged to the customer.