Magento

I’ve been following the Magento development for 6 months now and plan on putting it on a major commercial system in a few months, hopefully when 1.0 comes out, one big thing that we have been looking at is shipping, namely rate shopping, carriers that are supported, and such.  Anyway, I have a few questions that I’m hoping someone can answer in terms of what is there now and what is anticipated in 1.0

* What carriers are support?
* Is Rate comparison supported?
* Does it support internal and external rates?  Meaning, we have a discount rate with FedEx but we display the real rate and make a small profit on the difference.
* How flexible is it in determining packaging?  For example, someone orders 4 shirts and a poster.  The shirts will go in one box and the poster will go in a tube that has an extra charge because of the odd shape, so there are 2 packages and one with an extra charge.

Thanks very much for any input.

best,
shawn

* How flexible is it in determining packaging?  For example, someone orders 4 shirts and a poster.  The shirts will go in one box and the poster will go in a tube that has an extra charge because of the odd shape, so there are 2 packages and one with an extra charge.

* What carriers are support?

Right now we support real-time rates for USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL.
We also have Table rate shipping, Free shipping and Fixed amount shipping.

* Is Rate comparison supported?

Not sure what you mean by this but we show all available methods side by side at shopping cart and checkout .

* Does it support internal and external rates?  Meaning, we have a discount rate with FedEx but we display the real rate and make a small profit on the difference.

You can add handling fees to the FedEx (and UPS, USPS and DHL)

* How flexible is it in determining packaging?  For example, someone orders 4 shirts and a poster.  The shirts will go in one box and the poster will go in a tube that has an extra charge because of the odd shape, so there are 2 packages and one with an extra charge.

This will not be offered out-of-the-box with Magento for version 1.

I hope this helps

Thanks

yoav

Excellent, thank you for your response!