Express or Expedited Delivery? What is the difference?

Package delivery as a service has been growing exponentially in recent years, and it's not difficult to see why. As more people realize the benefits of small parcel shipments, the service range from parcel companies grows as well.

Arguably the two most popular delivery types offered from parcel delivery companies are Express and Expedited delivery types. Today, we’ll talk about both of them more in-depth, explain what each of them means and when to use each one of them.

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Express parcel delivery

Express deliveries are one of the fastest forms of shipping.. This means that a shipping company ensures that your parcel leaves the warehouse ASAP and it’s on the way to the receiver via the fastest route (when we talk about international shipping, it usually means by plane).

Normally, express offers will also involve a guaranteed delivery date, since you’re paying extra for your shipment to be sent out and delivered faster. Typically, it takes from 24 to 72 hours for your parcel to be delivered to the destination.

Main benefits of express delivery

Even though the express option is almost always more expensive than regular shipments, it’s much faster in its delivery. Typically, such a method is chosen by those who need to send out something urgent like business documents, products or those who simply want to make sure that their parcel arrives faster.

What is expedited delivery?

In the most simple sense, expedited deliveries are quite similar to express ones in terms that your package is prioritized over others since you’re paying for a faster delivery.

For a courier service provider, the term expedited, usually means a number of services resulting in deliveries faster than 3 working days.

This includes:

• Same-day delivery
• Next-day delivery
• Express delivery.

Main benefits of expedited shipping

The expedited delivery services provide similar benefits as the express one that we mentioned. 

While paying extra, you get guaranteed faster delivery times than with cheaper options. Since shipping companies work with high precision, the risk of a poor service is very low these days, even paying a higher price.

Routes today are measured using analytics and advanced technology, which ensures the most efficient delivery no matter we are talking about European or Global deliveries. 

This efficiency comes with the practice of minimizing checkpoints, increasing flexibility and even lowers costs for the shipping company.

The difference between express and expedited delivery

Some shipping companies differentiate between expedited deliveries and express ones. However, essentially, both of these mean the same thing.

Of course, this can often get confusing for customers.

To understand the main difference, one should pay attention to what the company is offering for the expedited and the express options. Some companies interpret express delivery as next-day or same-day delivery services, which ensure maximum speed. 
Meanwhile, expedited, quite often means prioritized shipping which takes from 1 to 3 days for a parcel to be delivered.

All in all

In this article, we’ve talked about the difference between expedited as well as express deliveries. In the broader sense, both of these terms refer to the same thing, however, a customer must pay attention to what each company offers, to see the exact difference.