As your order volume grows, shipping becomes both time-consuming and costly for online sellers. But, fast and accurate delivery is crucial to your customer experience. If you don’t offer fast and affordable rates, potential customers will decide to buy from someone else.
Needing an easier way to process online orders, many sellers turn to shipping software solutions to help with daily tasks like coordinating carriers, printing labels, and managing their returns process.
When Do You Need Shipping Software?
These are all typical challenges that online sellers face when trying to keep with customer demand. Are you experiencing any of the following?
- Growth: Can’t keep up with increase of online orders and getting them out the door
- High Costs: High shipping costs for you and your customers
- Slow Delivery Times: Shipping processing is slow and taking too much time
- Mistakes: Making mistakes like shipping to the wrong address
All the signs point to that your business could use shipping software to speed up your processes and increase your sales.
Advantages of Shipping Software
The main advantages of shipping solutions are:
- Obtain significant discounts from shipping carriers like USPS and UPS
- Import all online orders from different sales channels to a central location
- Speed up delivery with automated workflows to select carriers, print labels, and more
- Manage multiple carriers so you always ship with the best rate
- Handle returns
- Keep track of inventory to avoid stockouts
- Customer marketing like shipping notification emails
- Analytics and reporting
Comparing the Best Shipping Software for eCommerce
While there are many solutions available, we narrowed down our list to these top shipping solutions:
– Shippo
– EasyShip
Here’s a quick overview of how they stack up against one another.
| Software | Free Trial | Starting Price | Integrations | Customer Marketing | Support** | Mobile App |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ShipStation | 30-day | $9/mo for 50 shipments | 150+ | ✔ | 📧👱📞 | ✔ |
| Shippo | No* | 5 cents / label | 35+ | ✔ | 📧👱 | ✘ |
| EasyShip | 30-day | Free for 100 shipments / mo | 40+ | ✔ | 📧👱📞 | ✘ |
| ShippingEasy | 30-day | Free up to 50 shipments / mo | 65+ | ✔ (Add-on) | 📧👱📞 | ✘ |
| ShipWorks | 30-day | $49 / mo for 1,500 shipments | 90+ | ✔ | 📧📞 | ✘ |
| *Due to COVID-19, Shippo is offering their product free through 12/31/2020. | ||||||
| **Support: 📧 = email 👱= chat 📞= phone | ||||||
As you compare solutions, it can be difficult to decipher which one is best. Many companies have a long list of features. You have to determine which features are must-have or just “filler.”
Fortunately, all these options offer free trials so you can take a test-run of the software before you commit to it.
Top 5 Shipping Software for eCommerce
ShipStation
Best for U.S. Small to Mid-size Businesses
4.7 / 5 stars (698 reviews on Capterra)
Owned by Stamps.com, ShipStation is a leading shipping solution for eCommerce. They’re known for their user-friendly interface that allows users to import, organize, process, and ship from all their sales channels. You can access ShipStation from any web browser, and they’re the only provider with a mobile app.
ShipStation is also known for their extensive integrations (150+ sales channels), 30+ carrier discounts, and sophisticated automation features for workflows and saved filters. With ShipStation, you can handle just about any aspect of your shipping needs like creating orders, printing labels, comparing rates, handling returns, and customizing your customer experience.
Learn more here.
If you need to integrate ShipStation with an ERP or other backend systems, you’ll work with a partner like nChannel. Learn more about how nChannel can sync your shipping data from ShipStation with your existing systems.
Shippo
Best Multi-carrier Shipping Software for Growing Businesses
4.8 / 5 stars (446 reviews on Capterra)
Founded in 2013, Shippo has over 10,000 customers who send millions of packages to and from 196 countries with their platform. Their company began as primarily a shipping API, before adding their own app and dashboard. Today, they’re a partner for eBay’s Guaranteed Delivery Program, and also integrate with a handful of the top online sales channels.
With Shippo, sellers can generate labels, validate shipping addresses, compare multiple carriers, and ship internationally. They also allow you to provide tracking updates for your customers.
Due to COVID-19, Shippo is currently waiving all their software fees and offering their product free through 12/31/2020.
EasyShip
Best Global Shipping Software
4.4 / 5 stars (102 reviews on Capterra)
Founded in 2014, Easyship allows online sellers to compare services, print labels, and monitor tracking and shipments. Sellers can compare more than 250+ shipping options and receive shipping discounts up to 70%. If you’re looking to scale globally, EasyShip can deliver to 220+ countries and handles local custom regulations and duty and tax charges for you. They also have a global fulfillment network that you can leverage.
Also, EasyShip offers their Real-Time Shipping Rates plug-on, giving you the ability to show customers different shipping prices at checkout, so they can choose the best option for themselves. Easyship claims that their customers can increase conversions by 3x and revenue by 5x.
View their full feature list.
ShippingEasy
Best for Small Businesses
4.8 / 5 stars (1053 reviews on Capterra)
Founded in 2011, ShippingEasy is a cloud-based shipping provider that allows online sellers to accurately and quickly ship their orders. You can sync, manage, process, and print shipping labels for your eCommerce and marketplace channels like Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
Even on their free plan, sellers receive discounted USPS retail rates. All paid plans get access to USPS Commercial Rate and discounted UPS rates.
Beyond printing labels, ShippingEasy also gives sellers the ability to create email marketing campaigns that include: tracking numbers, gaethering reviews, abandoned cart emails, and more.
See their full list of features and pricing plans.
ShipWorks
Best for Mid-size Businesses and Warehouses
4.4 / 5 stars (30 reviews on Capterra)
Founded in 2000, ShipWorks is an ideal shipping solution for growing eCommerce businesses or warehouses. You can import orders from any of your sales channels or backend systems like an ERP/WMS and manage them from a centralized location. ShipWorks offers over 90 different integrations into their platform. They also have an Integration API so a developer could connect to any database or platform.
ShipWorks stands out from the rest of their competitors with their customization of their workflows and templates. They also offer extensive shipping options including air, container, freight, ground, and parcel.
As a veteran in the shipping space, ShipWorks is a window-based system that can be installed on multiple PCs.
How to Choose the Best Shipping Platform
Picking the best shipping platform for your business comes down to your unique needs. For each solution, pay attention to:
- Price for shipment volume
- What carriers you use and the discounts available
- Integrations into your existing systems
Keep reading about how to improve your shipping processes:
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