Choosing the Best Ecommerce Shipping Solution

Choosing the best ecommerce shipping solution may seem difficult given the dozens of options now available for small to medium-sized businesses. Which one will make the biggest difference for your business?

Today most ecommerce shipping solutions share many common features and incentives, from label printing to price comparisons, to discounts. Here are five practical questions to help you identify the right solution for your most urgent shipping problems.

1. What is the best ecommerce shipping solution for my unique challenges?

The best ecommerce shipping solution for your business will integrate with your sales channels, accounting software, and other existing programs. It will also address your most important problems such as creating shipping labels faster and reducing shipping costs.

List the three most urgent shipping problems getting in the way of your success. Then, look for a solution with a reputation for solving them. Here are some examples:

American Paper Optics needed to handle peak seasons and spikes in order volume
eCard Systems needed to automate shipping and stop missing carrier pickup time
BW Retail needed a faster pick-pack-ship process
State & Liberty needed to keep up with explosive ecommerce growth
Blue Sky Distribution needed an easier way to print shipping labels for NetSuite

Five best shipping solutions to increase warehouse throughput

If your business is rapidly growing and you need to fulfill orders faster, here are our five top picks to increase throughput:

Descartes ShipRush – Best business automation to increase efficiency and cut processing time

Descartes XPS Ship – Best user-friendly, low-cost option for scalable operations

Easyship – Best courier network with 550+ global courier services

Shippo – Best developer-friendly platform for enterprise-level shipping APIs

ShipStation – Best selection of integrations with 150+ options

We go into more specific detail about warehouse throughput and why these are the five best solutions.

Best shipping apps for Shopify sellers

If you sell on Shopify, here are the winners for shipping solutions available in the app store:

Small business only selling on Shopify

Shopify Shipping – This is already in your Shopify account and ready to connect to your carrier.
Descartes XPS Ship – This user-friendly app allows you to easily add more sales channels and carriers as you grow.

Midsized business with multiple sales channels

Descartes ShipRush – This robust multi-carrier shipping app integrates with all your sales channels and allows you to automate rate shopping to find the fastest, cheapest shipping.
UPS – If you exclusively ship with UPS and already have deeply discounted rates, this app is a great way to integrate Shopify and your other sales channels for easier label printing.

International shipping for Shopify

EasyShip – This reputable multi-carrier shipping app integrates with 250+ carriers worldwide for easy international shipping.
Passport Shipping – This shipping app streamlines demand duties paid (DDP) shipping for Shopify merchants.

Midsized business with a warehouse

Descartes ShipRush – This shipping solution fully integrates with Descartes Peoplevox WMS (warehouse management system) to automate pick-pack-ship processes for Shopify and all other sales channels.

Learn more about the best shipping apps for Shopify sellers.

2. Which shipping solution offers the best shipping rate discounts?

Most shipping software companies offer similar shipping rate discounts. They negotiate discount rates with carriers and pass the savings to you. Generally, carriers provide the same discounted rates to all partners because they want shipping platforms to compete on value rather than price. They are careful to avoid pricing discrepancies. That means the “best USPS shipping discounts” will be similar from solution to solution, and you will likely see comparable cost savings no matter which platform you choose.

How do shipping rate discounts work?

Shipping rate discounts can change multiple times per year as shipping solutions receive updated rate cards from their carrier partners. You will typically see the biggest changes around the holidays as carriers apply peak season surcharges, but that’s not the only time frame.

Some carriers are more dynamic with their pricing throughout the year as they attempt to balance shipments across their networks. As a result, you may see different prices for the same shipments from month to month when carriers lower prices to win business away from competitors. Similarly, they will raise shipping prices if they are already full and not looking to acquire more shipping volume.

It’s important to note that these changes to shipping rates happen across the board with all third-party shipping software partners. No shipping solution can give you locked-in discounted rates.

3. Does the shipping solution integrate with my other programs?

As you evaluate ecommerce shipping solutions, ensure integration with your preferred sales channels, accounting software, CRM, ERP, warehouse management system, or other programs. Most ecommerce shipping software integrates with various other software, so make sure yours is supported.

Prevent double data entry

Integration between shipping and ecommerce platforms eliminates double data entry, prevents mistakes, and speeds up order processing. In addition, many integrations prevent back-and-forth communication about shipping status. Whether you use Shopify, eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Woocommerce, ChannelAdvisor, or another ecommerce platform, choose software that can automatically pull orders from all your sales channels and display them on one screen to easily print shipping labels.

Easily track parcel shipments

Similarly, your shipping software integration should allow you to easily track parcel shipments for every order, all in one place. The best platforms make it very easy for your customer support or warehouse team to answer the question, “Where is my order?” This is why solutions like Descartes ShipRush offer a grid view of shipments from all sales channels on one screen. You can sort by shipment status, quickly find the tracking link, and answer the customer’s question.

4. Does the shipping software have live customer support?

There’s nothing worse than facing a frustrating problem and trying to figure it out yourself with help center articles. When your business faces technical challenges, it’s very helpful to have an ecommerce shipping solution with live customer support to help you. Common scenarios include:

Setting up and configuring your shipping platform of choice
Responding to errors and unexpected problems
Customizing automation rules specific to your unique business needs

Choose a provider that truly acts as a business partner. You will want someone with a long-standing reputation for customer satisfaction, preferably with a live-staffed customer support team. Look for live-chat, call center hours, and email support in the contact information on their website.

5. Ready to try ecommerce shipping software?

Choosing new software can feel overwhelming, but look on the bright side—you’re one step closer to overcoming your most significant challenges and enjoying the success you’ve been working toward.

Ready to try shipping software for your business? Descartes ShipRush offers competitive shipping rates and features, easy setup, and live customer support backed by over 20 years of ecommerce shipping experience. Try it free for 15 days.