If you sell products online, shipping and logistics will be an important part of your process. Lots of businesses work directly with the carriers they know best—UPS, USPS, or FedEx—but it’s often more expensive to use these shipping services than to work with an online shipping hub built to meet small business needs.
Online shipping hubs work with multiple carriers and pass along low shipping rates to their customers. Most also have automation options and streamlined tools for processing, batching, tracking, and returns.
Here, we share three options that work well for business owners throughout the United States:
Easyship
- Free package includes up to 100 shipments per month
- $49 per month package includes up to 2,500 shipments per month
- Easily compare rates across shipping carriers
- Automate with custom rules
- Generate return labels
Shipstation
- $9 package includes up to 50 shipments per month
- Generate discounted shipping labels
- Inventory management included
- Wide range of integrations available
WARE2GO
- Matches you up with third parties with unused warehouse space
- 99.9% US covered by 2-day shipping and 91% by 1-day shipping
- Over 80 integrations, including Shopify, ShipStation, Amazon, and Walmart
Easyship
Easyship is a great option for growing businesses. This robust solution offers more than 250 courier service options with unbeatable prices on deliveries.
Many owners with e-commerce sites opt for Easyship because it allows them to include dynamic shipping rates at checkout. With this feature, shoppers can select the shipping methods that best suit their needs right on the spot, factoring in price and delivery speed.
Easyship’s software makes shipping a breeze for business owners. This solution allows owners to quickly gather shipping quotes, create labels, schedule pickups, and monitor their shipping spend all from a single platform.
Easyship offers a free shipping program that allows owners to ship up to 100 packages per month, but the free plan lacks a few features that may be important for your business. These include branded tracking, multi-box shipments, and easy-to-access customer support. Their Plus package (which starts at around $29/month, plus the costs of shipping) includes these features and allows owners to send up to 500 packages per month through their platform. Owners with larger order fulfillment needs might go for their Premier package (starting at around $49/month, plus the costs of shipping), which allows for up to 2,500 shipments per month.
You can explore Easyship’s features and sign up for a free 30-day trial here.
ShipStation
ShipStation is another great shipping option for busy business owners. This solution offers branded shipping and returns, SMS tracking updates, and fulfillment automation to simplify the shipping process.
ShipStation integrates with all of the most popular selling sites, including Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, eBay, Etsy, WooCommerce, Wix, Walmart, and Volusion. It also teams with more than 50 carriers worldwide to optimize package delivery.
This shipping hub is best for single-location businesses with less than 5,000 shipments a month, but those with high-volume shipping needs may do better with ShipStation’s sister company, ShipWorks. We’ll introduce you to that option next.
You can ship up to 50 packages with ShipStation with their Starter plan for about $9/month (plus the costs of shipping). Many other packages are available for businesses with larger fulfillment needs, including their Silver package (starting at around $49/month, plus the costs of shipping), which allows for up to 1,500 shipments per month and introduces options for customized labels and packing slips.
You can try ShipStation for free for 30 days without putting a credit card on file. Get started by visiting ShipStation.com.
WARE2GO
If you have even higher volumes of sales—or are shipping very large items—you might consider WARE2GO.
WARE2GO is a network of warehouses located across the United States that can hold your inventory until it’s ready to ship. The benefit is that your goods will be closer to your customers and, likely, they’ll be eligible for 1-2 day shipping.
WARE2GO’s fulfillment platform is simple, streamlined, and easy to use. It connects to your supply chain and eCommerce systems to integrate your inventory and order data streams. WARE2GO boasts more than 80 integrations, including Shopify, Amazon, ShipStation, eBay, Wayfair, Walmart, and WooCommerce, as well as QuickBooks, TradeGecko, SellBrite, Ordoro, SellerCloud, and many others.
The pricing is fully customizable. The WARE2GO team will help you factor in product weight, volume, and special needs to build a plan that’s right for your business.
Ready to learn more? Visit WARE2GO.
What’s next?
Interested in other small business solutions? Let us help you find the right systems. Then, log into your owner’s portal for more articles and advice tailored to your business’s needs.
