Shippo Review 2021 – Easy To Use Shipping Solution

The ecommerce industry is growing at a very rapid pace worldwide, and sales are expected to reach 6.54 trillions US dollars by 2022. The current COVID-19 situation has even fueled it more and now more people are buying it online than before. So, this one of the best times to be in the ecommerce business and start your online store.

Starting your store is an easy part, but managing it and keeping your customers happy requires a lot of work. In an ecommerce business, the satisfaction of the customers purely depends on how well you have handled the order fulfillment of the products ordered. Although there are many tasks involve with an ecommerce business, but order fulfillment and specifically shipping is one of the critical task for keeping your customers happy.

Managing order fulfillment and shipping is simple when your store is smaller but as it grows, shipping is not the easiest things to manage. You have to manipulate through multiple shipping carriers to ensure the products delivered to your customers all over the world in the best possible time and cost. You also need to handle the return from the customers who reject their deliveries in best possible way.

Fortunately, there are plenty of software solutions available that are specifically developed for the shipping management and one of them are Shippo. It’s a shipping management software that’s easy to use and set up and offers a pay as you go model for the beginners. In this Shippo review, we will be looking at all the features it offers, its pricing, its pros and cons, compare it with similar tools and if it is worth your money or not?

Shippo Review: Overview

Shippo is a cloud-based shipping software that you can connect with your ecommerce store for shipping solution and management. It will help you manage your entire shipping and return management for your ecommerce store.

Shippo was founded by Laura Behrens Wu in 2013 and has office in  San Francisco, and employees in Chicago, Argentina, and other countries across the globe. It can serve the global market and handle everything from the moment the customer makes a purchase to the product is delivered safely.

It allows merchants to compare the shipping rates from various carrier solution. It works with all big shipping partners such as DHL, UPS, FedEx, USPS etc. Not only that, but it also offers  ‘next day delivery‘ to all its customers.

Shippo Review: Features

Shippo comes with lots of features from a convenient dashboard to various advanced integrations and add-ons. Some great features of Shippo are as follows:

• Easy to use dashboard – Shippo has an easy-to-use dashboard and beginner-friendly back-end interface.
• Shipping features – Shippo allows you to view and select best shipping rates for your products from a range of carriers. It also offers shipping label discounts from all major shipping carriers like UPS, USPS, DHL etc.
• Multi-channel sync – Shippo integrates and connects with various shipping carriers, ecommerce marketplaces and ecommerce providers. It also automatically sync orders between various platforms, and you can handle everything from their easy-to-use admin backend.
• Shipment tracking – Shippo allows you to track every order you accept on your store, and you can even get the estimated time for the shipment to reach the destination. This helps you to give your customers more realistic and personalized shipping experience when they are shopping from your ecommerce store.
• Shipping labels – Using Shippo you can print your shipping labels at a click of button and allows you to print up to 100 labels at the same time. You can also save time by creating templates of the labels you create and also pre-filling the information on customs form, if you are shipping internationally to  expedite the entire process.
• Reporting and analytics – Shippo enables you to check the summary of your shipping and fulfillment operations. You can check various in-built reports like how much you’ve spent on shipping, average price per package as well as how many shipping labels you’ve purchase in daily, weekly or monthly basis.
• International shipping – You can print customs forms from within the Shippo dashboard to reach out the international customers. Shippo also comes with built-in address validation that you can use to ensure the customer address is real and authentic before shipping the products.

Shippo Review: How It Works

Shippo connects to your ecommerce platform and provides you the functionality to manage the order fulfillment process from the moment a customer places a order on your store. It connects with all the major ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace and online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Etsy to streamline your fulfillment process.

Shippo will automatically sync with your store and fetch the order details whenever an order is placed on your store. Then, it allows you to select the carrier for the shipping process for the order. It integrates with all major shipping carriers such as UPS, DHL, USPS, FedEx etc and provides you exclusive discounts to you on the shipping cost for all orders.

In the Shippo dashboard, you can check the different available carriers for your order as well the discounted rates for each one and compare them to decide the best possible option to ship the products to your customers.

Connect Your Store to Shippo

Shippo connects with almost all ecommerce shopping cart solution and online marketplaces. Shippo integrates directly with following ecommerce platforms:

• Amazon
• BigCommerce
• eBay
• Etsy
• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• Magento
• Squarespace
• Spree Commerce
• Selz
• Weebly
• Wix
• and many more

You can connect Shippo to your ecommerce platform either from your ecommerce platform or from your existing Shippo account.

Connecting from your platform

To connect to the Shippo from your ecommerce platform follow the following steps:

1. Find Shippo in the app store of your platform and download it
2. Create a Shippo account and click Register on the Shippo app
3. Your store will automatically be connected with Shippo

Connecting from your existing Shippo account 

To connect to your ecommerce platform from your existing Shippo account, navigate to Settings -> Stores in your Shippo account and select your desired ecommerce platform from the list of platform shown:

On the following page, enter the requested information such as your store URL, and click on the connect button.

Next page will connect you to enter your store credential to login to your store, enter the details and your store will be connected to Shippo.

Uploading Orders via CSV

After you have connected to your ecommerce platform, Shippo will sync with your store and will automatically fetch any new orders. But if you any previous orders, and you need to ship those, you can do that by uploading the orders via a CSV file in your Shippo admin panel. To upload orders via CSV file, navigate to Orders Page and click on the button Upload CSV on the top-right, it will open the page to upload the CSV file as follows:

Drag your CSV file or click Select File to choose your CSV for upload, you can also download the sample CSV file and create your CSV file using it. Once the file is selected, assign the appropriate Shippo categories to the CSV columns and verify the fields are matched correctly, then click Upload.

Once the file is imported, it will display the summary of how many orders are imported successfully and how many have failed. If there is any errors, you can re-edit those orders in CSV file and re-upload it.

Accessing Carriers in Shippo

Shippo integrates with many shipping carriers worldwide for shipping label creation and tracking services. Some of the major carriers connected with Shippo are as follows:

• DHL Express
• FedEx
• UPS
• USPS
• Asendia US
• APC Postal
• LaserShip
• Newgistics
• Australia Post
• Fastway Australia
• Canada Post
• Purolator
• and many more

Shippo provides discounted rates for shipping whenever available, depending on the countries you’re shipping to and from. You can connect your shipping carriers account to see the rates and purchase shipping labels.

To connect your carrier account, navigate to Carriers page in Shippo admin and click on the button Connect Carrier Account on the top-right of the page. It will open a modal window with a list of all the carriers, select the desired carrier you wish to connect, or you can even search for the carrier.

Enter the required information on the next page and your carrier will then be listed under the Your Accounts tab on the carriers page.

Creating Labels in Shippo

Once you’ve connected to the shipping carriers in Shippo and imported the orders via CSV, or it has been fetch automatically, you can create shipping labels for those orders. Shippo allows you to create up to 100 labels at a time. You can also create a manual order and label in Shippo.

To create multiple labels at once, navigate to the orders page and select all the orders to be included for batch labels creation.

If you already have package information entered and rates loaded, you will be able to proceed with the purchase, by clicking the green Purchase X Labels button. If this button is not clickable, then you may need to enter the package information. To achieve this, click the Edit x Orders, then Edit Packages.

If you require, you can also add additional services to your batch label printing. To perform this simply click Shipment Options at the bottom of the page. This will open a context menu that will allow you to adjust the shipments date, add signature confirmation, insurance, and automatic return labels. Once you have selected all the additional services simply click save then proceed to purchase your labels. 

Once rates load, you will be able to press the green Purchase x Labels button and on the next page confirm the purchase of the shipping labels

Once you are done, you can download your labels, packing slips, and send notification emails to your customers. You can also download labels and packing slips at a later time from the Orders Page or Shipments Page.

All shipping labels that you create on Shippo can be personalized with your logo and brand colors and also there are various formats and options available to choose from. You can even create branded tracking pages that your customers can use to view and track order details and also send customized notification emails to your customers for consistent brand experience.

Scheduling Package Pickups in Shippo

After you have created the shipping labels, you can schedule the package pickup for USPS or DHL from within the Shippo. When scheduling a USPS or DHL pickup, Shippo will pre-fill all customer information on the pickup form for you. To create a pickup for these carriers you will need to ensure you have:

• At least one transaction of USPS or DHL with the shipment date of today or tomorrow
• A valid sender or company address in your Addresses Tab
• A valid phone number

To create a package pickup schedule, navigate to Shipments page and select USPS or DHL from the Schedule Pickup drop-down on the top-right.

Review the package information on the pickup page. Then click Schedule Pickup.

You’ll then be navigated to the Shipments page and will receive a notification at the top of the page with your confirmation number and the date of your pickup.

If you are scheduling a pickup for FedEx or UPS, you will need to do it directly at the carrier’s website. Please follow the instructions as specified on their respective website.

Printing Packing Slips in Shippo

Packing Slips in Shippo can be printed in ZPL, PNG, or PDF formats and are available for all orders fulfilled in Shippo to sent it with your packages.

You can change the packing slips preferences from label settings page by navigating to Settings → Labels in Shippo admin dashboard.

To download and print the packing slip, navigate to Orders page and click on the drop-down arrow next to the Fulfilled or Create Label button. Click on Download Packing Slip to download the packing slip in your computer.

You can also print multiple packing slips by selecting multiple orders on the Orders page and clicking on the arrow next to the Create label for selected orders button at the bottom right. Then click on Download packing slips for selected orders 

Shippo also allows branded packing slips for pro and premier plan customers that enables you to add your company’s branding to customize the packing slips in Shippo. To add branding to packing slips in Shippo, navigate to Branding Setting page by clicking on Settings on the left navigation panel and then click on Branding.

You can add your company’s logo and brand color on this page that will be used on the packing slips, email notifications and order tracking page.

Shipping Insurance in Shippo

Shippo also offer 1-click discounted insurance through their partnership with Shipsurance, a leading third-party provider of package insurance. Shipsurance coverage offers:

• Up to 50% discounts compared to carrier-provided insurance
• Simple, rapid, and paperless claims processing
• Coverage for packages to domestic and international destinations

You can purchase insurance while creating a label in Shippo. While creating your label, you will see the Buy additional insurance section. Enter the value of coverage you wish to purchase in the Insurance amount box and select the currency.

Entering the value in Insurance amount box field will open the Package content for insurance box. List the package contents in this field Package content for insurance.

Inventory Management Integrations in Shippo

Shippo also integrates with various inventory management providers to provide you seamless experience where you can manage your sales orders, stock levels, and process shipping. You can carry all these tasks from within Shippo admin dashboard. Shippo integrates with the following inventory management platforms:

• Freestyle Solutions
• ecomdash
• ShopMaster
• Picqer
• Fulfil.IO
• Duoplane
• Boxstorm
• Orange Manager
• TradeGecko
• Peoplevox
• SKUlabs
• Serlo
• Fishbowl
• Snapfulfil

Shippo also provides partial fulfillment feature which allows you split the order into different shipment. This feature is extremely helpful when customers have bought something from your store and that is probably out of stock right now. In that case, you can split the order in multiple shipments and fulfill the order.

Shippo Review: Reporting and Analytics

Shippo has reporting and analytics feature that allows you to see an overview of your order fulfillment process over a period of time. You can view the number of labels purchased, total shipping spent, and your average price per package by filtering for a given date range.

You can access this information on Analytics page by clicking on Analytics on the left toolbar in your Shippo dashboard.

Clicking on any sub-category box will display a graph based on your purchases by the total number of labels used in a given period of time.

• Number of Labels Purchased will display a chart for the number of labels used for each carrier over a given period of time
• Total Shipping Spent will display a chart showing the amount spent on shipping over a given period of time
• Average Cost Per Label will display a graph for the average cost of your labels over a given period of time.

Shippo Review: Pricing

Shippo provides users with few different plans to choose from that are suitable for small ecommerce merchants to the established one. The choice of plan you select depends on the number of shipments you send out each month.

Pay As You Go Plan

The pay as you go plan is great for small ecommerce merchants, as there are absolutely no commitments attached to this plan. This plan costs you $0.05 per shipment (plus the cost of postage) and includes:

• Up to 5,000 shipments per month
• One user account
• No monthly fees
• USPS discounts
• API access
• Global carrier discounts
• Use your negotiated rates
• Unlimited carrier accounts
• Unlimited platform integrations
• Web app
• API  for Orders Endpoint
• Email support
• US address validation
• Global Address Validation @ $0.09 per validation

Professional Plan

Shippo professional plan is loaded with extra features and starts at just $10/month, and it doesn’t charge $0.05 cents per label fee. This plan will cost you more depending on how much shipping labels you want to print per month, and it costs between $10-$125 per month (plus the cost of postage). For up to 60 labels, the cost is $10/mo, for 200 labels its $25/mo and for up to 10000 labels its $200/mo.

This plan includes everything in the Pay As You Go plan, plus:

• 0 per-label fee
• Five user accounts
• Custom Branding for Packing Slips
• Custom Branding Email Notifications
• Custom Branding for Tracking Pages
• Custom text for email notifications
• Global Address Validation @ $0.08 per validation

Premier Plan

Premier plan provides everything in the Professional plan, as well as technical implementation assistance, dedicated customer support, and up to 15 user accounts. The Premier plan is comes at custom pricing and with everything in the Professional plan and:

• Technical implementation assistance
• Dedicated customer support
• 15 user accounts
• APIs for Order Endpoint and Batch Endpoint
• Multi-piece shipments
• Integration specialist
• À la carte package tracking
• À la carte address verification
• Global Address Validation @ $0.06 per validation

Shippo Review: Customer Service & Support

Shippo provides various types of customer support resources. You can contact them via email, live chat and social media etc, Here are the few customer support options available at Shippo:

• Email: All users have access to customer support via email.
• Support Form: Submit a support form and customer support will reach to you via email.
• Live Chat: Professional and Premier plan users can access customer support through live chat.
• Help Center: Shippo’s Help Center provides articles and FAQs that answer your questions.
• White Papers: Shippo’s white papers include relevant surveys, reports, and e-books.
• Videos: Shippo’s YouTube page features short tutorial videos that teach Shippo’s basic features.
• Find An Adviser: Users on the Premier plan gain access to dedicated customer support.
• Blog: Read product announcements and articles on efficient shipping practices.
• Social Media: You can contact Shippo on their social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Live chat is only available to the users on professional and premier plans, if you are on free plan you can submit a support form and have someone reach out to you via email.

If you need to connect to Shippo team fast, you can try reaching them out on their social media accounts available, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  If you’re on Premier plan, you’ll have dedicated customer support.

Shippo Review: Security

Shippo doesn’t offer many advanced security features, such as the ability to create user accounts with various permissions. This means all the users of the Shippo has the same set of permissions, and it can be a problem for your company if you need to provide a different level of control to your team members.

Shippo also doesn’t offer much information about its data security as offered by their alternatives like ShipStation. Shippo is compliant with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework, and the site uses HTTPS security in the admin dashboard. 

Shippo Review: Pros & Cons

Now let’s discuss some pros and cons of Shippo. Shippo has some great features that makes it ideal for new ecommerce merchants but has some drawbacks also. Knowing both pros and cons will help you better before purchasing a paid subscription.

Shippo Pros

• Returns Made Simple – Shippo makes handling returns a seamless experience while at the same time, maintaining great customer experience. It also allows you to automate the return labels printing process and saves your time having to do the manual way.
• Great Carrier & Marketplaces Integrations – Shippo integrates with over 55 shipping carriers and 25 shopping carts. You can even integrate more than one store or marketplace, so if you are selling your products in multiple locations all of your fulfillment can be managed from one place.
• Ease of Use – Shippo is easy to set up and use making it a good option for beginners as well as more advanced sellers. It has very smooth learning curve, and you don’t need to be expert to integrate this shipping software to your online store. 
• Discounted Shipping – Shippo provides shipping discounts to all users irrespective of their shipping volume and provide all customers instant access to the best shipping rates. This is very useful for smaller merchants who have just started, they can provide cheap shipping or even free shipping to their customers and increase their sales.
• Flexible Pricing Model – The Pay As You Go pricing model is great for smaller businesses with fewer orders, as its doesn’t require any monthly commitments, just a small fee per shipment apart from the postage costs.

Shippo Cons

• User interface not ideal for big merchants – Shippo user interface is great for smaller merchants who sent less than 5000 shipments per month, but not so great for a retailer who handles 10,000+ orders each month. Unfortunately, they don’t provide some advanced user interface that is required by big merchants for handling bulk shipping, you need to rely on Shippo API for that.
• Customer support issues – For smaller merchants who are on pay as you go plan, it can be difficult to get in touch with the customer service team. If you need any issues and want to contact customer service the only option is to contact them via support tickets, that can delay the response time. 

Shippo Review: Alternatives

Shippo is a great tool to manage your entire shipping and return management for your ecommerce store, but but there are some other tools also that are as good as Shippo. Let’s have a look at some of them:

• Shippo vs ShipStation –  ShipStation is also a cloud-based tool for managing the entire shipping and order fulfillment process like Shippo. It is capable of integrating with various ecommerce platforms, online marketplaces, shipping carriers, payment gateway solutions, and other sales channels. ShipStation offer a free trial period of 30 days and after that, the cheapest plan is $9 / month.
• Shippo vs ShippingEasy – ShippingEasy is a software-as-a-service solution that you can use to streamline your business fulfillment operations.   You can integrate it with various ecommerce platforms, online marketplaces, shipping carriers, payment gateway solutions, and other sales channels. It also offers  completely free trial on all packages and doesn’t require a credit card and also offers a starter package for FREE to ship a maximum of 50 packages per month.
• Shippo vs EasyShip – EasyShip is also a cloud-based tool for managing the entire shipping and order fulfillment process. It integrates seamlessly with lots of sales channels such as ecommerce platforms, online marketplaces, shipping carriers, payment gateway solutions etc. It offers a FREE package to ship a maximum of 100 packages per month and after that, the cheapest plan is $29 / month.

Shippo Review : Conclusion

We have reviewed all the features of Shippo and also mentioned some of its alternative, it is a fantastic tool for ecommerce merchants both for startup, or a scaled-up one. It has one of the most flexible pricing plan and the pay as you go plan is great for the smaller ecommerce merchants.

You can use it to manage your entire shipping and fulfillment process from one place, even if orders are coming from different platforms such as Shopify, Amazon, or other ecommerce platforms.