Top Shipping Apps for Ecommerce & How to Integrate Them
Amazon set the pace. What started as an online bookstore quickly diversified, and within years of startup, Amazon decided the best way to get products to its customers quickly was investment in supply chain management. Today, the company’s vast logistics network includes more than 100 U.S.-based warehouses and thousands of delivery vehicles and drivers.
By immersing itself in logistics, Amazon revolutionized ecommerce and shipping. The familiarity, ease of use, trustworthiness, and speed of this ecommerce giant raised consumer expectations to a baseline of free 2-day shipping and the ever-present option for even faster service, including same-day delivery.
Then, when the pandemic struck, it rapidly accelerated the race for retailers to find the fastest, cheapest, and most reliable shippers to keep up with a surge in online shopping. Today, many ecommerce businesses are still trying to catch up.
Traditionally, retail businesses negotiated rates with individual carriers to reduce shipping costs. However, those partnerships did not always optimize shipping routes or times—especially for brands that manage their own small, geographically limited warehouses and distribution centers. This made many retailers vulnerable to competitors that can deliver products faster and cheaper.
But retailers weren’t the only ones trying to find the best path forward. Other companies caught on, too, realizing there had to be a way to simplify everything shipping-related. This led to a rapid rise in shipping application development and usage. One research group estimated the shipping software market to be at nearly $2.65 billion in 2023, forecasting it would continue to increase with a compounded annual growth rate (GAGR) of almost 7%, exceeding $4.4 billion by 2030.
With so many applications on the market and more spinning every day, knowing which one may be right for your business can be challenging. However, with the right knowledge and planning, you, too, can reap the benefits of online shipping apps to reduce costs, ensure compliance, and meet your customer expectations to get the right products to them quickly and on time.
How Do Shipping Apps Work?
Apps for shipping are designed to help businesses streamline, automate, and optimize the shipping process, creating increased efficiencies and cost savings.
While every application offers unique features, here are some of the most common ones that can help brands with shipping management:
Automated Label Generation
Retailers that use a warehouse management system (WMS) with order management capabilities can simplify this process and reduce errors by connecting data from order status, like via Shopify, directly with well-known shipping apps, carriers, and label providers. These integrations ensure all the correct information is where it needs to be, decreasing the likelihood a package will be held up or lost because of incorrect shipping data.
Tracking
Most shipping apps track orders from multiple carriers, increasing visibility and transparency for retailers and customers. Many tracking apps do this in real-time, so you always know where your package is and when to anticipate delivery.
Rate and Carrier Comparison
Instead of doing tedious research and comparisons on your own, shipping software can instantly compare rates from different carriers so you can find the most affordable shipping option and best carrier for each order.
International Shipping
Some shipping tools also have information about international shipping rates and carriers, covering everything from automatic generation of customs forms and other documentation to ensuring import and export compliance, and accurate delivery.
Returns Management
Some shipping apps also have features that help manage returns, including generating return labels for customers with tracking information.
Inventory Management
Most shipping apps also integrate with your central systems for inventory management, which provide real-time visibility into your inventory levels as they align with order fulfillment and shipping.
Why Use Shipping Apps?
Shipping apps offer a range of benefits for brands–everything from automation to cost savings and from fewer errors to happy customers:
Increased Efficiency
Some small businesses may still manually create shipping labels, re-entering data from sales and order platforms into appropriate formats for shipping. This is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error-prone. One mistake can leave a package in limbo or returned to you. Shipping apps overcome this by automating shipping label generation exactly to each carrier’s specifications. Shipping apps that integrate with technology from basic pick and pack software to sophisticated order management solutions can even instantly pull that information from your orders based on pre-set parameters so your labels are ready when you need them.
Enhanced Order Fulfillment
When you integrate a shipping app with your inventory management system, you can quickly optimize your order fulfillment processes. Shipping apps provide real-time stock visibility to avoid stockouts and accurately fulfill orders. Some integrations can automatically alert businesses when a particular item is running low, proactively driving stock replenishment so you don’t have delayed orders.
Improved Customer Experiences
Shipping apps can also enhance customer experiences. Many offer real-time shipment tracking information so customers can easily find their package and know when it may be delivered. Transparency like this helps your brand meet customer expectations and builds trust in your business. Some apps also support returns, so your customers can quickly output a label and return a product.
The Top 7 Shipping Apps for Ecommerce
1. ShipEdge
Key Features: Shipedge supports multi-carrier shipping with negotiated rates, automated label generation and shipment tracking, real-time inventory management, order fulfillment features, and integration with accounting software
What Sets It Apart: Integrations with accounting software for streamlined financial management alongside shipping
Best for: Retailers needing more control over shipping costs and expenses
How It Helps: Simplifies shipping workflows, automates tasks, and integrates seamlessly with accounting software, creating a holistic view of shipping costs and overall profitability
Integrations: Popular accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero, along with other ecommerce platforms, and Extensiv
Ease-of-Use: Robust features with a slight learning curve for more advanced needs
2. ShipMonk
Key Features: ShipMonk has warehousing and fulfillment services, multi-carrier shipping with negotiated rates, inventory management across multiple locations, and international shipping capabilities
What Sets It Apart: Focuses on fulfillment for growing businesses, offering warehousing, picking and packing, and shipping services with automated returns management
Best for: Companies scaling fulfillment operations
How it helps: Provides a one-stop solution to outsource fulfillment
Integrations: Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Extensiv, and WooCommerce
Ease-of-Use: Simple interface, user-friendly
3. Shippo
Key Features: Shippo boasts robust API for developer customization, multi-carrier comparisons, rate shopping, automated label generation with USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others, and return management tools
What Sets It Apart: Highly customizable API allows developers to integrate shipping seamlessly into existing platforms
Best for: Retailers with unique workflows or that need deep integrations
How It Helps: Provides flexibility for brands with complex shipping requirements or those needing integrations with existing systems
Integrations: Open API allows for integration with virtually any platform, including Extensiv
Ease-of-Use: API friendly, but other features, like manual shipping tasks, may have a learning curve
4. ShipStation
Key Features: ShipStation features multi-carrier shipping with discounted rates, automated label generation and shipment tracking, built-in return management, and order management
What Sets It Apart: User-friendly interface with a range of features
Best for: Brands of all sizes, especially those with multiple integrations and functionality needs beyond shipping
How It Helps: Simplifies order management and automates core shipping processes like label generation, carrier selection, and tracking
Integrations: Extensiv, Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, WooCommerce, and others
Ease-of-Use: User-friendly, even for beginners
5. Stamps.com
Key Features: Stamps.com offers deep integration with USPS for discounted postage rates, automated shipping labels and tracking, return solutions, and integration with existing accounting software
What Sets It Apart: Focuses on USPS shipping with the deepest integration and often the most competitive rates for domestic USPS services
Best for: Ecommerce businesses primarily reliant on USPS
How It Helps: Simplifies USPS shipping processes, reduces postage costs, and streamlines integration with accounting software for efficient expense management
Integrations: Extensiv, popular ecommerce platforms like your Shopify store, eBay, and WooCommerce
Ease-of-Use: Easy to use, especially for retailers accustomed to USPS shipping
6. Veeqo
Key Features: Veeqo includes an inventory management system with multi-warehouse support, order management features, multi-carrier shipping with rate comparisons, and built-in return management
What Sets It Apart: Inventory management with features like real-time stock visibility across multiple locations
Best for: Retailers needing tight inventory control alongside shipping functionalities
How It Helps: Acts as a central hub for managing inventory, streamlining order fulfillment, and offering shipping options, creating a consolidated view of stock and order workflows
Integrations: Extensiv and popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, eBay
Ease-of-Use: Intuitive interface, well-designed user experience
7. Webgility
Key Features: Webgility provides inventory management with barcode scanning and multi-location support, multi-channel selling on various platforms, integrated shipping with major carriers, and order fulfillment automation
What Sets It Apart: Good for omnichannel sellers, including features to manage inventory and sales across multiple platforms
Best for: Retailers that sell on multiple marketplaces alongside their online store
How It Helps: Simplifies managing inventory and sales across different channels, automates order fulfillment, and has integrated shipping
Integrations: Extensiv and popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, eBay, Etsy
Ease-of-Use: Easy-to-use
Key Factors to Consider When Comparing Shipping Apps
When evaluating which shipping application is best for your business, a range of factors unique to your operations will ultimately influence your purchasing decision. Still, some commonalities apply across the industry:
Functionality, Flexibility and Scalability
To begin, how do the app's features align with your business needs? Is your business growing? Are you scaling back? Do you flex up and down throughout the year? Which specific functions would make your shipping processes more efficient?
Consider factors like multi-carrier shipping, international capabilities, automated order fulfillment, returns management, and ecommerce integrations with your existing key systems. By understanding the product’s features, you can ensure you will have the functionalities necessary to streamline your processes and automate manual tasks.
Cost and Efficiency
Just like any purchasing decision, your available budget will influence which shipping software options you’ll be able to consider. When evaluating options, gather information about each product’s pricing structure.
Look for other cost-saving opportunities, like task automation, templates, and out-of-the-box reporting. To take advantage of savings on discounted shipping rates, look for applications that offer negotiated carrier rates and additional savings like postage discounts or discounted rates for fulfillment management.
The right application should minimize shipping costs, help identify the most cost-effective carrier options, and automate common tasks to free up your resources and save other costs, like labor hours.
Ease-of-Use
Consider how user-friendly the interface is, especially if your employees are not particularly tech-savvy. If you need more advanced functionality, how intuitive is the interface? Do you need more training to get the most out of the app? What type of customer support and onboarding does the vendor offer?
The right solution should ensure everyone on your team quickly understands how to use the app and that it makes their day-to-day processes easier, so they’ll be more likely to buy in and use the product as intended.
Integrations
Evaluate the app's integrations with your existing ecommerce platform, accounting software, and other business tools like your WMS, order management tool, and inventory management software.
The right solution should work seamlessly with the tools you use most and unify data to get you valuable operational insights with analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
How to Choose the Right Shipping App
1. Understand Your Shipping Needs
First, it’s important to thoroughly analyze your business needs and understand the most crucial functionalities of your operation. Consider:
- Shipment volume
- Multi-carrier needs
- Budget
- Your business’ technical capabilities
- International shipping requirements
- Order fulfillment automation
2. Research and Compare Shipping Apps
Once you understand your business needs, it’s time to research and compare shipping apps that offer functionalities that align with your goals. Utilize online resources like G2, TrustPilot, and Capterra. Read customer reviews. Request free trials or demos to see how each app can specifically address your needs. Understand how easy the app is to use and what current customers say about the vendor's training and support options.
3. Know Your Essential Integrations
To facilitate app implementation and adoption, be sure the tool you select integrates seamlessly with your existing software. This simplifies data flow and reduces the need for manual data entry. Apps with pre-built connectors or APIs for your specific ecommerce solution will facilitate more rapid implementation.
4. Implement and Test
Once you've chosen your shipping app, carefully follow the vendor’s instructions about setup and implementation. Gather necessary information, such as credentials for your ecommerce store and carrier accounts. Be aware of relevant API keys and ensure you have staff who can help configure settings and customize features as needed.
After initial setup, conduct thorough testing to ensure everything works as intended. Double-check shipping rates for accuracy. Ensure all information in automated labels is correct and formatted properly. Test order-tracking and returns management functionality. And finally, ensure accurate and hassle-free data flow between the shipping app and your other systems.
Overcoming Shipping App Integration Complexities
Most shipping apps offer user-friendly interfaces and guided setups to help with implementation. Many also have online resources, tutorials, and customer support to help with initial setup.
You may find it helpful to select shipping apps with pre-built integrations for your specific ecommerce or other systems, like your customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and warehouse management solutions. Out-of-the-box options generally involve minimal configuration and often offer one-click options to get started.
Fulfillment software can help you connect your entire ecommerce technology ecosystem by serving as a central hub that breaks down silos between crucial data from your primary systems like your online storefront, inventory management system, shipping apps, and accounting and invoicing tools. As a single source of truth for all things inventory and order-related, you can ensure accurate order fulfillment and proactively address issues that may prevent you from fulfilling orders as they come in.
Another barrier to shipping app implementation centers around how complex your fulfillment strategy is, especially for omnichannel sales and when you have a widely geographically dispersed customer base. If you’re managing orders across multiple channels like your website, online marketplaces, and social media, it can quickly become overwhelming, negatively impacting your ability to fulfill orders and ship them promptly.
You can overcome this challenge by using fulfillment software to automate order fulfillment tasks and integrate with shipping apps to instantly handle things like label and shipping document creation. Real-time tracking is also important for all your orders so you can inform your customers and meet expectations.
Inventory management headaches are also common stumbling blocks that can negatively impact shipping app implementation and adoption. If you’re not accurately managing your inventory, especially with a perpetual inventory system, it’s easy to oversell or understock and not have enough product availability to meet customer demands
Streamline Shipping with Extensiv
Extensiv itself is not a shipping app, but our platform works with these apps to enhance functionalities within your existing workflow and provide insight into an all-in-one dashboard.
By unifying all data flowing through your ecommerce technology stack, Extensiv Integration Manager will help you quickly adapt to changing customer demands. Additionally, through automating routine tasks like order routing and inventory management for a seamless, fast, and accurate fulfillment experience, Extensiv's solutions for brands ensure your shipping processes are smooth and efficient.
Extensiv can also open up new avenues to help you explore other innovative fulfillment and shipping strategies. Here are three ways our platform can help you streamline your shipping processes with integrated shipping apps:
- Extensiv connects seamlessly with various shipping apps and other operational platforms to eliminate data silos. For example, Extensiv can automatically populate accurate order and inventory data within your shipping app to prevent errors and ensure accurate label generation and fulfillment. Extensiv’s order and warehouse management tools for brands play a crucial role in facilitating this data flow and enabling comprehensive analytics.
- With automated workflows across your sales, order fulfillment, warehousing, inventory, shipping, and returns processes, Extensiv enables you to create custom workflows to automate tasks that integrate with your shipping apps—for example, automatically routing orders to the appropriate fulfillment center based on location and stock availability, or triggering label generation upon order confirmation.
- You can also use Extensiv’s advanced analytics and reporting features to optimize your shipping processes, such as analyzing carrier performance, identifying areas for cost savings, and tracking key metrics like shipping speed, lead times, and on-time delivery rates. These insights are vital to making more informed decisions about shipping options within your shipping app.
Interested to learn more about how Extensiv can help you manage fulfillment workflows and shipping apps? Request a demo today!
