In today’s ShipHero review, we’re going to be looking at a rapidly-growing shipping solution designed to improve fulfillment for ecommerce brands. ShipHero may not be as well-known as some competing solutions like ShipStation, but it’s quickly gaining attention as a market leader.
Shipping and fulfillment are some of the most significant challenges facing companies in the ecommerce world. As customers become increasingly demanding, and expectations grow, business leaders need to ensure they’re delivering according to demands.
Tools like ShipHero are custom-made to help emerging brands serve their audience, outshine the competition, and scale rapidly.
Ranked the number one Momentum leader in shipping for 2021 by G2, ShipHero has proven itself to be a fantastic solution for business leaders in search of simplicity, reliability, and growth. The company has some of the best user ratings on the market, as well as some highly intuitive software.
Quick Verdict
As an ecommerce business owner I think ShipHero is a great all in one shipping and fulfillment solution. The integration with multiple platforms, real time inventory and mobile pick and pack are a big plus for me.
I like the transparent pricing and the analytics tools so I can make data driven decisions to optimize my business. Fulfillment services also looks like a great way to scale my business without having to build out my own warehouse.
But I do have some concerns. $499 a month for the Essential WMS plan might be too much for smaller businesses or newbies. And the 500 DTC orders a month to get access to fulfillment services might be a barrier for newer or smaller scale businesses. I’m also a bit worried about the learning curve of implementing such a big system even with the onboarding support. Would be great to see more info on how ShipHero handles international shipping.
What is ShipHero?
ShipHero is a shipping and fulfillment solution for ecommerce vendors, facilitating multi-channel warehouse and inventory management.
The service features tools to support a wide range of businesses, and even allows users to sync their inventory automatically with various online stores, including Amazon, eBay, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Etsy.
ShipHero was created by CEO and Founder Aaron Rubin, after years of frustration trying to find the best shipping software solution for his lifestyle store. In 2013, Rubin created ShipHero Warehouse Management Software, to make it easier to ship ecommerce.
The ShipHero solution gradually evolved over the years to include not just warehouse management, but fulfillment too. After purchasing its first warehouse in Las Vegas, ShipHero continued to evolve, and now owns and operates warehouses across the US.
Ultimately, ShipHero provides software for the warehouse, and outsourced shipping for a range of D2C brands, in a fast-paced environment.
Shipping Software
ShipHero’s shipping software is at the heart of the company’s offering. The solution connects multiple stores and shopping environments, from Shopify to Walmart, to synchronize your inventory across the online landscape, through the cloud. You can bring in connections with carrier accounts too, to keep everything you need for fulfillment in one place.
As soon as you implement your system, you’ll be able to set up streamlined workflows, where orders seamlessly migrate to pickers, packers, and shippers for efficient, accurate processing. The service supports mobile picking, real-time carrier rate shopping, and bulk shipping.
Throughout the whole shipping solution, ShipHero provides analytics tools and real-time monitoring to assist with making better decisions. The Hero Board, for instance, offers real-time insights into your warehouse to improve order processing. There are also detailed insights into employee productivity, COGs, and sales.
Some of the shipping features offered by ShipHero include:
- Orders and Returns: One-click integrations with Shopify and Returnly make it easier to manage orders and returns. Seamless store integrations are included as standard, along with order tracking, shipping notifications, automation rules, shipping mapping method and validation, and smart warehouse routing. Essentially, you’ll have everything you need to run your e-commerce business, including access to a support team.
- Inventory Management: Consistently keep track of your inventory across all environments, with multi-warehouse tracking and order allocation. You can easily manage a range of locations, track purchase orders and receiving, re-order products, count cycles, and access kitting, putaway, and log features. The functionality of the order management system makes it easy to track resources across a range of different environments. You can even store inventory in different locations, so your supply chain is closer to your customers.
- Mobile Pick and Pack: The mobile pick and pack service sends pickers into the warehouse with mobile technology to make picking more efficient, such as barcode scanners. You’ll have access to an intuitive interface via iOS, guided and optimized pick routes, automatic batch creation, bulk shipping, error reduction, and user data reports. Because ShipHero integrates directly with tools like WooCommerce and Amazon, it’s easy for the system to send the right information through to packers easily, to accelerate ecommerce fulfillment.
- Rate shopping: With real-time rate shopping, you can save on significant postage costs. The service helps you to find the best shipping rates, so you can save money on every order. There’s even real-time label creation too. No matter your company size, you can access a range of client support options and convenient shipping from leading companies like FedEx, DHL, USPS, UPS and OnTrac.
- Reporting: Extensive reporting features cover Picker/Packer efficiency, COGS, and replenishment insights. You can also create your own custom reports working with the ShipHero client solutions team. Inventory reports, operational reporting, shipment reporting, efficiency reporting, and sales reports are all included as standard. The ease of use of the platform extends to the reporting capabilities, so you can optimize your insights into your company and order fulfillment.
- 3PLS: The built-in warehouse management software from ShipHero also works for 3PLs, making it easier to manage various clients. You’ll also get access to all of the benefits of the ShipHero warehouse inventory distribution, routing, carrier rate shopping and more. There’s open API access, unlimited SKUs, kitting, dynamic slotting, sandbox testing and customer portals for 3PLs.
The extensive range of SaaS features has significantly improved ShipHero’s overall rating as a leading provider of user friendly fulfillment services and ecommerce inventory management.
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Fulfillment Services
While the warehouse management and shipping capabilities of ShipHero are the core of its service offering, the solution has also evolved over the years to offer extra capabilities too. For instance, you can access “modernized fulfillment services”.
The fulfillment services allow you to connect your store to the ShipHero network, and send all the products they’ll need to support your clients. From there, the ShipHero team can intelligently distribute and store inventory across a country-wide network of warehouses, ensuring faster delivery at low costs for you and your clients.
As soon as a customer places an order, you can transmit that order to ShipHero, and the team will work on picking, packing, and shipping products for you. The service comes with full visibility into tracking the delivery of each item. Plus, you’ll have real-time reporting to assist with inventory replenishment and making various business decisions.
The great thing about the fulfillment services from ShipHero is how easy they are to access. All you need to do is send your products to a single warehouse, with locations near a range of major ports to ship to. You will have to ship at least 500 DTC orders per month to create an account.
The ShipHero team then stores products closer to customers, intelligently distributing them throughout a wide network of warehouses to minimize delivery times and carbon footprint. Then orders are picked, managed, and consistently optimized based on location, and product availability.
Features include:
- Visibility into all of your orders in real-time, with in-package snapshots
- Inventory management with full overviews of low stock
- Reporting to cover what was shipped and how much you paid
- Support from live chat service agents
There’s also a new feature from ShipHero called “PostHero” which allows users to track their packages all the way to their destination, and keep up-to-date on their progress with data visualization charts and convenient dashboards. This is fantastic when you want to keep your customers informed throughout the delivery process.
ShipHero Pricing
The pricing for ShipHero depends on whether you’re accessing the shipping software, the fulfillment services, or both. Starting with the fulfillment services, there are no setup, software, or onboarding costs, and the pick, pack, box, and postage costs are all included.
ShipHero’s transparent approach to pricing ensures you know exactly what you’re going to get with each service. There are currently 3 service levels to explore, and an extended “zone 9” shipping option:
- Standard 3-7 days: Shipping days on Monday-Friday, with Saturday and Sunday included during peak season. Orders before 12pm are shipped the same day.
- 2-day expedited: Orders received before 1pm are shipped the same day, with support for the lower 48 states only.
- Overnight expedited: Orders before 1pm are shipped the same day, with a 20lb max weight for the lower 48 states online.
The extended zone shipping options will ship to Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, the Virgin islands, and Greenland, with a 20lb max rate. The price you pay for fulfillment will depend on both the weight of the product and the type of shipping required.
Storage pricing is calculated according to your cubic volume, and starts at $0.65 per cubic foot.
For your software, there’s both brand pricing and 3PL pricing available. The brand pricing options include:
- Essential WMS for Brands: Starting at $499 per month with returns, automation rules, shipping rate shopper, 24/7 support, training and set-up, 5,000 orders per month, 2 user seats, and 1 store connection.
- Standard WMS for Brands: Starting at $1850 per month with all the features of Essential, 5 user seats, 10 store connections, and unlimited SKUs and orders. You’ll also have access to lot and expiration features, and warehouse routing.
- Enterprise WMS for Brands: Quote price including all standard features, increased API connection rate, Sandbox account access, contract options and advanced onboarding features for beginners.
3PL pricing only offers one package starting at $1,995 per month. This includes lot and expiration management, returns, automation rules, shipping rate shopping, warehouse routing, setup and training, sandbox account access and contract options. You’ll also have special 3PL billing, marketplace listings, sandbox accounts, and customer portals.
Onboarding and Customer Support
One of the things making ShipHero such an attractive solution for today’s business leaders is its approach to customer service. The ShipHero onboarding solution makes it easy to understand all of the shipping software in no time.
The process starts with team introductions where you provide the ShipHero team with a complete overview of your pain points and issues. Together, you’ll establish key milestone dates, and begin mapping out your current operations processes, from warehousing to picking, packing, and shipping.
Users are introduced to all the fundamentals of the ShipHero system, and provided with extensive advice regarding the kind of equipment you may need in order to make the most of your fulfillment strategy. You can also access specialist services when needed.
The full onboarding service also comes with user acceptance testing, validation, and troubleshooting, to help eliminate any potential issues with your process as quickly as possible. Your partners in onboarding can even help you to set up ipads for inventory checkers and other tools to make your team more efficient.
Users of ShipHero’s software also access a fantastic 24/7/365 approach to customer service, where you essentially get a dedicated partner to help you make the most of your software. You can pay a little extra for onboarding support, but the full service can be particularly useful for beginners looking for help optimizing their fulfillment strategy.
ShipHero Review: Final Verdict
Hopefully, this full review of ShipHero has given you a decent insight into what you can expect from this leading fulfillment provider.
Whether you turn to ShipHero as a comprehensive software provider for managing your inventory, or you’re just looking for a vendor to help with fulfillment, there’s no shortage of amazing features to explore.
ShipHero has quickly gained a lot of attention in the ecommerce market, thanks to the company’s ability to make delivering excellent customer service as quickly as possible.
The integrated shipment system easily connects with a range of online stores, simplifies the shipping process, and keeps everything secure from start to finish. You also get complete stock control, with absolute overviews of your warehouses, and where products are stored.
Despite a huge range of features, ShipHero is also surprisingly affordable for most beginners, with transparent pricing for all services. It’s definitely worth checking this provider out if you’re looking for a convenient way to simplify and accelerate shipping for your ecommerce website.
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