ShippingEasy Review
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- Date Established
- 2011
- Location
- Austin, TX
Pros
- Excellent customer service
- Easy to use
- Numerous integrations
Cons
- Slight learning curve
- Some features need improvement
Overview
It takes a lot of faith in a product to brand it with the word “easy.” You’d better deliver on that promise or suffer the wrath of critics and consumers alike. The other hurdle to deal with is that “easy” isn’t typically associated with quality (e.g., “Easy Mac”). Recording artist Eazy E did well for himself in the hip-hop world, but a relaxed attitude can also be an Achilles’ heel. I guess what I’m trying to say is, the term carries some baggage.
That brings us to ShippingEasy, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application that promises to simplify the fulfillment process for your business. Like many of the startups I’ve reviewed, this company is headquartered in Austin, TX.
The mission for this product is pretty simple: Give business owners the most streamlined shipping experience possible, integrating every major eCommerce platform with an automated shipping system that provides deep postage discounts. You can enjoy savings up to a 46% discount on USPS rates and process orders for all your sales channels in one dashboard. That’s not all, though. If you want to know more, I’ll be covering some of the other features once we get into the bulk of the review. Keep reading for the details on pricing, usability, and customer support.
Table of Contents
Shipping Volume Of Business
ShippingEasy works well for companies of all sizes. ShippingEasy offers a free plan for companies shipping under 50 orders per month, and it has an unlimited plan for companies that ship over 6,000 shipments per month.
All of these plans are reasonably priced for the features they offer.
Pricing
Rating: Excellent
ShippingEasy prices its product based on the number of shipments you send out per month. Each step up in pricing includes more shipments and more personal customer support options. Here are the current plans:
Starter
ShippingEasy’s Starter plan costs $0/month and includes:
- 50 shipments/month
- Support: knowledgebase
- Unlimited stores, carts, and marketplaces
- Batch print shipping labels
- Discounted USPS rates
- Send tracking numbers to customers
- Create customized packing slips
- Shipping rules
Basic
ShippingEasy’s Basic plan costs $29/month and includes everything in the Starter plan, plus:
- 500 shipments/month
- Support: chat, email, phone, and knowledgebase
- Exclusive setup and training
- Ship with all available carriers
- Branded shipping labels
- Create shipping reports
Plus
ShippingEasy’s Plus plan costs $49/month and includes everything in the Basic plan, plus:
- 1,500 shipments/month
- Support: chat, email, phone, knowledgebase
- Advanced dedicated training
- Discounted USPS rates and USPS cubic discounts
Select
ShippingEasy’s Select plan costs $69/month and includes everything in the Plus plan, plus:
- 3,000 shipments/month
- Support: chat, email, phone, knowledgebase
- Advanced dedicated training
Premium
ShippingEasy’s Premium plan costs $99/month and includes everything in the Select plan, plus:
- 6,000 shipments/month
- Support: chat, email, phone, knowledgebase
- Advanced dedicated training
There’s also an Enterprise plan available for businesses with more than 6,000 shipments/month. The Enterprise plan costs $149/month and allows you to ship unlimited orders.
Also, you can add ShippingEasy’s built-in customer marketing features and inventory management features for an additional monthly expense. View prices on ShippingEasy’s pricing page.
Accounts can be changed or canceled at any time.
Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed
ShippingEasy is a cloud-based software.
ShippingEasy also offers a downloadable app called ConnectEasy that helps integrate your hardware, such as your scale and printer.
Hardware & Software Requirements
There are no requirements other than a web browser and an internet connection.
There is currently no mobile app available.
Ease Of Use
Happily, ShippingEasy lives up to the promise in its name. The interface is simple and easy to navigate, and it doesn’t take a master class to get everything up and running. Everything is clearly labeled, and I didn’t encounter any obvious bugs as I stepped through the fulfillment process. This was the screen that I first encountered when I logged in:
ShippingEasy guided me through the setup process with a bit of hand-holding, which I appreciated:
The workflow is straightforward. Start by importing your orders into ShippingEasy. All I had to do was enter my Shopify URL, and I was redirected to my Shopify admin. Once there, I clicked to install the ShippingEasy app. When I completed that process, I clicked “Sync” in the ShippingEasy UI, and my Shopify orders automatically transferred over.
Once orders have been brought into your account, select the ones you wish to fulfill and click “Create Shipments.” Then, click on the “Shipments” tab above, and you will arrive on the page where you can set your parameters, including the carrier, postage rate, packaging, weight, and so on. You will then have the option to purchase and print your postage or to make the payment and leave the printing step for later.
The printing page gives you the option to print a pick list, a shipping label, a packing slip, or both a label and a packing slip. From there, it’s just a matter of physically printing out the materials, and you’re ready to ship! The entire process takes less than five minutes.
You can even set up shipping rules to further automate your process. Once you’ve established those shipping rules, you can use the “Buy & Print” button on the “Orders” page to quickly purchase and print shipping labels and packing slips.
I do have one complaint about ShippingEasy’s order processing, however. As I selected shipping methods for my orders, I was only able to see the prices for one shipping carrier at a time. To view multiple options simultaneously, you have to click on the shipping calculator available near the top of your dashboard (see screenshot below). I wish this shipping calculator was built into the order processing page — it would make choosing the cheapest shipping option a little faster.
Also, I noticed that ShippingEasy’s user interface doesn’t adapt to the size of my browser window. That means that on my 13-inch computer screen, I had to scroll side-to-side to view the whole page. I’d like to see ShippingEasy change its interface to be more adaptive soon.
Overall, I think the software is very intuitive. I didn’t feel the need to run to a help doc at any point. If you have any aptitude with computers, I doubt you will either.
Features
Rating: Excellent
Every ShippingEasy plan includes all of the software’s basic shipping features. Customer management and inventory management are available at an additional cost. Take a look at some of our favorite features below:
- Shipping: View real-time rates and services from multiple carriers using the shipping calculator. You can also set up shipping rules to automate your order fulfillment process.
- Multichannel Sync: Manage orders from all of your sales platforms in real-time. Use CSV files to upload orders to your ShippingEasy account in bulk.
- Shipment Tracking: Send branded confirmation emails to your customers, complete with package tracking information.
- Order Management: Process multiple orders at once and print multiple shipping labels at the same time.
- Inventory: Manage inventory across all your sales channels. You can set low stock thresholds and alerts, so you always have the right products on hand.
- Supplier Management: These features are included with ShippingEasy inventory management (which you can purchase at extra cost). Manage your supplier database by assigning products to suppliers. You can also create purchase orders (POs) in your dashboard.
- Reports: In the ShippingEasy user interface, you can find a tab that displays a snapshot of your shipments as well as a tab with more comprehensive reporting.
- Shipping Labels: You can choose to send scan-based return labels or send return labels on request. Use InstantLabel features to print labels automatically when an order is placed.
- International Shipping: Automatically create customs forms for international shipments.
- Alexa Skill: Add an Alexa Skill to your Amazon Echo device to hear order information and to send shipping labels to the printer using a vocal command.
- Discounted Shipping Insurance: Purchase shipping insurance through Shipsurance. Set automation rules to simplify that process.
- Customer Management: These features come with ShippingEasy’s additional for-purchase customer management tools. You can use these tools to track customers from multiple sales channels and view customer activity and communications. Use customer segmentation to form customer groups based on sales demographics, and use the email marketing tools to create and automate email campaigns.
Overall, I’m impressed with ShippingEasy’s core shipping features. Top marks here!
Integrations & Add-Ons
Rating: Excellent
ShippingEasy offers direct integrations with over 60 online marketplaces, shopping carts, shipping carriers, and other business software. View the full list of integrations on ShippingEasy’s site to see if your favorite software solutions are included.
ShippingEasy also provides an API, which allows you and your development team to build a custom connection to any other software you choose.
Customer Service & Support
Rating: Excellent
Customer service is one of ShippingEasy’s selling points. The level of support you receive will vary based on the plan you’ve signed up for (on the free plan, you won’t have any access to personal support at all), but it seems to me that ShippingEasy excels in customer service through all of its support options. What’s more, the online documentation is extensive and easy to navigate, so in many cases, you may not even need to reach out to the support staff.
Here are the available support methods:
- Phone: Phone support is available to users on paid plans Monday-Thursday 8 AM-6 PM CT and Friday 8 AM-5 PM CT.
- Email: All users on paid plans can contact a support representative via email Monday-Friday 7 AM-7 PM CT.
- Live Chat: Live chat is available to all users on paid plans and is available Monday-Friday 7 AM-7 PM CT.
- Knowledgebase: Find guides for getting started, managing orders, installing printers, troubleshooting, and more.
- Community Forum: Post your questions or browse the questions already posted to get help from other users.
- White Papers: Find information on all aspects of shipping, including shipping rate changes and tables, information on international shipping, and case studies from other users.
- Videos: ShippingEasy has a few dozen “how-to” videos on its YouTube channel.
- Training: Training is included with ShippingEasy’s higher-level plans.
- Blog: Read about product updates and find articles that give tips for more efficient and cost-effective shipping.
- Social Media: ShippingEasy has active accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Current users report that ShippingEasy’s support is helpful, friendly, and quick to respond. Users sing the praises of a few support reps by name.
I am a bit disappointed that customer support seems to only be available during business hours. While this is fine for merchants who ship exclusively during these hours, I could see it becoming a problem for sellers who prepare shipments in the wee hours of the morning or throughout the night.
User Reviews
Rating: Excellent
Negative Reviews & Complaints
The internet is flooded with glowing reviews of ShippingEasy, but it was difficult to find any negative feedback. Out of the dozens of reviews that I read, only a handful expressed any complaints about ShippingEasy. Here are a few trends that I noticed:
- A Few Functions Could Be Improved: Customers have a few suggestions for ways ShippingEasy could improve its service. For example, I’ve seen plenty of requests for ShippingEasy to add a mobile app to its offerings. Fortunately, ShippingEasy has a very active feature request page, and it appears major issues are quickly escalated.
- Slight Learning Curve: ShippingEasy’s UI can be a challenge for some new users to learn. After that slight learning curve, however, daily operations should run smoothly.
While ShippingEasy has its weak spots, none of these are fatal flaws. If any of this concerns you, I’d recommend taking ShippingEasy for a trial run before signing up.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
As I said before, most reviews of ShippingEasy sing the software’s praises. Here’s what commenters talk about most:
- Good Customer Service: ShippingEasy’s users overwhelmingly report positive interactions with customer support. They say that support representatives are helpful, pleasant, and quick to respond.
- Easy To Use: Once you overcome the very slight learning curve involved with using any software, you’ll find that ShippingEasy is remarkably easy to use. Any questions you may have are answered in the software’s knowledgebase and community forum.
- Most Platforms Are Supported: A shipping software’s primary purpose is to make fulfillment easier and more automatic. Seamless integrations with leading eCommerce platforms and marketplaces make importing and processing your orders a whole lot smoother.
- Time Saver: ShippingEasy’s automation reduces the chance of human errors, and it significantly speeds up a merchant’s shipping process.
- Discounted Rates: Sellers love that they can access Commercial Plus rates with USPS.
ShippingEasy also includes customer testimonials on its site. These testimonials praise the same features as the unsolicited positive reviews I’ve seen on third-party sites, which tells me that they are honest reviews. Keep in mind, however, that ShippingEasy is the one who publishes these testimonials and would likely cut out any negative comments that were originally included.
Security
ShippingEasy doesn’t offer much information on its security protocols. The company states in its privacy policy that it complies with “applicable laws and security standards.” One of the security standards that it names is the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). ShippingEasy also complies with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework. In the future, we hope to see more specific information on how ShippingEasy protects its users’ data.
Final Verdict
ShippingEasy is a great application that appears to be continually improving. It’s got a usable, easy-to-learn interface, the software runs without bugs, and a very loyal user base speaks highly of the support team.
While it still has a few flaws, the ShippingEasy team seems to be working to improve the software and make ShippingEasy an even more user-friendly solution.
I’ll heartily recommend ShippingEasy (especially to small and mid-sized businesses) with a perfect score of 5 stars. ShippingEasy gives you a lot for a good price, has great customer support, and seems to run well. How’s that for easy?
Liz Hull
Liz Hull is a writer for Merchant Maverick. In her three years with Merchant Maverick, she has tested and reviewed over 40 eCommerce platforms and published two ebooks on the topic of online selling. Liz has also been published in Startup Nation and Home Business Magazine Online. Liz has a BA in English and Spanish from George Fox University.
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Site and service is good for most sites/carts.My main gripe is they don’t properly support Magento 2 even though they advertise it as supported.Case: A Magento 2 site is configured to process transactions in sale mode: authorizing AND capturing, creating an invoice at time of customer checkout.Their integration creates an extra $0.00 invoice for the order in Mage 2 which requires the clerk to flag as shipped in the magento back end. Big pain in the tail as it requires a couple of clicks per order processed. On a busy site is a major pain for the shipping department.It took them two weeks with a lot of back and forth just to get their support department to identify and acknowledge the problem. The problem was described clearly by me several times. Now that the problem has been identified, they are having their development department look at it.It is scheduled to be worked on at some point, but they are most likely going to freeze it’s release so as not to affect current users during the busy holiday season. Meaning Magento 2 users are S.O.L until after Christmas.Sounds like they could use a better testing framework to me.Hello Shipstation
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Elliot,
We have great news! As of February 2016, we now support capturing payments for Magento 2 stores. Sorry that this was not added in time for the 2016 holiday season, but we wanted to make sure you got an update that this option is now available in ShippingEasy. We’re including a link below with more information on how to capture your payment for Magento.
Here is how to select capture payment for your Magento orders, if you don’t already have this option selected in your settings: https://support.shippingeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/208183303-How-to-Capture-payment-on-Magento-shipments
Based on the information you have provided, we believe we have also found your previous ticket with our support team and the problem with the 0 invoice in Magento has also been resolved as well. If you are having any further problems , please contact us here: https://shippingeasy.com/contact-us/
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Stay away!! The worst shipping solution ever, not because of the company itself but because of the insurance co. (Shipsurance) they use (same thing at the end though). Out of thousands of packages we sent in a year, we did a claim on just 10. Even though they were justified, they paid only one for about $35. Even for small claims they ask you for ridiculous stuff (pictures, affidavits from customers, letters, more pictures, estimates for fixing/replacing items, and so) It is just not worth it. The time you have to spend gathering information, sending emails and documentation back and forth is obscene, they just do it so you get tired of following up on your claim. They use all kind of excuses for not paying; To me, ShipStation is just a way to skim money from customers and ShippingEasy is the channel. They don’t even let you use the shipper’s insurance company, like ShipStation does.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Isiah,
Sorry for the late response. Though it sounds like you have already found an alternate shipping provider, we wanted to add some comments for anyone else who stumbles across this post.
We’re sorry to hear that you have not had a positive experience with our insurance provider, Shipsurance. Adding insurance should give you peace of mind when sending your packages. We completely understand that having to provide documentation to file your claim is frustrating, especially when you already have a lost or damaged shipment.
Anytime you use a new insurance provider, we recommend that you look at their terms of use to make sure that your packages are compliant with the standards set to file a claim. Here are the terms of using Shipsurance, for your quick reference: https://support.shippingeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/203082899-Shipsurance-Terms-of-Use
We’ve also included a couple more links below to help you pack your shipment, and file your claim.
We have some tips here on making sure your packages are ready to be insured: https://support.shippingeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/207295713-Know-How-Protect-your-shipments-ensure-delivery
Here is the process to file a claim: https://support.shippingeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/204259589-How-to-File-a-claim-with-Shipsurance
One more note: Shipsurance used to be underwritten by Lloyds of London. However, this is no longer the case. Shipsurance is now underwritten by Voyager Indemnity Insurance Company. Read more at Shipsurance’s website here: http://www.shipsurance.com/about This change may reduce some concerns from the past.
With that said, we’re happy to help investigate issues with your claims on a case-by-base if you feel the resolution of the claim was incomplete.. We’re here to help!
Thanks again for sharing your feedback.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
no work my time, this company have a great costumer services but i dont recommend them for a woo commerce site, they still have to fix issues with the plugging it didnt work as i expect it. to complicated, to much to set up. and if you have more the 100 products you will expect days setting this up. sucks i’m going back to my old way i hope they do good but they didn’t work for me.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Andres.
We’re sad to read that you experienced difficulty with the WooCommerce integration and felt that ShippingEasy was too complicated. We offer a robust feature set to meet the needs of every kind of shipper including a large number of WooCommerce merchants – some just starting out in ecommerce, and some that ship over 5,000 orders per day. There are many ways to use the application depending on how much automation you want to utilize. Yes, if you want to fully automate your process so that purchasing a label happens with just a couple of clicks, there is a bit of set-up involved to teach ShippingEasy how you ship. Of course, our support team is here to make sure that process is simple. However, if you’re less concerned with complete automation, there’s little to no set-up required. Simply pick your label format, selecting your orders, and purchase your shipping labels. We’re sorry our application did not work out for your company, but please reach out to our support team if we can assist in the future.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.