ShipStation Review

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Date Established

November 2011

Location

Austin, TX

Overview

ShipStation is a web-based shipping solution for eCommerce retailers. Designed to streamline the fulfillment process, this software offers a huge number of integrations that allow you to synchronize your business with the most popular sales channels, shopping carts, payment gateways, and mail carriers.

The company was founded in 2011 by Jason Hodges and Byron Wier. Based out of Austin, TX, ShipStation boasts a reputation as a leading company in its field.

Over the course of this review, I’ll be highlighting the major features this application has to offer. I’ll also take a look at the community response and volunteer my own thoughts on the user experience. Let’s get into it.

Pricing

Here are the different plans ShipStation offers:

• Starter
  • $9/month
  • 50 shipments a month
  • All selling channels (Unlimited stores)
  • 1 user
  • Branded labels and packing slips
  • Email and community forum support
• Bronze
  • $25/month
  • 500 shipments a month
  • Unlimited stores
  • 1 user
  • Branded labels and packing slips
  • Email and community forum support
• Silver
  • $45/month
  • 1,500 shipments a month
  • Unlimited stores
  • 2 users
  • Customized packing slips and branded labels
  • Live Chat, email and community forum support
• Gold
  • $65/month
  • 3,000 shipments a month
  • Unlimited stores
  • 3 users
  • Customized packing slips and branded labels
  • Live chat, email, and community forum support
• Platinum
  • $95/month
  • 6,000 shipments a month
  • Unlimited stores
  • 5 users
  • Customized packing slips and branded labels
  • Live chat, email, and community forum support
• Enterprise
  • $145/month
  • Unlimited shipments a month
  • Unlimited stores
  • 10 users
  • Customized packing slips and branded labels
  • Live chat, email, and community forum support

There’s a free 30-day trial that includes access to all features, with no credit card required. If you’re not satisfied with the product within 90 days, ShipStation offers a full refund, no questions asked.

Web-Based or Locally Installed

The software is entirely web-based. There is nothing to install.

Hardware and Software Requirements

No hardware or software is required. All you need are a web browser and an Internet connection.

Ease of Use

You can test ShipStation’s admin for yourself by signing up for a free 30-trial. When I logged into my test panel, I was immediately directed to this page.

You can get started adding your sales channels and shipping carriers right from this set-up dashboard.

I then headed over to the orders page. Since I didn’t have any sales channels to add, I manually created my first order.

I was able to automatically calculate shipping rates by adding in my product weight, shipping methods, and package dimensions. It was all relatively easy to enter.

One of the more handy features in ShipStation is the ability to create custom views. Custom views allow the user to tailor the user interface to their liking through a number of different criteria. You can choose from a couple different interface sizes, decide which menus you’d like to include, set your default page and more. This feature can be accessed by visiting the Settings page and selecting Display Options. To me, custom views are the mark of pro-grade software, and any application that implements these well is going to get high marks from me.

Automation is another highly sought after feature in enterprise software, and ShipStation includes this as well. Using automation, you can create a set of rules that are applied if an order fits the right criteria. For example, you could set a default shipping service for orders received from a specific country, or do something as simple as automatically adding tags to certain types of orders. I really like this kind of functionality, and was glad to see it included here.

While it can take some time to get the hang of some of the more advanced tools, the basic features are simple. I was creating shipping labels and packing slips within a few minutes of signing up for my trial. It’s very usable software.

If you have any trouble determining what a feature does, just hover your mouse over the little blue “help beacons” scattered throughout the admin. You can also easily contact support via email (or live chat if you’re signed up for the Silver Plan or above).

Features

ShipStation has no shortage of great features. Here are some of the best:

• UPSP and Stamps.com accounts included
• Receive discounted USPS rates
• Connects with multiple shopping carts and marketplaces
• ShipStation Mobile app
• Manage USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL shipments in one place
• Batch print shipping hundreds of shipping labels and packing slips
• Customize shipping labels
• One click return management
• Automatically print a return label to include in every package
• Integrate with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
• Ship internationally
• Reporting tools for orders, products, shipping costs and more. I’ll go into more detail in the next section.

Reports

ShipStation has great reporting tools that can be accessed on the Insights page. Data is filtered by date range and other criteria, depending on the type of Report. You can also export information to Excel or PDF. Here’s a look at the different options:

• Reports
  • Order Details
  • Country Comparison
  • Buyer Comments
  • Item Demand Summary
  • Product Sales
  • Returned Products
  • Shipment Count by User
  • Shipped Items
  • Shipping Cost
  • Shipping Manifest
  • Batch Detail
  • Postage Purchase History
  • Inventory Low Stock Report
  • Inventory Audit Report
  • Inventory Out of Stock Shipments
  • Inventory Status Report
• Hotkey and Barcode Scan Actions
  • Hotkey Reference Sheet (Keyboard shortcuts)
  • Barcode Scan Action Report
  • Barcode Scan Action Quick Reference Sheet
• Raw Data Exports
  • Customers
  • Orders
  • Shipped Items
  • Shipped Orders
  • Product Aliases
• Charts and Graphs
  • Operations
  • Customer Engagement
  • Sales Trends
  • Customer Overview
  • Product Highlights

Integrations and Add-Ons

One of ShipStation’s biggest selling points is that it integrates with an enormous number of carriers, marketplaces, and shopping carts. I’m not exaggerating. The list is crazy long, especially compared to their competitors.

If by chance you have a platform that doesn’t Integrate with ShipStation, you can utilize the API. The Custom Store Integration feature is also available if you need to import orders from a source that isn’t natively supported. Consult with your developers to see which option is best for your company.

Here are the main integrations included in ShipStation:

Carriers:

• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
• FedEx and FedEx Canada
• UPS
• USPS
• Stamps.com
• DHL Express and DHL eCommerce
• OnTrac
• ShipWire
• Canada Post
• APC
• FirstMile
• Globegistics
• Shipsurance

Marketplaces & Shopping Carts:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Etsy
• BigCommerce
• Spark Pay
• Shopify
• Magento
• WooCommerce
• Yahoo Store
• Volusion
• Miva Merchant
• SquareSpace
• PrestaShop
• CrateJoy
• OpenCart
• OpenSky
• Zen Cart
• MijoShop
• CS-Cart
• UltraCart
• FoxyCart

Other Integrations:

• DEAR Inventory
• Celery
• Square
• Newgistics
• ChannelAdvisor
• StitchLabs
• PayPal
• Brightpearl
• SkuVault
• Connex for Quickbooks

This is only a partial list of the Integrations offered. View the complete catalog.

Customer Service and Technical Support

All customers have access to support through email, live webinars, the ShipStation knowledge base and the community forum. Silver plans or higher can receive chat support. Here are links to those support avenues:

• Knowledge Base and FAQs
• How To Videos
• Webinars
• Community Forum
• Live Webinars with Q&A
• Phone: (512) 485-4282
  • Support Hours: 8am – 8pm CDT, Monday – Friday

My interactions with the Customer Service team were satisfactory, but not outstanding. The turnover time on my support tickets was one business day, across the board. The email responses I received read as detached and boilerplate, and they repeatedly suggested that I initiate a feature request if something didn’t work the way I wanted it to. Overall the support team did their job, but I didn’t ever feel like they went above and beyond. Maybe they shouldn’t have to, though.

Negative Reviews and Complaints

In general, customers are happy with ShipStation. Customer comments and reviews across third-party review sites (like this one) are overwhelmingly positive. However, that doesn’t mean ShipStation is without fault. Here are a couple things ShipStation customers dislike:

• Difficulty with Customer Management: While ShipStation does a good job handling shipping, it has some shortcomings when it comes to customer identification. ShipStation does not let you place identifying characteristics in a customer’s account information. ShipStation also has trouble recognizing the same customer when he or she purchases from two different sales channel. The software will instead create a duplicate customer account. This makes it difficult to identify repeat customers.
• Downtime Reports: I’ve seen a large number of complaints on Twitter regarding downtime. It’s never good when your software suddenly becomes unavailable.
• Poor Customer Service: Some customers report that technical support is difficult to contact and isn’t very helpful.

Overall, customers seem happy with ShipStation. The complaints I’ve found have been about really specific issues, not about the overarching design and functionality of the software.

Positive Reviews and Testimonials

As I said, feedback for ShipStation is generally positive. ShipStation scores high marks across review boards and currently has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. Here are a few of the things commenters praise most about ShipStation.

• Automation: ShipStation’s goal is to make running your business easier, and it does just that. The software essentially automates your shipping process, making it easy to calculate shipping rates and print shipping labels and packing slips.
• Ease of Use: After the initial learning curve, ShipStation is fairly easy to use. Main features are easily accessible on the backend, and the admin panel is well organized.
• Lots of Integrations: The ability to integrate is one of the biggest reasons merchants choose ShipStation over other shipping solutions. You’ll likely find that ShipStation integrates with your favorite sales channels and shopping carts. Check out the full list of integrations.

Security

You can use ShipStation’s user permissions to allow different employees to access different aspects of your business’s shipping.

Final Verdict

ShipStation works. The software employs solid design, has obviously been tested thoroughly, and is able to execute its various tasks efficiently. If you’re a small to medium-sized business owner, I can happily recommend this application to you.

It’s not perfect, though. The software is missing some customer management features, and the Customer Service team is competent but joyless. However, if you’re willing to invest some time into learning the workflow, you’ll get a lot out of it.

What I mean to say is, ShipStation is business software for business people. They’re not trying to sell you a story about how startups can change the world, or about how their employees are awesome. ShipStation is trying to sell you a product that makes shipping quicker and easier. And they do just that.

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• Bio
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Liz Hull

Liz is a recent college graduate living in Washington state. As of late, she can often be found haunting eCommerce forums and waiting on hold with customer service representatives. When she's free, Liz loves to rock climb, watch Spanish dramas, and read poorly-written young adult novels.

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