ShipStation Reviews

Pros

I've used ShipStation, ShippingEasy, ShipWorks, Stamps.com, Ordoro, and SolidCommerce with a few clients. My two favorite are ShipStation and ShippingEasy. They both have different strengths - sweat the small stuff because it really makes a difference if you're shipping 200+ packages a day. It's worth using two or more systems and then picking the best. The time spent is worth the effort.

I use ShipStation for managing the shipping and customer service from my website, Amazon, Walmart, Jet, Ebay, and Etsy. The application is rock solid. Creating manual orders is simple, as is importing orders and combining shipments. I like that I can place orders on hold and setup future shipments. Other vendors like ShippingEasy cannot do this (yet). We get a fair number or orders that have a bad address and we're able to put orders on hold until we hear back from the customer. This shipping rules and kitting options are fairly robust. It is easy to identify return customers (this is something not done well by other platforms). The UI is very buttoned-up. ShipStation also has a superior "Search Customers" function that will search on 3 and 4 part names, city, state... Some of the other vendors fail here. Having good search reduces customer service time.

Cons

There are some things that ShippingEasy does better - e.g. they're a single page application and that means that the interface is super fast. ShipStation is slower as you mover around in the interface. I wish that ShipStation could manage my inventory across marketplaces and I'm in love with how some of the other vendors solicit reviews using marketing/email automation. I hope someday that vendors like ShipStation will also connect to Auth.net or Stripe.com so that we can Auth and Settle New Manual Orders. It takes a bit longer to learn ShipStation but if you're running a larger/complicated business you'll come to appreciate the power that comes with the complexity.

Pros

Once it is set up with all of your products it rolls along without much attention. I also like the variety of reports I can pull.

Cons

They no longer have account managers so customer service can be a challenge.

Pros

I like that it seems to be more cost efficient to ship through ship station vs just going to the post office. I also like that I can just print my label, and stick it in my mailbox to ship. So easy!!

Cons

There's nothing that I disliked about ship station. It's super easy to use and very cost efficient compared to others.

Pros

Shipstation is great for companies that are looking for a label printing solution for there shopping carts. Shipstation is able to handle high volumes of orders and allows for labels to be pre-printed, which can greatly increase the fulfillment time. There are pretty good filtering options that can lead to more efficiencies when printing that can save time with your fulfillment team.

Shipstation integrates with many different platforms fairly seamlessly, which allows for more diversity in the ever growing number of platforms that are out there. They are also constantly adding new platforms that can integrated with.

I think the fact that this software is user friendly and efficient in its design makes this software a worthwhile investment for those that need a better shipping solution.

Cons

The issues that we have run into with this software as we have scaled to processing over 3000 shipments a day are too many holes which can cause many opportunities for errors, processing speeds, and lack of flexibility.

When you are processing up to 3000 orders a day problems flesh themselves out quickly. One issue that has arisen is the inability to hold people accountable when errors occur. For example, since the labels are pre-printed there is not a simple to way to know who misshiped an order when it is sent incorrectly to a customer. On top of that, since the labels are pre-print there is no way to verify through software on the outbound that a shipment is correct. You have to trust that your team is packing order correctly, which is guaranteed to cause problems regardless. There is also the possibility that labels can be double printed or not printed at all since labels are processed and then a PDF is created to print orders. This has been costly for us an multiple occasions, which is hardly preventable no matter who you have printing.

Due to the fact that Shipstation is cloud based this can cause issues with processing speeds. We have seen hang ups (especially on Mondays) that cause the whole team to be slowed down due.

The other issue with cloud based system is the lack of flexibility for Shipstation to be customized to how you would like it. If changes are made they have to be made globally, which can take a while or just simply cannot happen altogether.

Pros

The price checking, the tracking, the integration the ease of use...all lead to an excellent product.

Cons

So far we have not run into anything major but we have just implemented and are still in testing phase so we need more time for a list of potential cons to emerge (if any do)

Alternatives Considered

Shippo

Reasons for Choosing ShipStation

Price Shopping made easy.

Switched From

FedEx Ship Manager

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

The array of features, the pricing and the seemingly straight forward integrations were the main factors.

Pros

It's easy to use and makes my job convenient. I'm glad I discovered Shipstation.

Cons

I have no complaints about it. It helps us on the daily!

Alternatives Considered

Stamps.com

Reasons for Choosing ShipStation

Just easier to navigate and gets it done in a jiffy.

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

It was just easier and more user-friendly. That matters for a company, especially when you have older employees who aren't as "high-tech".

Pros

- Easy to use order fulfillment platform.
- Great customer service team.
- Batch print labels.
- Filter and view orders by a number of variables.
- Easy to setup with multiple shipping providers.

Cons

- Once orders are pushed over, edits to orders don’t always sync so some have to be done manually.
- Orders with multiple packages have to be split manually.

Pros

Easy to use and ability to price shop all carriers on one dashboard

Cons

Cannot be used as an inventory management system.

Pros

Seamless integration to a website run on a platform such as Shopify, Wordpress etc. makes managing and fulfilling orders much more efficient saving time and money.

Cons

I don’t love having to pay a monthly fee to use the software but I do think the tiered pricing is worth it based on the time shipstation will save you.

Alternatives Considered

Shippo

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

While I actually use both depending on the location I prefer shipstation due to its ease of fulfillment and how well it integrates with our websites.

Pros

• I was assigned a specific person as my customer service representative, and when I called with an issue, one of the customer rep picked up the phone and answered my question on the spot; meaning, I didn't have to dial a ton of menu options or wait on hold at all to speak with a person. She is also very responsive to emails. We tend to look at websites and applications as faceless businesses, but with ShipStation I know there is someone on the other end that cares about my experience.

• Integrates seamlessly with Squarespace Commerce account

• Automatically marks order fulfilled when a shipping label is printed

• Connects to printer easier than Stamps.com

Cons

• Have to load balances instead of paying for what you use as you go. I encountered this with Stamps.com as well, but it is annoying because I have to make cash flow considerations when all I need is a few extra dollars to print a label.

• Cannot edit manual orders, need to delete and re-create an order if changing quantity or amount of a product.

• I "chose" ShipStation because it was the only shipping option that would integrate with Squarespace. Most of my issues were encountered while trying to transition from Stamps.com to become familiar with the new platform. Though very similar, ShipStation INITIALLY felt like a clunkier, gaudier version of the same thing. Thankfully, they've recently made some positive design changes. However, there are still some quirky user interface aspects, including:
— animated "help/info" bubbles (which I just figured out how to hide).
— In Stamps.com, I was able to see if my thermal printer was connected (or visible to the website) before clicking "print" — which, when I click, charges the postage to my account regardless if the label actually printed. In ShipStation, I have to click "print" without knowing if the website is able to send the job to the printer. This has resulted in additional postage billed to my account because I clicked "print." I then have to wait for that amount to be refunded in my account. Though I should add, I rarely have printer connection issues with ShipStation, whereas it used to be the bane of my Stamps.com experience.
— Stamps.com also made it easy to see all the USPS shipping options and rates at a glance, while viewing an order. In ShipStation, I either have to select a service, then an option from within that service or open up a separate rate calculator. This makes it harder to find the lowest shipping fee/service or fastest method for its value when modifying individual orders.

Pros

It worked great until they did an update to the interface now it's worthless.

Cons

I have used ShipStation for years they did an update about a year ago and it all went to shit after that, I constantly have to reset the printer to recognize the software and now I have spent an hour trying to print a label with no success. For some reason they are double entering sales so I have to delete one so it doesn't throw the totals out of wack. Looking up shipped packages some don't show up even though it was shipped. My clients are not receiving a tracking # email so I have to answer the "Where's my stuff email. Done.

Pros

Shipstation has been great for managing our shipments for our smaller businesses! It's very simple to use and integrates with both Shopify and Klaviyo.

Cons

There's not enough robust sorting/filtering features. I'd like to be able to have some of my shipments be filtered into different buckets and Shipstation doesn't have the ability to do this. If you have a complex shipping system Shipstation wouldn't be for you.

Pros

1) Import orders from multiple ecommerce platform
2) One software for multiple shipping carriers and method
3) Great email notification for clients, multiple options of emails and multiple templets
4)inventory tracking
many other good futures

Cons

1) Depend on package you have with ship station support can take long time to answer your question. No phone support for any users and only email support for lowest package. This is not acceptable. When I need to ship and I have issue I need to call somebody and fix problem ASAP. If you send email you can wait who know how long to resolve issue. Live chat is available only for selected ship station clients ( base on how much you are paying = selected package of ship station) and it may take very long time to actually chat with somebody ( we are talking hours in some cases before you are at top of chat queue )
2) you have to press button to read package weight if you have scale attached. This is very annoying if you ever used software with automatic scale. You place package on scale and software already know what you shipping. ( or alarm you when scale is 0 = nothing on scale ). I had packages returned because I did not press "read" scale button and package was over weight compared to postage purchased. Same goes the other way. You pay more for postage if your package is less than what you estimate in your ecommerce platform.
3) FedEx international shipping has big problem. Ship station does not print commercial invoice for international packages. You technically can print label but than you have to go to FedEx and fill out commercial invoice form. I do not understand why it can not be printed at the same time with label. All info is already available ( item, price etc) on ship station after importing order. Ship Station print all required paper work for USPS international packages
4) address verification is not strong future on a software . I am comparing it to a stamps.com again. If client place wrong address on a form ship station will tell you that address is not valid but will not tell you what is wrong and will not suggest correction. Stamps.com will suggest correct zip code , street name , apartment number if it is missing etc. Ship station will only tell you " invalid apartment number" or "apartment not found"
5) international imported addresses create issue sometimes if client used other than English address form. German , Japanese, Spanish language use soft punctuations and different letters like ~ or ę ó ś ć and many similar. Ship station when import such address create strange characters replacing original with something like @##@$%% and if you print it I can guaranty package will not be delivered to a clients since local post office will not recognize street name or town.
6) some countries are not recognized by ship station as international address. Republic of Ireland is not recognized. If client place that name on order form Ship station assign USA address to it. Since this is official name if country my client always put it than way and not Ireland in Country section. They would have to put Ireland instead ( Ireland in country field create correct international destination) Same goes to United Kingdom but England will be correct ( it may be few others - just do not remember )

Pros

The best feature of ShipStation is how well it can handle orders from multiple channels (eBay, amazon, website) and ship them without the hassle of going to each channel. It flawlessly imports the orders, creates shipments, verifies addresses, and ships with the preferred method. It also allows you to easily set up rules so you can easily specify how each channel, product, or other various filter is shipped.

Cons

The main feature that I wish this product had is the ability to scan SKU/product ID verification to confirm shipment before shipping. ShipStation does have scan to ship available, where you scan the barcode on the packing slip to bring up the shipment and then ship the item. This is a nice feature, but I would like to to go once step further where you scan the barcode on the packing slip, then you scan the barcode of the SKU/product ID to make sure it was picked properly, then you print the shipping label.

Pros

The user interface is great providing the info that the user required where it is needed while avoiding clutter. Additionall,y the setting and administration functions are streamlined and functional.

Cons

Rate shopping among different shipping carriers is cumbersome and not able to be automated in the system. If you primarily ship with a single provider, it is not much of an issue but if you like to shop for rates from different providers on an order-by-order basis, you will find this software slows you down because you must manually select each shipping method and compare rates manually rather than being able to select automatically based on business rules or logic around cost, delivery time, etc.

Pros

Easy to implement, we used a 3rd party to help integrate with Sage200 and the data flow worked very well indeed, not immediate but fast enough for the business to get the order data via Sage200 into ShipStation, and integration with multiple couriers was simple. Customer service was helpful and did their best to help with every issue we had.

Cons

We had a number of label printing speed issues that despite best efforts the ShipStation customer service and tech support were unable to resolve - we eventually found out that we needed network label printers instead of USB printers as the USB caused a bottleneck, but it took a long time and a lot of testing to get to this conclusion.

Pros

Shipstation is able to connect directly with my eCommerce site and makes getting packages out the door a breeze. As long as you take the time to setup the parameters, there is rarely, if ever, an issue. My customers get an automatic email with the tracking information (that is on a branded page...not the carrier's page!) and we get emails letting us know that the item has been delivered safely. Its such a time saver and everything comes through looking incredibly professional. Small to medium sized operations will benefit greatly from this.

Cons

The only critique I have is that we are not able to effectively communicate the (actual) added cost of insurance and/or delivery confirmation from our eCommerce software to ShipStation. We get around this by adding a percentage handling amount onto higher value items so that we're not losing money on the shipping cost for these pieces of merchandise.

Pros

What I like most about this software is its capability of offering shipment options from all of the major shipment carriers, those being USPS, UPS, and FedEx. I also very much like the fact that all shipments are charged at the same rate as if you would be shipping them from an on-site location, which in turn provides an incredible convenience factor. All of the shipments made from all of the carriers used are consolidated into one easy to handle screen, where the shipping labels can be generated from and then tracked online. Overall, a great platform, and I would definitely recommend it to those who ship packages on a regular basis.

Cons

There is not much to dislike about this software when it comes to its functionalities and ease of use and setup, when I think about it to a great extent. The only con that I can potentially think of is the pricing of the service, which I feel would could be a little lower in order to attract even more potential consumers. When comparing the costs of this service with those of their competitors, one might argue that the cost of the service could be a little more competitive. Other than that one aspect, there is not much else to report on the negative front.

Pros

I liked the fact that this software synced with online sales through places like Amazon and initially seemed to work pretty well.

Cons

A few months ago, Shipstation released a new version and I have had many problems with it. It simply does not work as advertised. Things that were seamless before no longer work. The fact that they have not fixed these issues after a few months is very frustrating. I would not recommend them any longer for shipping.

Pros

We have two small retail stores with most of our owners and employees' time dedicated to servicing those in-store customers and providing great experiences for everyone who walks through the door. Shipstation allowed us to open up our online store and divert minimal time to fulfilling the rush of orders we received from our website. During the Covid 19 Pandemic this website with the Shipstation software helped us to keep the doors open.

Cons

Integration with our Point of Sale Solution is not perfect and could be improved significantly.

Alternatives Considered

EasyPost

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

ease of use and setup.

Pros

It has a very wide partner ecosystem and allows us to bring our orders all together into one system to check shipment tracking. The UI is clean and modern. The addition of an iOS app is a big plus and lets us fulfill orders on the go.

Cons

The ability to auto-correct addresses is great, but ShipStation should highlight these orders so that I can review what was corrected to determine if the change was good. Not all auto-corrects are...correct but overall it catches more of my mistakes then if there was no auto-correct. Support could use some improvement as some issues have required multiple attempts with different agents but generally I do get my issue reolved.

Pros

Shipstation is extremely easy to use. It also has better pricing for postage than USPS itself! It even has more applications than I ever dreamed of! You can have your brand name on your postage (or anything you'd like), it also allows you to: send your customers an email -AND- choose WHEN to have it sent; like so, I learned you can have shipping tracking/delivery confirmation sent to your customer; when it is mailed (scanned at post office - and on it's way), or even sent at the moment you print it out! You can add other venue's that you sell from, integrate the sales from them & print your shipping label right from Shipstation! SO MUCH MORE, that I am still learning I can do! SHIPSTATION IS A WONDERFUL APP IN MORE WAYS THAN I CAN COUNT! ... AND IN MORE WAYS I'VE YET TO LEARN! EXCITING -AND- SIMPLY PUT - IT IS SO EASY TO USE! I'll never go back to printing shipping labels from my on-line account with USPS directly, they do NOT have all the capabilities & extra's that shipstation offers! ONLY SHIPSTATION FOR ME!

Cons

The only 'con' for me is because I don't have enough customers to warrant the monthly charge. A smaller fee for people like me (who -in a way- are paying more for postage when you add on the monthly fee with the postage). That would help me, or people like me, who can barely afford even the lowest per month for 50 postages per month because I am only printing up to 10 per entire month. It's great for bigger business' tho!

Pros

Besides everything? The thing I loved the MOST would be how fantastically easily it was to get up and running and integrated with every platform. I looked like a real genius. But it wasn't me, it was the simplicity of the system. Its that easy.

Cons

They had an inventory management portion of the software that I didn't quite understand how to utilize it.

Pros

We ship a lot, and ship station enables us to ship more quickly and more effectively. It also helps us track returns which as a rental business, all of our shipments come back and having all of that in one place is really helpful.

Cons

They've established the software, they focus on vendors who aren't rental companies and ship a lot of smaller packages. Updates are slow coming and it feels like they've said "hey we've done it!!! Let's coast." and don't really do updates anymore. Although if you ship to Zimbabwe on a regular basis they are more than happy to add rickshaw as an option, but won't give you the option to select that it was delivered by someone internally.

Pros

We love how ShipStation integrates with our Stamps.com account. Our favorite features are how they keep track of the packages you ship to each person, the value, and the items. You can keep track of promotional items this way or keep detailed notes. Another of our favorite features is the branded tracking page that your customers will see with the tracking code. It looks great and helps give your site a more polished and professional look.

Cons

The monthly subscription for this is just way too expensive. Even with the amazing features that make a business look awesome and really helps the customers, it's just way too expensive for smaller or starter businesses.