One of the most important parts of an online business is shipping. People want their items quickly, and how long it takes to ship them can make or break your business.
When a customer has to wait too long, they get antsy. If they get the wrong product, they will send it back, and you will both lose money.
Many companies today promise to ship within 24 hours. They can keep this promise because they know who to work with when it comes to shipping.
ShipBob comes in at this point. In this ShipBob review, we’ll look at its services, features, and prices to help you decide if partnering with ShipBob is a good idea for your business.
Why is it important to ship things?
Shipping is important for an online business because the customer has already paid for the goods but doesn’t have them yet. In a regular store, this shouldn’t be a problem, since the customer is the one who picks up the package and takes it home.
Or, he pays for delivery and waits until the product gets to his house. This setup is also less stressful because the customer knows where to find the merchant if the shipping is late or if the product that was sent is of poor quality.
Online, the customer doesn’t have the item and doesn’t know where to go to get it. He doesn’t know where the package is either.
Because of this, people are eager to get their products as soon as possible. The sooner it comes, the better they’ll feel because then they can check the product and let you know if something is wrong.
Shipping can make people want to buy from you again or hurt your reputation as a seller. It’s too easy for someone to tell his friends and family that a product he ordered online came as advertised and early.
It is also easy for a customer to tell others that he is unhappy with the shipping times, the price of shipping, and the condition of the item when it arrives.
When it comes to shipping, you need to pay attention to accuracy, timeliness, and how things are handled. All of these things are possible to do with ShipBob.
ShipBob is what?
ShipBob is a fulfillment solution for online shopping. This means that it sends physical products to the door of your customer.
If you think about it, Amazon has its own shipping partners, which lets it deliver to some places in the United States in as little as 24 hours.
Amazon also has a program called “Fulfillment by Amazon” or “Amazon FBA.” In this case, you send all of your items to Amazon and then list them on your Amazon account.
When someone buys something, Amazon sends it out.
You can do the same with ShipBob’s help.
Amazon FBA sounds great, but you can only sell your items on Amazon. If you don’t want to sell on Amazon, what should you do? What if you want to run your own online store to make the most money and be in charge?
If you don’t have a shipping partner, you have to drive to a local courier or arrange for them to come to your house to pick up the package you want to send.
After that, all of the packages will be sorted in their shipping warehouse and then sent out.
With ShipBob, you don’t have to set up a pick-up time or bring the items to an office. Instead, you send all of your products to ShipBob, and they handle the inventory for you.
Since all of your products are in their warehouse, they will make a list of everything they have. You, as the business owner, will have access to all of these codes. Then, all you have to do is manage your sales.
You don’t even have to plan when to send something. ShipBob will know if a customer ordered a product from you because of the integration. They will then pack the item and ship it to the customer within two days.
How does this work, then? The thing is, you need to connect your online store to ShipBob’s logistics systems. This shouldn’t worry you because ShipBob works with a lot of different online store platforms.
This is also easy to do because you don’t need to know how to code in a computer language to connect with ShipBob. You just click and follow simple instructions.
After the order has been sent, you’ll know where it is. You can give your customer the tracking number and let them know that the order they paid for is on its way.
The good news is… ShipBob will send anything from the US to anywhere else in the world. This means that you don’t have to sell only in the US; you can sell anywhere in the world.
ShipBob of Features
Now, let’s look at ShipBob’s great features and why you should use it.
Multiple eCommerce Integrations
No matter how many stores you have, it doesn’t matter. ShipBob can be linked to a lot of different online store platforms. After you place an order, they will pack your package and send it to you.
ShipBob can be used with Shopify, CrateJoy, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, SquareSpace, and a lot of other shopping carts.
Taking care of inventory
Since all of your items for sale will be shipped with ShipBob, you need to make sure that your partner keeps track of all of your items correctly.
When a customer orders a product and then finds out later that it is out of stock, it is not a good thing. If he has already paid for it, he is entitled to a refund. But it takes a while to get a refund, which will make your customer angry.
ShipBob is good at keeping track of its inventory. The system knows how many more of your products are in their warehouse. This stock count will show up in your store by itself.
As the business owner, you will have a dashboard that shows you how many are in stock at ShipBob’s facilities, how many were ordered or booked, and how many were sold in the last month.
You can also do random spot checks to see how many stocks are in the warehouse with the inventory system. You can also look at the past sales of certain items in your store.
The cloud is also used for the inventory system. Logging in to your ShipBob account is all you need to do to get access from any computer.
And because it is in the cloud, all of the systems are always up to date. You might get up at midnight and decide to check on your business. When you do, you’ll see real numbers and can decide if you need to send ShipBob more products.
You will also get inventory alerts when the stock of a product is getting low. This gives you time to send more items to ShipBob instead of waiting until the stock is gone.
Multiple Locations
ShipBob doesn’t just work out of one warehouse. ShipBob’s main office is in Chicago, but it has a number of fulfillment centers all over the U.S.
Some examples are:
- New York City’s Brooklyn
- The California cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco
With this feature, your items can be spread out in different places. If a customer places an order, ShipBob will get the product to the warehouse closest to the customer’s shipping destination. This means that it will be delivered in less time.
Your customer will be happy, and they will be more likely to buy from you again.
This doesn’t just happen on its own. You decide where to ship your products, and it’s your job to make sure they get there.
Manage orders, get reports, and use advanced filters.
After you place an order, you can see what is going on in ShipBob’s warehouse. You can check to see if the item has been packed, processed, delivered, or sent back. The system also has a feature that sends tracking numbers to customers without them having to do anything.
ShipBob’s order management system can keep track of all packages from the time they are received until they are delivered or returned. It can also send tracking information to your customers on its own.
With the advances filter, you can look at your dashboard and only see items that are being worked on, have already been shipped, or have been delivered.
This type of filtering system will help you run your business well and get things done in the right order.
You can also see important information about your sales in a report on the dashboard.
Some examples of what the report includes are:
- Order ID
- Import date
- Source
- ship date
- Name of customer and email
- Tracking number
- Order status
- Insurance details
- Notes
- Various timestamps
You can export the report as a spreadsheet, which can help you make your own analysis. For example, you can make your own report to find out which of your customers order from you the most often or how many items they buy.
You can use this kind of information to drive your marketing campaigns. You can thank a customer who keeps coming back, or you can send a personalized upsell email to someone who only bought one item.
ShipBob Compatibility
ShipBob works with many different types of online store platforms. Let’s look at a few of them and how ShipBob can help you manage your shipping process.
Shopify
Shopify has deals with many shipping couriers that give you a discount on shipping, but you have to send the items from certain offices. You can only get discounts this way.
But if you connect ShipBob to a Shopify Plus account, you can promise your customer a 2-day delivery.
Here’s what happens:
- Before integrating the two, you send your items to ShipBob’s fulfillment center.
- Once the integration is done, all of your products will be in your ShipBob dashboard.
- ShipBob will take care of processing, packing, and shipping an order.
- If the customer’s shipping destination was one that could be reached in two days, then the item will be delivered in two days. Your customers might also be able to get same-day delivery.
Big Business
If you use BigCommerce, you can use the option for free shipping. BigCommerce has some shipping calculators that work in real time.
These apps can be used with ShipBob, and they will check to see if extra shipping fees and handling fees need to be charged.
You can also choose whether to ship for free or charge a flat rate.
If you use ShipBob with BigCommerce, you can offer free shipping because ShipBob doesn’t charge high shipping rates for BigCommerce users.
SquareSpace
SquareSpace is a platform for building websites that lets you set up an online store. You can ship internationally and set up shipping zones when you use SquareSpace and ShipBob.
A shipping zone works like a coverage area. You can add countries per zone or just cities and towns per zone if you only want to ship locally.
ShipBob can also be connected to WooCommerce, Magento, BackerKit, ShipStation, and many more platforms besides these three.
All of the benefits are the same, and all of the ways to integrate are the same. Depending on which ShipBob plan you choose, the only difference will be in the features you get.
No matter what platform you use for your online store, you have to send your stock to ShipBob’s fulfillment centers. The company does not come to your house to get the parcel or package.
Also, your store’s platform determines the shipping zones and regions, not ShipBob.
ShipBob Pricing
Now it’s time to look at how much ShipBob would cost as a business tool.
ShipBob is different from many apps that charge a monthly fee.
The tool itself is free, and you can get the following services from it:
- Free lessons to get you started
- Your products should come in standard packaging.
- Less expensive shipping prices
- Returns management services
- Reports and research
- Dashboard
- Keeping track of stock
- Order management
Basic services are the same for everyone. If you pay more, you’ll get better service, and how much you pay will depend on how much you have to sell.
ShipBob charges you based on how much space you use in their warehouse and how many hours you work.
You will pay $25 for the first two hours of work that ShipBob does for you. For each work hour after the first, you will be charged $35.
What is this money for?
Someone has to work on storing, labeling, packaging, and adding your products to your digital inventory. This is how much you pay for work.
There is always a warehouse fee, and for each pallet you use, you will have to pay $40 per month. This is sometimes called the storage fee, but only if your products need to be stored on pallets.
If your items are kept on a shelf, you’ll have to pay $10 per month. If your items, like clothes, need to be stored in a bin because they are not fragile, the cost is $5 per month.
ShipBob doesn’t have a set shipping rate because the cost depends on:
- The place where you sent the package
- How much your item weighs and how big it is
- The cost of insurance
- Where the product is going
You have to be a member and then send them your items to get a custom shipping quote.
What’s the point of using ShipBob?
ShipBob is perfect for small and medium-sized businesses that ship at least 100 items a month. With this number, it’s hard to print shipping labels, pack them up, and then take them to UPS, DHL, or FedEx.
You can ask the shipping couriers to pick up the item from your store, but a logistics partner like ShipBob will do a better job and save you money.
You’ll save money because you won’t have to pay an employee by the hour to manage your stock. ShipBob will take care of it.
And once the work is done, ShipBob won’t charge you for any more man-hours, unless there was an order and someone worked to get your product to the customer.
Summary
ShipBob is a great logistics partner for small businesses because it doesn’t require a minimum number of orders per month. Here, you can send the items to their warehouse and start right away to connect your online store to their platform.
ShipBob has also made it easy to do analytics by giving you a dashboard that is always up to date. All you have to do is download the report in Excel, and then you can view filtered reports based on what you want to see.
You can use the analytics tool to make business decisions that are well thought out. With ShipBob, you can spend less time packing, labeling, and shipping. Then, you can use that time to focus on what’s really important for your business: making new products and getting the word out about them. What did you think of the review?
