ShipHero has seven warehouses across the United States and Canada, allowing you to ship orders from the warehouse closest to your customer for faster, smoother delivery to improve overall customer satisfaction. Integrations with renowned online seller portals like BigCommerce, Amazon, and eBay, as well as the largest domestic and international shipping carriers like DHL, USPS, and FedEx, are another reason ShipHero is a suitable choice as a reliable e-commerce fulfillment service. However, its limited warehouse network may interrupt or prolong operations—an issue that becomes even more serious when you factor in ShipHero’s inconsistent customer support.
ShipHero Compared to the Best Ecommerce Fulfillment Services
ShipHero is a great ecommerce fulfillment service, but it’s not the only one worth considering. Here are my top recommendations for the best ecommerce fulfillment service options:
Shopify Fulfillment Network offers 24/7 access to logistics and fulfillment experts, free storage, and tons of features to fulfill ecommerce orders faster and more smoothly—all offered at a flat fee per fulfilled item. Start your 14-day free trial.
ShipBob allows you to ship products directly to consumers through multiple sales channels, ensuring a streamlined omnichannel experience. Request a quote to get started.
Easyship handles calculating taxes and duties and complies with customs regulations, making it the best bet for ecommerce stores with an international presence. Get started for free today.
ShipHero: The Good and The Bad
Like any ecommerce fulfillment service on the market, ShipHero has both pros and cons.
While it offers a comprehensive list of handy features to accelerate error-free order fulfillment, the lack of liability insurance and minimum order volume requirements can feel limiting. Let’s discuss these pointers in more detail below.
What ShipHero Is Good At
ShipHero is a reliable ecommerce fulfillment service packed with several excellent features to ensure your product gets into the customer’s hands-on time. Robust inventory and order management features keep you on top of your logistics, while direct integrations with renowned platforms help eliminate inefficiencies and complexities. There is also a handy mobile app to provide anytime-anywhere access to your teammates.
Robust inventory management features: From inventory tracking to replenishment to reporting, ShipHero has the key features of any efficient inventory management software. Integrate the software with your preferred sales channel to track and count product levels and eliminate “out of stock” issues.
The software also has inventory transfer and order routing that lets you manage multiple warehouses. Set expiration on inventory lots and decide between pre-assembly or assemble-on-the-fly packing. Dynamic slotting lets you manage multiple pick bins and facilitate seamless bin transfers.
ShipHero streamlines inventory replenishment as well. You can create purchase orders directly from the platform and add low-stock products to purchase orders. The software also supports product scanning for received stock that will automatically update your stock levels.
Direct integrations with ecommerce platforms and marketplaces: ShipHero directly integrates with some of the biggest ecommerce platforms and marketplaces. Examples include WooCommerce, Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Walmart, and BigCommerce. That’s not all, either—after integrating with these platforms, you can view detailed analytics, reporting, and insights directly from the ShipHero dashboard.
Setting up automation rules to streamline fulfillment operations is another possibility that can be super handy to save time. These rules carry out desired actions in response to “triggers.“ For example, you can have ShipHero send emails with order tracking links to customers once their orders are shipped.
PostHero and ParcelView: PostHero and ParcelView are two special features under ShipHero’s fulfillment service. While the former makes it easier to predict delivery and track shipment progress, the latter ensures end-to-end transparency at the click of a button.
What’s more, both features can be implemented almost immediately to simplify fulfillment.
Streamlined order management: ShipHero takes active measures to streamline your order management process. After customers place orders on sales channels like Amazon or Etsy, they are automatically uploaded to the ShipHero platform, eliminating the need to check each sales channel for the total orders placed manually.
It also offers warehouse order routing capabilities, under which all orders are automatically assigned to available warehouses. Furthermore, you can apply automation rules to validate every order and flag potentially fraudulent orders or invalid addresses for inspection.
Based on the assigned shipping methods, ShipHero can determine the required ship date for each order and add priorities to orders or personalize shipments as needed. Barcode scanning allows you to print packing slips and shipping labels without any extra hassle.
Faster delivery and shipping: ShipHero is often the go-to choice for ecommerce brands struggling to manage their own logistics. Thanks to its fulfillment services, you can consistently offer two-day and overnight delivery options.
ShipHero‘s network of fulfillment centers allows you to fulfill orders faster without inflating delivery costs. In other words, when a customer places an order, ShipHero will automatically ship it from the warehouse closest to them.
There is also a bulk shipping feature that is particularly useful during the holiday season or seasonal spikes. Use it to streamline the pick and pack processes and effectively handle large order volumes.
Advanced in-depth reporting and insights: With ShipHero, you can instantly access real-time inventory data, team reports, or pull-up order information.
You get a robust inventory management and shipping tool that makes it easier to monitor inventory levels in real time. The system also sends automatic notifications for easy stock replenishment and lets you set automatic order points to prevent overstocking or understocking issues.
Mobile-friendly and cloud-based: ShipHero is one of the few ecommerce fulfillment services with an excellent mobile app that supports full-fledged warehouse management.
The ShipHero mobile app is purpose-designed to streamline pick-and-pack processes and provide guided directions to optimize picking routes. Yacht team members can connect their devices to scanners through Bluetooth and scan every product to complete pics. They can view items ready to be picked and orders ready to be shipped directly from the dashboard as well.
The fact that ShipHero is cloud-based means anyone can log in to their account from any device to track order fulfillment and monitor stock levels.
What Is ShipHero Is Lacking
ShipHero has a few disadvantages that make it unsuitable for certain types of businesses. For instance, its minimum order volume means beginner-level merchants cannot use the service. The lack of liability insurance may not sit well with sellers dealing in fragile or high-value items. Other areas where ShipHero needs to improve are offering consistent customer support and building on its existing warehouse network.
Minimum order volume requirements: ShipHero has a minimum order requirement of 500 orders per month for its users. This rule makes the platform a worse fit for merchants just starting out or with sales below this level.
Inconsistent customer support: ShipHero’s customer support has mixed reviews from users. While some are all praise for the customer executives’ efficiency, many have found it comparatively slower than the assistance offered by other ecommerce fulfillment services. A few users have also mentioned they kept getting reassigned to different dedicated reps.
Limited warehouse network: ShipHero has five fulfillment centers in US locations, plus two in Canada. While this allows you to strategically split stock between facilities to optimize shipping speed and stock levels, it doesn’t do much for merchants targeting foreign customer bases, especially since none of its facilities operate outside North America.
No special handling facilities: ShipHero doesn’t offer liability insurance and lacks services for special goods like ammunition. Its errors/damage policies are also unaccommodating for those selling heavy, oversized, high-value, or fragile items. So if you deal in products requiring special handling, you’ll do better to seek an alternate fulfillment solution.
ShipHero Options and Pricing
Alongside full-fledged fulfillment services, ShipHero also offers an innovative warehouse management system. We’ll discuss this service in more detail below.
ShipHero Warehouse Management System
ShipHero’s warehouse management system is your best bet to simplify picking, packing, and shipping. It lets your team members pick and pack more products faster, helping you save money while increasing customer satisfaction.
Here’s a quick rundown of features and options you can expect:
- Orders and returns: Use it to enjoy seamless store integrations, track orders, and send shipment notifications. You can also set up custom automation rules to save time.
- Inventory: Implement multi-warehouse and order allocation, counting cycles, and set reorder and replenishment levels.
- Mobile pick and pack: Innovative mobile tech with optimized and guided pick routes makes picking faster and more efficient. Barcode scanning further cuts down error rates by 99.9%.
- Rate shopping: ShipHero’s real-time ship rate shopping allows you to save on postage. Use it to find the cheapest carrier label to save money.
- Reports: Built-in reporting allows you to dig deeper into your online business’s inventory and sales, operations and shipment, and overall efficiency.
ShipHero’s warehouse management system starts from $1,850 per month. You can also opt for the Enterprise plan to get a custom WMS.
ShipHero in Summary
ShipHero provides a diverse range of solutions to facilitate both in-house and outsourced ecommerce fulfillment. A nationwide network of warehouses and integrations with popular marketplaces and systems work together to deliver products faster without adding to your distribution expenses.
However, ShipHero may not be suitable for all kinds of businesses. In such cases, other ecommerce fulfillment services like Shopify Fulfillment Network and ShipBob would be more appropriate.
