Best Shipping Software for Small Businesses in 2022

Small businesses can bolster their shipping process by using shipping software to compare rates, generate labels, organize orders, and more. The cost of these tools varies from free to hundreds of dollars per month and is typically billed on a monthly basis without the need for a long-term contract.

The best shipping software integrates directly with your ecommerce platform and other necessary tools. It also has robust order management features, generates helpful reports, and provides high-quality customer support. Many shipping solutions also provide significant discounts on standard shipping rates—making in-house fulfillment much more affordable.

Based on our evaluation, the best shipping solutions are:

• ShippingEasy: Best overall shipping software for small businesses
• Ordoro: Best for high-volume sellers seeking a multipurpose tool
• EasyShip: Best for crowdfunding campaigns
• ShipStation: Best for companies scaling to meet shipping demands
• OrderCup: Best for small-scale sellers and ecommerce beginners
• Shippo: Best for international shipping

Best Shipping Software Compared

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ShippingEasy: Best Overall Shipping Software

ShippingEasy is a cloud-based application that offers the best combination of savings, integrations, features, and functionality—making it our top recommendation. It also delivers an impressive set of additional features, helping you tackle your inventory management, customer relationship management, and marketing efforts. These features helped ShippingEasy earn a total score of 4.2 out of 5 on our assessment.

As a shipping management tool, ShippingEasy allows users to functionally organize orders and compare rates side-by-side in an intuitive interface, as shown below.

ShippingEasy’s platform is designed for small businesses, but the company’s top-tier plan (called the Enterprise program) provides valuable benefits for high-volume operations as well such as unlimited users and custom configurations from a shipping expert. For users shipping over 10,000 orders per month, custom pricing may be available.

ShippingEasy Features

• Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive deeply discounted UPS rates and discounted USPS Commercial Plus rates. ShippingEasy also works with your own negotiated rates.
• Exclusive Priority Mail service rates: ‘Flat Rate Green’ is ShippingEasy’s exclusive discounted dimensional pricing for USPS Priority Mail services. It provides low costs on parcels weighing 20lbs or less, with more dimensional flexibility than standard Flat Rate packaging.
• Integrations: ShippingEasy directly integrates with 65 other tools, including 60 popular ecommerce platforms and solutions such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Magento, WooCommerce, Etsy, BigCommerce, Walmart, PayPal, and more. Connect your USPS, FedEx, UPS and DHL account for streamlined shipping.
• Automation: Save time and labor by easily programming rules into your shipping workflow to automate shipment selections, tracking updates, confirmation emails, buy and print functions, label creation, order splitting, FBA routing, and more.
• Order management: ShippingEasy gives you split/combine/recombine functions, batch processing, CSV entry, customizable grouping, manual entry/editing, gift options, returns management, and more. It also offers customizable packing slips, barcode creation, and location support for picking and packing.
• Inventory management: Manage your stock with real-time inventory tracking, product catalog support, product image support, customizable categories, and barcode compatibility.
• Marketing tools: ShippingEasy’s Customer Marketing add-on gives you fully customizable plug-and-play templates and contact/data management tools to supercharge your email marketing. It also includes campaign management, feedback requests, and interactive metrics.
• Peripheral hardware: Use thermal/laser printers, scales, and barcode scanners through ConnectEasy—the company’s proprietary connectivity application.
• Customer service: Highly rated support is available by live chat, phone, and email to Basic-level users and above. Customers on the Starter plan are limited to forum communication with support staff.
• Online resources: Reference ShippingEasy’s marketing resource hub, case study reports, shipping guides, blogs, checklists, forums, and calculator tools.
• Highly rated: ShippingEasy is rated 4.8/5 from about 1,100 user reviews on Capterra, and 4.6/5 from some three dozen reviews on G2.

What ShippingEasy Is Missing

ShippingEasy isn’t compatible with direct connections to dropshipping suppliers, making it a poor choice for sellers doing a high volume of dropshipped sales. The program does allow users to mark an order as “shipped” at any stage—which is a work-around used by occasional dropshippers—but Ordoro is a far better choice for sellers needing vendor connectivity.

If you ship both parcels and LTL truck freight, ShipStation readily integrates with a larger range of carriers than ShippingEasy. Plus, it offers a mobile app, while ShippingEasy doesn’t.

The limitations on ShippingEasy’s lowest-level plan is another area of compromise. Starter plan users don’t have access to international shipping, FedEx integration, or customer support (except through a public forum).

For more information, read our in-depth ShippingEasy review.

Ordoro: Best Shipping Software for High-volume Sellers Seeking a Multipurpose Tool

Like our other picks, Ordoro offers great shipping functionality—but where this software really impresses is in advanced inventory management and automated purchasing features that seamlessly integrate with its shipping system. This makes it great for high-volume sellers.

These features earned it major points in our evaluation, along with its affordable pricing and generous free plan. However the provider was docked for its restrictive sales channel allowances and the lack of a few key features—such as displaying live shipping rates at checkout. Ultimately, Ordoro earned a score of 4.04 out of 5.

Its robust integrations with the top dropshipping marketplaces makes Ordoro a must-have for dedicated dropshippers and retailers supplementing their offerings with dropshipped goods.

While its wide-spanning features are powerful, they come at a cost. Many of Ordoro’s capabilities—including its advanced inventory management tools—are only available on its higher-level plans.

Ordoro Features

• Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive discounted USPS Commercial Plus rates and discounted shipping insurance.
• Integrations: Ordoro integrates with eight shipping carriers including USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as 38 other ecommerce platforms and solutions. Open API is available on the Pro and Enterprise plans.
• Automation: Ordoro provides advanced automation features to program rules and maps into your shipping workflow. Dropshippers can set up manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic dropshipping.
• Supplier management: Assign suppliers to products, track specific costs, customize workflows, and allow access to a vendor portal. Enterprise plan users can access supplier and third-party warehouse direct integration.
• Order management: Manage returns, receive and restock goods, initiate RMAs (return merchandise authorizations), and view orders from all sales channels from your dashboard. Plus access built-in address validation and barcode scanning.
• Inventory management: Pro plan users have access to advanced inventory management features, including multichannel inventory sync, real-time inventory tracking, stock alerts, allocation, and one-click PO creation. Multichannel sellers can link product listings on various channels to a “master product” in your Ordoro inventory catalog.
• Marketing tools: Create a branded experience by customizing labels, packing slips, outbound emails, and tracking pages.
• Peripheral hardware: Ordoro supports USB scales, plus scanner and printer connectivity.
• Customer service: Austin, Texas-based support staff is available by phone or email Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.–6 p.m. Central time. Limited email support is offered on weekends.
• Online resources: Ordoro hosts a resource library with videos, guides, case studies, a blog, and an API forum.

What Ordoro Is Missing

Ordoro’s biggest drawback is its pricing model. Some of the most important features—such as inventory management capabilities, API access, and returns processing—are only available on the second-tier paid plan, which may be unaffordable for many small businesses.

All of Ordoro’s three plan options are missing a few helpful functions that the competitors offer. The software is incompatible with scan-based return labels and can’t display live shipping rates at checkout. For these features, we recommend ShippingEasy.

Unlike EasyShip and ShipStation, Ordoro doesn’t offer a mobile app.

Read our Ordoro review for more information.

EasyShip: Best Shipping Software for Crowdfunding Campaigns

EasyShip delivers an easy-to-use shipping solution with affordable pricing and powerful features that set it apart from competitors. Plus, the platform is available on a mobile app for iOS and Android.

The provider caters to crowdfunding campaigns by offering connectivity with all of the leading marketplaces as well as special pricing options. If your crowdfunding project has been successfully funded, EasyShip will waive its monthly fee until you’ve shipped all of your initial campaign.

It also offers a suite of tools designed specially for crowdfunding, called EasyShip Collect, which lets your backers upgrade shipping, prepay duty and tax, and add shipping insurance.

These special features helped EasyShip earn points in our evaluation, along with its impressive 24/7 support accessibility, international shipping capabilities, and overall functionality. We detracted points for its limited range of plan options, incompatibility with peripheral devices, and lackluster order/inventory management features—ultimately giving EasyShip a score of 4.03 out of 5.

EasyShip Features

• Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive discounted USPS Commercial Plus rates as well as discounted UPS and DHL Express rates.
• Integrations: EasyShip integrates with 13 shipping carriers including USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as 31 other ecommerce platforms and solutions. Open API is also available.
• Automation: EasyShip provides basic automation capabilities to program shipping rules on all free and paid plans.
• Supplier management: Assign suppliers to products, track specific costs, customize workflows, and allow access to a vendor portal. Enterprise plan users can access supplier and third-party warehouse direct integration.
• Order management: Manage orders and returns from EasyShip’s dashboard, which features advanced search and filtering tools.
• Inventory management: EasyShip lets you manage shipping-related product information (such as dimensions and category) to work in tandem with your ecommerce platform’s inventory management features.
• Marketing tools: Create a branded customer experience by adding your logo and custom text to packing slips, outbound emails, and dedicated tracking pages.
• Customer service: All paid plan users can access 24/7 live chat support. Phone support is available to Premier and Enterprise subscribers, while users on EasyShip’s free plan can contact support through email or Facebook messaging.
• Online resources: EasyShip’s online resource hub features extensive tutorials in addition to free shipping tools, case studies, a blog, and ecommerce shipping guides.

What EasyShip Is Missing

EasyShip’s limited range of paid plans means that some users might be paying for a plan with a significantly greater shipment allowance than they need. To ensure you only pay for what you actually use, we prefer Ordoro’s “flex pricing” structure or Shippo’s wide range of 11 plan options.

Additionally, EasyShip users can’t connect useful hardware like shipping scales or scanners, which could create an obstacle for businesses that rely on these devices in their shipping workflow. ShippingEasy is the better choice for peripheral connectivity.

We also found that the platform lacks functionality when it comes to inventory and order management and doesn’t provide the option to modify user permissions (which can be a helpful feature for dropshippers). While EasyShip can accomplish the basics, Ordoro is a more robust multifunctional tool.

ShipStation: Best Shipping Software for Companies Scaling to Meet Shipping Demands

ShipStation beats our other recommendations in the number of carriers its shipping software supports. It offers far more plug-and-play integrations with fulfillment centers, freight companies, and international carriers.

Since these types of shipping services are typically used by mid- to high-volume ecommerce sellers, this impressive feature doesn’t weigh as heavily for small business needs. However, it’s nice to know you can quickly scale to meet freight and international shipping demands as needed.

Like our other picks, ShipStation also offers wonderfully intuitive order processing and multi-carrier shipping rate comparison screens. You can easily access and print order invoices, packing slips, and shipping labels—individually or in batches—and send shipment tracking data back to sale channels.

It stands out from the competition in its robust returns management features and mobile app offering—which earned ShipStation significant points in our evaluation. The software was docked for its steep learning curve and bleak online reviews. Ultimately, it earned a score of 3.93 out 5.

ShipStation Features

• Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive discounted USPS Commercial Plus rates, discounted UPS rates, DHL Express Worldwide Shipping Discounts, and more.
• Integrations: ShipStation integrates with 53 shipping carriers including USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as 70 of the top sales channels and 215+ other ecommerce platforms and solutions. Open API is also available.
• Automation: ShipStation supports setting product defaults and preset groups, service mappings, and automation rules that apply preset actions to selected orders.
• Order management: All ShipStation plans come with standard order management features—plus a robust returns management platform with a branded returns portal for your customers. Pick and pack features are also included to minimize packing errors.
• Inventory management: Basic inventory management features are accessible from ShipStation’s web or mobile app, including catalog support, stock allocation, inventory alerts, and syncing.
• Marketing tools: Create a branded experience by customizing labels, packing slips, outbound emails, and tracking pages.
• Peripheral hardware: Use thermal/laser printers, scales, and barcode scanners through ShipStation Connect—the company’s proprietary connectivity application.
• Customer service: Support staff is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.–8 p.m. Central time. Phone support is only available to top-tier, Enterprise plan users. Chat support is available to Bronze plans and higher. Email response times may exceed one business day.
• Online resources: Reference ShipStation’s large integrations help guide, workflow guides, troubleshooting guide, mobile help guide, FAQ, forum, YouTube tutorials, and webinar library.

What ShipStation Is Missing

While its aggregate rating isn’t bad, we found that an overwhelming number of reviews left for ShipStation in the past 12 months were ardently negative. Users frequently report bugs and known issues persisting without attention from the development team, as well as extremely poor customer service.

Many small businesses may not need customer service from their shipping software—especially if you’re using only prebuilt integrations and selling volumes below enterprise level. But if accessible support is important to you, ShippingEasy is a much better choice than ShipStation.

ShipStation lacks a free plan, and its pricing is slightly more expensive than the other providers on our list. Because of this, we recommend seeking a free alternative if you’re a low-volume shipper.

We also found that ShipStation isn’t the most functional choice for dropshipping management. Through granular user permissions options, you can grant your suppliers a ShipStation user account that only has access to specific orders. This workaround makes dropshipping possible—but a bit tricky. If a portion of your sales come from dropship suppliers, we recommend Ordoro instead.

For a full list of integrations and features, read our ShipStation review.

OrderCup: Best Shipping Software for Small-scale Sellers & Ecommerce Beginners

OrderCup scored 3.89 out of 5 on our assessment, largely thanks to its friendly pricing and excellent ease of use. The software is great for accomplishing the basics—like managing shipments, comparing rates, and organizing multichannel orders.

While it lacks the accessories and extra features of many competitors, OrderCup is one of the most affordable options on our list. It’s a great choice for small-scale sellers and those wishing to test how shipping software fits into their selling strategy, as well as ecommerce beginners who may need a user-friendly platform with high-quality support.

In our evaluation, OrderCup scored points for its top-notch customer service, simple dashboard, and robust international shipping functionality. It was docked for its lack of integration options and undeveloped resource library.

OrderCup Features

• Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive discounted USPS Commercial Plus rates and discounted shipping insurance. OrderCup works with your own negotiated rates, as well.
• Shipping perks: Every account receives access to free pickups, free shipping supplies, and free global address verification.
• Integrations: OrderCup has 36 direct integrations, including 19 popular ecommerce platforms and solutions like Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Magento, WooCommerce, Etsy, BigCommerce, Walmart, PayPal, and more. Connect your USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon, Canada Post, Purolator and UK Mail accounts for streamlined shipping. No API is currently available.
• Automation: Create automated defaults, predefined package types, and profiles for your shipping methods. OrderCup has sophisticated filtering to categorize order and shipping rules to automate processing—plus automated insurance rules to decide which orders to insure for how much.
• Order management: All OrderCupplans come with basic order management features such as batch processing, CSV entry, manual entry/editing, returns management, and more.
• Inventory management: Manage your stock by using OrderCup’s product catalog support with warehouse assignment options and automatic syncing through multiple channels.
• Marketing: Send and automate branded outgoing emails, packing slips, and tracking notifications.
• Peripheral hardware: OrderCup supports web-based direct printing of labels, customs forms, and packing slips to most thermal and laser or inkjet printers, plus zero-configuration scale and scanner support on PCs and Macs.
• Customer service: Support is available to all plans seven days a week, 7 a.m.–6 p.m. Pacific time—plus a separate Europe-based support center operating 7 a.m.–6 p.m. GMT. Contact staff through email, phone, live chat, or live screen sharing.
• Online resources: Reference OrderCup’s video library and blog.
• Highly rated: OrderCup is rated 4.8/5 from some 300 user reviews on the Shopify App Store, and 4.78/5 from about 20 reviews on the BigCommerce App Store.

What OrderCup Is Missing

Many of the competing shipping solutions have functionality that could potentially replace other tools in your arsenal, whereas OrderCup is much more rudimentary. Furthermore, it lacks the ability to work for dropshippers. For advanced dropshipping and inventory management features, we recommend Ordoro.

OrderCup isn’t as scalable as other options, either. The 12,000-shipment cap on its highest-level plan could mean needing to eventually migrate to another solution. Plus, its sparse integrations could pose a problem for high-volume sellers.

We found that OrderCup has the most limited reporting and analysis capabilities of the providers on our list. It does present helpful data on sales, shipments, orders, and costs, but ShippingEasy’s customizable reporting options are more advanced.

Read our OrderCup review for more information.

Shippo: Best Shipping Software for International Shipping

Overall, we gave Shippo a 3.59 out of 5 in our evaluation—it’s slightly more expensive than the other providers on our list, but it delivers features to support scalability and international shipping that set it apart. It offers extensive connectivity with the leading ecommerce channels and tools, as well as a wide selection of paid plans that provide a fit for any volume without overpaying.

For your international orders, Shippo offers free Paperless Trade options to send and manage customs documents electronically. It also supplies prefilled customs forms to expedite the label generation process.

These features helped boost the provider’s score, but it was docked for lacking peripheral hardware connectivity as well as dropshipping tools, inventory management features, and useful reporting capabilities.

Shippo Features

• Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive discounted USPS Commercial Plus rates and discounted DHL express rates.
• Integrations: Shippo integrates with 25 shipping carriers including USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as 88 other ecommerce platforms and solutions. Open API is also available.
• Automation: All paid plans can create automation rules within the web app to program package templates and shipping actions.
• Order management: Manage returns, receive and restock goods, and view/filter orders from your Shippo dashboard— plus built-in global address validation and partial fulfillment options to split an order into multiple shipments.
• Inventory management: Shippo’s platform stores package- and product-related data, but lacks robust inventory management functionality. Users may want to connect a dedicated inventory management app.
• Marketing tools: Add branding and custom text to email notifications and tracking pages.
• Peripheral hardware: Shippo does not support connectivity with peripheral devices.
• Customer service: San Francisco-based support staff is available by email, or live chat 6 a.m.–6 p.m. Pacific time Monday through Friday, and 6 a.m.–2 p.m. Pacific time Saturdays and Sundays.
• Online resources: Shippo hosts a resource database that includes tutorials, guides, case studies, e-books, webinars, podcasts, and a shipping encyclopedia.

What Shippo Is Missing

Shippo is one of the pricier providers on our list, and it doesn’t offer a truly free starter plan. It also limits the majority of its paid plans to five user accounts, and additional users cannot be added. If you need to create accounts for your team but don’t want to invest in an enterprise-level custom plan, Ordoro is a better choice.

It’s also missing peripheral connectivity to work with devices like scanners and scales. If you frequently use shipping hardware, ShippingEasy may be a better fit.

Unlike EasyShip and ShipStation, Shippo doesn’t offer a mobile app, and many reviews state that its web app is not mobile-friendly. Plus, its inventory and order management capabilities are limited, leaving users to rely on other connected apps.

To see a full list of paid plan options plus reviews and more, read out Shippo review.

Methodology: How We Evaluated Shipping Software

We compared a lineup of the most popular ecommerce shipping solutions, looking for high-performing functions, an intuitive interface, effective customer support, and additional features that go beyond the scope of shipping.

To find the best tool for small businesses, we prioritized economical pricing and factors that contribute to overall ease of use. Our ecommerce experts also weighed in with their assessments of each provider.

Based on our criteria, ShippingEasy is the best shipping management software for small businesses, earning the highest overall score according to our grading system (4.2 out of 5). ShippingEasy’s economical plan pricing, discounted shipping rates, robust features, and excellent ease of use make it the best choice for online sellers.

Click through the tabs below for our full evaluation criteria:

Small Business Shipping Software Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is shipping software?

At its core, shipping software is a solution that enables users to create and print shipping labels from their home, office, or warehouse. Most shipping solutions also include related features to compare rates, manage orders, and generate reports.

How does shipping software help?

Shipping software allows ecommerce businesses to efficiently manage shipments by organizing orders, comparing up-to-date rates from multiple carriers, automating tasks, and providing insights.

Plus, you can skip the post office by purchasing and printing labels directly from your computer.

How much does shipping software cost?

Like many ecommerce tools, shipping software is typically available as a SaaS subscription, billed on a monthly basis. The cost varies from free to hundreds of dollars per month, and it usually doesn’t require a contract.

The monthly cost of shipping software usually depends on the number of shipping labels and user accounts you need.

Bottom Line

Comparing rates among multiple carriers is the only way to ensure you’re getting the best shipping cost on every package you send. Using shipping software is the most efficient way to accomplish that—as well as manage your shipments, organize orders, track inventory, and more.

Taking all details into account, ShippingEasy is our overall pick for the best shipping software for ecommerce sellers. Its affordable paid plans offer impressive functionality across a host of helpful features—delivering the shipping and order management tools that multichannel sellers need to grow at the best price.

Visit ShippingEasy

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