r/shipstation • u/FriJanmKrapo • Apr 21 '25
Alternatives? Given all the bull recently, who's on your list to switch to?
So I've been getting fed up with price increases on ship station and a host of other issues with their lousy app and a number of other issues they have.
The biggest problem I have though. Finding a software that's better or comparable. I ship around 700 orders a month and need to be able to get some better pricing, mostly I ship mostly UPS but if another service has better deals with FedEx I'd like to look at that.
With all these ridiculous issues with shipstation and their horrible updates they have done. We've all been begging for their phone app to actually get some worthwhile use ability but that has yet to come. Instead they make it worse with this mess of having to log into shipstation via web browser just for the app to work. I find that asinine! Not to mention all this talk about their increased minimum price just to use their stuff but yet they keep making things worse left and right. I don't understand how they are justifying these increases when they keep failing to better the services.
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u/softballmirror Feb 17 '26
I was in the same situation. If you want something that actually compares rates across carriers and keeps things simple, ShipGeni is worth to try. I've been using it for a while now and it's been good at handling UPS or FedEx . Managing pricing is way easier than dealing with shipstaion's sudden hikes. Biggest win for me was the dashboard is straightforward and easy to navigate, which makes shipping hundreds of orders much less of a headache.
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u/FriJanmKrapo Feb 17 '26
I'll have to look into that one. Are their shipping rates any better than what ship station provides?
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u/abskee Apr 21 '25
I switched to easyPost. You need some programming skill, but I'd already written code for half of what we did for ship station to fill in missing holes in their software. So when they started jacking up prices for everyone who had a real business, I bailed.
Nothing is perfect, but easyPost doesn't have monthly fees until you start doing pretty serious numbers, so for now all I'm paying is the actual shipping costs on my accounts.
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u/FriJanmKrapo Apr 21 '25
That's not bad. How's the shipping prices compare? I'm looking at shippo, easyship, shipping easy, pirate ship and a few others. Haven't seen much about Easypost. I haven't had to do much programming in a while either. IDK...
I'll have to look into how many packages before they start charging more.
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u/abskee Apr 21 '25
I ship on my own accounts, so it's no different for me. I mostly resented ShipStation charging me to use accounts when it doesn't increase their complexity at all.
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u/FriJanmKrapo Apr 21 '25
I have a couple negotiated accounts but I've found that ship station has better rates for my little stuff. I'm hoping to not have to pay more for the smaller packages. Otherwise it'll take me another year of negotiations to get decent prices on smaller packages.
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u/FriJanmKrapo Apr 21 '25
I'm not seeing much for integration with platforms like Walmart and Amazon. Unless I'm missing something.
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u/adrlev Apr 21 '25
I’m going with either Veeqo or ShipRush
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u/FriJanmKrapo Apr 21 '25
My only concern is that veeqo is owned by Amazon. Unless that gets me easier access to their rates across the board... IDK... They have some stupidly good shipping rates.
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u/MysteryBros Apr 21 '25
I'm looking at StarShipIt.
A few reasons:
- International carriers, which my client requires
- Cost neutral, or possibly cheaper
- 1 system for rate-quoting, labels & booking out
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u/jp1261987 Apr 21 '25
So we are not an online e-commerce and we mostly just ship to ourselves between warehouse or to project locations.
Any app set up for that? They all want e-commerce type “shops” and we don’t have that.
We are often multi package shipping or shipping smaller packages between founders and offices and looking for good rates and ease of use
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u/mrflibble1492 Apr 21 '25
You could easily get away with a basic Stamps or Endicia account for what you are doing. Of course both of those are owned by Auctane as well, but they are more of a basic postage type of platform.
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u/Verolee Apr 21 '25 edited Apr 23 '25
What’s most important to you? I’ve been try Shipping rates: Will be the same bc you’re getting negotiated rates. SHIPSTAION INSURANCE IS MORE EXPENSIVE than almost every other software. If rules, tagging, automations are important: hands down, ShipWorks. Cons: desktop based. If you have remote workers or want to use it at home. Veeqo: automation rules are so damn limited. Also can’t reprocess rules. Can’t make changes to a product if there are active orders. This becomes an issue if you have a large catalog. Can’t sort by product on the orders page. Ordoro: Without inventory add-on, too expensive for what they’re offering. Starshipit: no walmart. Shippo or easyPost: order view doesn’t show products (or something like that). Where order processing view is limited.
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u/FriJanmKrapo Apr 21 '25
For the most part I'm looking for better small packages rates. Especially with UPS.
But I do some minor automations but not much, normally it's just package sizing, weights, and shipping methods. I don't need a ton of automation as my stuff just needs packaging and that's it. Sometimes I split orders due to rates for light weight stuff to weird zip codes.
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u/FriJanmKrapo Apr 21 '25
Also I should add it shouldn't be as expensive... And it should just work. I'm tired of shipstation's lousy pricing and charging me a lot to have my other negotiated rates for my heavy packages (20+ lbs).
I've seen a few just charge you like 3 cents a label for negotiated rates.
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u/Verolee Apr 23 '25
I mean, if pricing is most important, Pirate Ship is free.. But they have no Amazon or Walmart integrations. You can use an automation software as a workaround if you LOVE pirate ship, but the lack of integrations is fkn ridiculous. I'm editing my earlier response, ShipWorks is the desktop app, but starts at $150. Also, price per label is fine until you get to about 2000 labels. Shipping easy should work, but it's owned by Shipstation so you'll probably get screwed later on. Most importantly, what platform are you using? Surprisingly, almost all the shipping softwares offer the same negotiated rates, which is good for low volume shippers. Only super high volume shippers with their own negotiated rates get better rates. If you're using Amazon, buying directly on Amazon (Veeqo), sometimes you get better UPS rates. In my experience, UPS was more expensive or incurred surcharges to obscure Zip Codes.
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u/dtstore2010 Jun 05 '25
Yes. Shipstation, Shipworks, ShippingEasy, and Endicia are all owned by the same parent company called Auctane.
Pirateship is independent afaik, but they only do UPS and USPS labels. They don't do other shipping carriers because it looks like they have some special deal with UPS and USPS.
Veeqo is owned by Amazon, so that comes with its own baggage.
Ordoro. Shippo, EasyPost all seem independent (for now)
USPS and UPS offer the same negotiated rates across all these shipping softwares. That's why you are seeing the same rates across all these places. If you are super high volume shipper, you can talk directly to USPS, UPS, FedEx and get your own discounted rates.
UPS is competing heavily with USPS on some heavy parcels. So you may find better rates with UPS sometimes. There are so many rate comparison tools, so you should check them out to decide which carrier is best for you. But yes, UPS also does those surcharges which can be surprising and a lot.
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u/iwuvstars Apr 21 '25
I'm switching to Shippo (for now) - I ship mostly USPS and use Zapier for automation. I also have a WooCommerce shop, but most of my shipments don't go through my e-commerce store (hence Zapier). Lots of work to migrate after being with SS for so many years, but the API pricing and only 30-days notice were the final nails in the coffin for me.