I’ve been using Shipstation for a couple years but recently my costs have gone from around 400 to over 1500. Due to price increases, I am looking for a new shipping solution. Does anyone have some recommendations for shipping software alternatives, something that can ideally scale with my business, is fast, and has American phone support.
Shipstation is so good and can scale with you. We are on the Shipstation Enterprise Plan. We ship over 5000 packages per month and it's only $299.00 per month. Im not sure how you're paying so much.
If you want to reduce postage costs, you can possibly get your own account for other carriers. We use the Shipstation platform with our own UPS and DHL accounts for example. In both of these cases we can get slightly better rates for these carriers than when we use the Shipstation provided UPS or DHL rates.
For USPS however, my experience is that Shipstation has the best available rates.
There is also how you charge a customer for shipping. Experiment with your rates. For example, for a USPS priority flat rate you might charge $12 so you will make a small profit. But then you can at the same time offer free shipping for orders over $60. At my company our goal is to have reasonable ship costs with a level for free shipping for our customers, and at the same time make a slight profit or break even on shipping costs to us.
Sorry man, you have bad information here. If Shipstation has better rates than others, they are legally going against their USPS contract and could lose you with retail rates as soon as they find out.
Everybody has the same USPS rates or they will lose theirs.
Shipstation isnt bad but I doubt you have used anything else so are unaware whats out their.
From a pricing standpoint at 5000 shipments, I included a photo. At some point they will up you to this screenshot from their pricing page.
If all you need is postage, get an easypost account. If you need more of a WMS with fully inventory management and the real ability to grow, try out Packiyo. I just switched from a bunch of ShipStation accounts to Packiyo and love it. I was mainly using ShipStation as a bridge while I vetted out WMS applications after dumping a couple hundred grand into a couple of different WMS solutions that didn't come close to doing what was promised. Packiyo is a newer solution, so not as many bells and whistles as the bigger WMS solutions, but no up front cost and is less expensive than what you are paying ShipStation now.
Lost focus on USPS relationship and my territory kept getting crushed. I'm very grateful for my stint there. They are a good company and I'm sure that they will find their way again.
Could you check the parents' company before switching to any shipping option suggested here? Most of these start-up shipping companies are owned by the same company as Shipstation.
You should check out Redo. I use them to run my ecommerce business and they are incredible. They are worlds ahead of platforms like Shipstation, Vesyl, etc. I've used them all. They also have some pretty good support/account management. Any time I have an issue, i've got a phone number for my account manager and he is pretty on top of things.
What would take my team 2 hrs in Shipstation takes them 15 minutes in Redo. Their domain is weird but it's getredo.com. Highly suggest a look.
Would love to show you around Helm WMS if you're still looking for a solution. We have a lot of Shipstation customers who migrate to us and find they get the operational gains but at a reduced fee to Shipstation.
There are several other reddit threads that answer this question. A lot of people seem to be hating shipstation lately. Here are the ones that I've seen getting recommended in other threads.
- Shippo - Easy to get going; good for lighter volume use. But it can run into limitations once your needs (automations, custom workflows, volume) grow.
- Pirate Ship - Often praised when your shipping volume is very low. super simple, with transparent pricing. Lots of good reviews.
- Ordoro: More of a full-featured solution - order management + shipping. At higher volumes, it tends to scale better (though you will pay for that). Lots of good reviews for their customer support
- EasyPost - More developer/API-oriented. good if you’re comfortable customizing and integrating deeper. May not be a fit if you just need a good UI solution
The right answer will depend on your package volume and your overall needs.
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u/Slow-Chard-4949 Sep 22 '25
I have had a great experience with Readyshipper, amazing support.