ShipStation Reviews

Pros

It is by far the best e-Commerce tool for shipping and logistics. It helped me grow and run my business immensely. I was able to easily plug in the stores that I operate and it worked like a charm. It populated all the orders without any problem. I also liked the shipping discounts that it provided, as well.

Cons

I found it a little clunky to use at first. I had trouble navigating the orders. It is really a warehouse type of tool which I had to get used to. I had to learn to how to navigate using the software which didn't seem as intuitive as shipping on eBay or Etsy, for example.

Alternatives Considered

BigCommerce

Reasons for Choosing ShipStation

Stamps.com is also a mandatory subscription to utilize USPS postage. So technically I am still using it but I use it through ShipStation. Previously, I was just using Stamps.com by itself but was unable to connect accounts and get the amazing discounts that ShipStation provides me now.

Switched From

Stamps.com

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

BigCommerce SUCKS. I used BigCommerce and set up an entire store only to find out that it is the worst service. It was terrible and I am so happy I made the switch to ShipStation from BigCommerce. BigCommerce is expensive and locked me into a platform that I didn't want to use. I had to completely redesign everything and wasn't able to use the shipping platform because it was just hard to navigate and poorly designed.

Pros

I like how all shipping services are available and easy to apply. Everything is easy to understand and operate. The software communicates with most selling platforms and keeps updated inventory.

Cons

I would like the pricing to be based on volume not number of platforms.

Pros

Nothing except international shipping less

Cons

Horrible customer service. They don’t answer phone. Website terribly confusing and difficult to use on IPhone The free trial is a lure as you must give a credit card .Sales rep didn’t mention you must cancel on their website which is difficult and requires multiple steps. Canceling by email or message to rep or customer service WONT get you cancelled and your credit card charged. There notifications go to spam . They quoted the wrong charges and didn’t mention u don’t get a tracking number so if you do business on EBay you’ll be dinged.They lie to avoid responsibility for their shortcomings ie 90 day free cancel period… they didn’t honor claiming I used their service after the 90 days.. bold faced lie. STAY AWAY

Pros

Once you get all of your rules set up it doesn't require much additional work

Cons

Customer service isn't always easy to get

Pros

It is super easy to implement, it has a lot of features to make your job faster and it has good customer support if you have a bit of patience.

Cons

I don't like that I can not put insurance into auto re charge for more than $100.00

Alternatives Considered

ShippingEasy

Reasons for Choosing ShipStation

Because Shipstation offered better rates and I like their UI more.

Switched From

ShippingEasy

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

Because Shipstation offered better rates and I like their UI more.

Pros

Integration is a cinch. YOu really need next to no technical knowledge to set this up on most platforms. Once you create all the rules anyone and I mean anyone can just come in and fulfill all your orders.

Cons

Honestly, I would say that I wish it was free but it is as I like to say WEP - Worth Every Penny, and it doesn't really cost very much.

Pros

What I like most is the ability to print directly onto adhesive labels. It sounds like a small thing, but having to print out labels on a paper, and then cut/fold them, and then place into a label sleeve takes a lot of time and effort when packaging a large number of orders. ShipStation allows me to print and stick in one easy step.

Cons

What I like least is because it is not affiliated with an official carrier service (FedEx, USPS, etc) I have to actually go and drop off the packages. A carrier will not come to my business to pick it up.

Pros

The price checking, the tracking, the integration the ease of use...all lead to an excellent product.

Cons

So far we have not run into anything major but we have just implemented and are still in testing phase so we need more time for a list of potential cons to emerge (if any do)

Alternatives Considered

Shippo

Reasons for Choosing ShipStation

Price Shopping made easy.

Switched From

FedEx Ship Manager

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

The array of features, the pricing and the seemingly straight forward integrations were the main factors.

Pros

It's easy to use and makes my job convenient. I'm glad I discovered Shipstation.

Cons

I have no complaints about it. It helps us on the daily!

Alternatives Considered

Stamps.com

Reasons for Choosing ShipStation

Just easier to navigate and gets it done in a jiffy.

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

It was just easier and more user-friendly. That matters for a company, especially when you have older employees who aren't as "high-tech".

Pros

Easy to use and ability to price shop all carriers on one dashboard

Cons

Cannot be used as an inventory management system.

Pros

When we implemented it, it was a big step up from ShippingEasy in terms of feature set and ease of use.

Cons

Their software is not updated in a timely manner, so when Shopify makes an update , ShipStation no longer works and you are sitting waiting for 6+ months for them to actually fix it so that you can get orders out without the fear that things are not going to work.

Pros

- Easy to use order fulfillment platform.
- Great customer service team.
- Batch print labels.
- Filter and view orders by a number of variables.
- Easy to setup with multiple shipping providers.

Cons

- Once orders are pushed over, edits to orders don’t always sync so some have to be done manually.
- Orders with multiple packages have to be split manually.

Pros

1) Import orders from multiple ecommerce platform
2) One software for multiple shipping carriers and method
3) Great email notification for clients, multiple options of emails and multiple templets
4)inventory tracking
many other good futures

Cons

1) Depend on package you have with ship station support can take long time to answer your question. No phone support for any users and only email support for lowest package. This is not acceptable. When I need to ship and I have issue I need to call somebody and fix problem ASAP. If you send email you can wait who know how long to resolve issue. Live chat is available only for selected ship station clients ( base on how much you are paying = selected package of ship station) and it may take very long time to actually chat with somebody ( we are talking hours in some cases before you are at top of chat queue )
2) you have to press button to read package weight if you have scale attached. This is very annoying if you ever used software with automatic scale. You place package on scale and software already know what you shipping. ( or alarm you when scale is 0 = nothing on scale ). I had packages returned because I did not press "read" scale button and package was over weight compared to postage purchased. Same goes the other way. You pay more for postage if your package is less than what you estimate in your ecommerce platform.
3) FedEx international shipping has big problem. Ship station does not print commercial invoice for international packages. You technically can print label but than you have to go to FedEx and fill out commercial invoice form. I do not understand why it can not be printed at the same time with label. All info is already available ( item, price etc) on ship station after importing order. Ship Station print all required paper work for USPS international packages
4) address verification is not strong future on a software . I am comparing it to a stamps.com again. If client place wrong address on a form ship station will tell you that address is not valid but will not tell you what is wrong and will not suggest correction. Stamps.com will suggest correct zip code , street name , apartment number if it is missing etc. Ship station will only tell you " invalid apartment number" or "apartment not found"
5) international imported addresses create issue sometimes if client used other than English address form. German , Japanese, Spanish language use soft punctuations and different letters like ~ or ę ó ś ć and many similar. Ship station when import such address create strange characters replacing original with something like @##@$%% and if you print it I can guaranty package will not be delivered to a clients since local post office will not recognize street name or town.
6) some countries are not recognized by ship station as international address. Republic of Ireland is not recognized. If client place that name on order form Ship station assign USA address to it. Since this is official name if country my client always put it than way and not Ireland in Country section. They would have to put Ireland instead ( Ireland in country field create correct international destination) Same goes to United Kingdom but England will be correct ( it may be few others - just do not remember )

Pros

Initially Importing Orders with little setup time using the XML integration helped us import orders using our custom Order Entry Program in a two-day time frame. It is also easy to add in supported carriers providing you have the required information. Automatic Notifications and returns support is a great added feature.

Cons

The missing value for B2B customers is missing support for Blind Shipping, in our case, we only update the company name in the ship at this time which we are unable to do in ShipSttion, the recommended workaround was to re-enter 2500+ resellers in each location as a unique Ship From Location. (We have 3) Alternatively we can tax our shipping employee with entering them with each new shipment. Otherwise, I think the lack of bulk importing these Ship From Locations makes things a little worse off. I am hopeful that more features will be released with B2B and Dropship customers in mind.

Pros

OMS, carrier, product, inventory and integrations

Cons

Everything. There isn't a single feature in ShipStation they haven't changed in the last two years and made worse. Integrations are broken and the team doesn't work on them. Order Management has become barren of features as they remove things instead of fixing them. You can't trust that a feature you rely on will be maintained. Customer Service group is absolutely worthless and the development team doesn't work on any request. The forums are a joke. Tons of people with tons and tons of people supporting their bug reports, feature requests, etc. and all being completely ignored by ShipStation.

Alternatives Considered

Shippo

Reasons for Switching to ShipStation

Accounting integration

Pros

Shipstation was not the first shipment software I tried but it will definitely be the last. The platform is perfect for busy online retailers. At times, I was shopping 2,000 packages a day and shipstation handled it like a boss.

Cons

At times, it can be difficult to reach the account manager assigned to our account. When customers depend on the shipment estimations we provide, we can’t afford software issues that go unresolved for any length of time.

Pros

Shipstation is a fantastic shipping suite for our business. We use the integrations for Shopify, eBay, and Amazon. Orders are automatically imported and we are able to simple and efficiently manage shipments for UPS and USPS. Rates are automatically displayed, invalid address warning shown, and everything can be managed from a web-based UI with remotely connected printers using Shipstation Connect. We are able to use our UPS business account with the UPS integration for our set rates. Labels and Pack Slip templates are customizable and simple to set up. Our 4x6 Brother QL1000 continuous label printer works perfectly with Shipstation and Shipstation Connect, and we use standard letter paper for pack slips.

Cons

The Shipstation android app does not work with Shipstation Connect very well in terms of printers, and there are UI issues with it. On top of that, the Shipstation web-based application does not work well on small browser screens, so it is currently almost impossible and very painstaking to print labels from a phone.

Pros

It is incredibly helpful when all is well and is a major benefit to businesses that ship.

Cons

I pay for "Silver service" which boasts "Live Chat support". There is no live chat support actually and we have submitted tickets via email that have gone unanswered for weeks. This dramatically impacts our business. What could take potentially minutes to sort out with tech support could feasibly cost us thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Customer support is immediately there for on-boarding new clients....but is entirely absent when it comes to upholding promises of live support, or sustaining proper functioning of customer accounts.
I get that times are tough and some delays can be expected, but to promise live chat support and then not respond for weeks on end just feels like negligence at this point. Just because its more profitable to focus on new accounts than it is to help existing customers doesn't mean its the right thing to do.  Please reallocate some resources to uphold your promise to provide customer service.

Pros

ShipStation is very useful for small companies. I work for a small online boutique, and use ShipStation to package/ship items all over the United States, Canada, and Australia. ShipStation is user friendly and very useful for large order quantities. I find there are many useful options when shipping. For instance, it allows ability to combine orders, hold orders until a selected date, sort orders by name, date, size, etc. It is an extremely helpful software.

Cons

I have not found many flaws in this software. The only issue I have encountered with ShipStation is its inability to function well with other pages open. For instance, when I am shipping, I often have other windows/internet tabs open. ShipStation slows down substantially when I have these other windows open.

Pros

Shipstation, above all, is very easy to use. The features list is really comprehensive and it works extremely well as an integral part of your online shipping program. Our needs were for a non-standard integration but their support team and API made it very easy for us to get up and running. Plus, with a 3rd party app, we seamlessly use Shipstation as an order pass-through to get orders into Quickbooks online. It's given us an ability to grow without increasing staff for mundane work!

Cons

We wish that an order wasn't tied directly to a singluar shipment. Our orders contain various products from various vendors and we'd prefer to keep a single order together and post multiple shipments to it, as opposed to needing to split and duplicate orders to ship multiple items for one reference. This and other annoyances are the most we could say negatively about Shipstation, but are not representative of a need to change in any way.

Pros

I like how ShipStation swiftly and efficiently manages the order inventory. With ShipStation, it helps the company to coordinate with multiple carriers and order sources in one place. It has an excellent integration with the main shipping service to accelerate shipping management activities.

Cons

Sometimes, ShipStation may fail to print the labels the user wants but this can be manually downloaded and printed from outside ShipStation. Despite this, there is still a lot in there to explore since the user interface is good.

Pros

I like the ease of syncing our orders with shopify, shipping them through shipstation, and having the tracking number then re-uploaded to shopify.

Cons

I had an issue a long time ago of not being able to change SKU or UPC numbers in my inventory. It has been a year and customer service never figured it out or replied to my most recent messages. We were able to edit the packing slips on our old plan, then they changed it so you had to be upgraded further to access that ability. We have an error on our old packing slip and am not able to get it fixed unless I pay an additional $100 for one month.

Pros

Shipstation connects with some important channels that it's parent Stamps.com does not.

Cons

price is expensive compared to Stamps.com it's parent company.

Pros

It works, most of the time. There isn't actually any alternative.

Cons

You have to refresh to page every single time you use it, or else it doesn't work.

Pros

Believe it or not, it's the little things that I enjoy about ShipStation. One of my favorites is the "Tags" feature. Being able to color coordinate particular orders is great! Aside from placing orders "On Hold", certain orders have to be identified and tagged. By tagging them, this allows us to avoid errors. Again, it's the little things that make a difference.

Cons

Shipstation's "Rate Calculator" could be better. Every time I utilize this feature, it gives me inaccurate rates. I mainly utilize this feature to give accounts quoted rates but after a handful of them turned out to be incorrect, I've had to go around it.