ShipStation is an order fulfillment and inventory management web-based shipping software designed for eCommerce businesses. It allows users to import, manage, and ship orders from multiple online selling channels while providing discounted rates and integrations with carriers like USPS, UPS, DHL Express, Canada Post, FedEx, Royal Mail, AUSPost, and more. ShipStation also offers workflow automation to speed up fulfillment, and branded package tracking, vital for enterprise and small businesses…
$9.99
per month
QuickBooks Commerce
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Commerce (formerly TradeGecko) is a cloud-based Order and Supply Chain Management platform. TradeGecko was acquired by Intuit QuickBooks in August 2020, and plans to sunset the resulting product were announced June 2021 (it will be discontinued as a standalone product in June, 2022).
N/A
Pricing
ShipStation
QuickBooks Commerce
Editions & Modules
Starter
$9.99
per month
Bronze
$29.99
per month
Silver
$59.99
per month
Gold
$99.99
per month
Platinum
$149.99
per month
Enterprise
$229.99
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ShipStation
QuickBooks Commerce
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
—
Monthly and yearly subscriptions available to meet your business' needs. Cancel at anytime.
Basic - $99/month
Business - $249/month
Business Premium - $449/month
Enterprise - $999/month
I looked at several other products and either they were cost prohibitive or just too complex. If I wanted complexity I would go with a full suite approach (Navision, Intacct, Netsuite, Sage, etc.) for a major price point entrance into the accounting system world.
I do - and have - recommended them to other businesses. If they had taken care of the USPS pickup option and started supporting Rollo printers again I would have given them a 10. But a year with no resolution is unacceptable. Everything else about them is excellent. When I do have issues I'm usually able to contact someone via live chat and get it resolved. They are glitchy on occasion, but what piece of modern technology isn't.
Using TradeGecko requires to the company to make compromises. Which compromises depends on the business, what they are using for other 3rd party applications and what they sell. You need to be very good with excel since you are able to upload and modify most files, which gives you major control over your data. They however need to modify the way in which new inventory items get loaded, as it is quite awkward if you use variants. 'Reports' as has been described prior has improved dramatically and most if not all can be downloaded in CSV/Excel format. This allows you to build your own reports with the data from the system. If your business is very complex in nature, TradeGecko probably isn't the system for you. If you are doing thousands of transactions a day, again this is not the system. However, if you are a small to smaller mid-sized business, the system, its cost and the 3rd party applications make it worth a first second and third look.
For years users have requested UPS End of Day Report for Driver to Scan. Shipstation Refuses to offer this and it means that Claims with the carrier are next to impossible to process as there is no PROOF the carrier received your package.
Customer Service is Seriously Lacking within the last 6-12 months. Repeated outages, problems, and their front-tier support has no insight as to how long the system will be down. Poor Response times for even the most basic of issues such as error logs so our cart can troubleshoot from their end.
The Status Page is inaccurate. 5 of the last 6 times when we had major issues their status page shows as 100%. Not a reliable gauge of up-time.
- Couldn't integrate with existing QBO account. Had to set up a new QBO account and transfer all data, create lots of journal entries - was very time-consuming and labor-intensive. Caused some financial discrepancies to resolve.
- Have to process returns on Amazon and Shopify orders manually
- Tax-inclusive is not allowed - European sales are tax inclusive - can't import order with VAT included. Looks like the software is suitable for US only. Have to create such orders manually in Commerce and then manual journal entries in QBO
- Supports accrual accounting method only. In cash - it's a mess
- Support - not knowledgeable enough - I could only call for support (now they have chat) and they always had to get with the back-end and every call was not less than 1 hour. At the end I would get a link for the training materials
- Inventory not synching timely sometimes - I have a screenshot proving that inventory on our Amazon account was 0 but Commerce still had quantities, I had to manually press synch
- Shipping line from Shopify orders is not coded to Shipping income account but goes together with Sales of product income account
- When partial of the PO is received, not able to create a bill for the partial. There're only 2 settings: either bill created at the time of PO creation (for the whole PO amount - which increases your AP right away) or at the time the whole PO received. It works only when PO is shipped as a whole.
Its a very quick platform and being web based it does not require install for say viewing order's shipping status. For the shipping itself, there is a app that grabs data in near real time. Its an easy install and I have had next to no issues with the shipping aspect of the app.
I have quarterly calls with my account rep to discuss metrics and performance to ensure we are remaining consistent without fulfillment and transit times. He is super friendly and knowledgable. Whenever I have questions, if he can't answer them himself, he gets me in contact with the appropriate person almost immediately.
ShipStation is mainly used for automating and streamlining our shipping process. It doesn't track inventory or deal with fulfillment. ShipBob, on the other hand, is a fulfillment and shipping provider. (in addition to automation) Because our e-commerce business is still small and we're operating from our brick-n-mortar store, we don't have a need for ShipBob at the moment.
Each of the applications has a specific place. We select and implement the best solutions for our clients based on their budget and requirements. This is often determined by integration requirements. We like to say that every application with do a different 95% of what you need it to. There will always be a different 5% to forgo between applications.
