ShipStation vs. Zoho Inventory

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.

Incentivized

It's a basic system which does some things well but the things it does well are the basic things you would expect! Many other features that are a little beyond basic are just not available or you can get 90% of the way there but get stuck on the final 10% so you need to hire a developer who can try to get you through the last bit. An inventory management system with no bin locations pretty much sums it up. The reporting system is terrible. To get any real use you need to integrate it with Zoho Analytics but the problem there is it only syncs every 3 hours. The integrated shipping process is extremely cumbersome

Incentivized

• Integration: It works so well I forget that it is a 3rd party solution sometimes.
• Automation: You can set nested rules based on order details, really cutting down on the little things that slow down your fulfillment process.
• Management: We almost never log into the admin side of BigCommerce thanks to ShipStation. ShipStation handles all of our day-to-day needs.

Incentivized

• It is simple to use.
• Does all the basics well.
• Is able to integrate with our CRM.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Templates within Zoho Inventory are very weak. You can't customize many including package slips, shipment docs, etc...
• When an order has multiple packages, it's next to impossible to find the item you are looking for. Scenario, a large order has many packages and a customer has cancelled one of the items. You must click through every package to find the item, edit the package and remove it before you can cancel the item.
• The reports within Inventory are extremely basic and many of them are useless
• The packing slip module is useless as it does not print out bin locations
• It's an inventory management system but it does not have bin locations
• The backorder system is useless. If you "backorder" something then the whole order is locked until the backorder arrives in. Scenario.... a client orders 20 items, 1 is on backorder. You "backorder" that one item but want to ship the other 19... not possible. The order gets completely locked.
• You can't print out RMA requests. There is just no option to do it, you have to do a screen shot
• Integration with Amazon or other 3rd party e-commerce providers is troublesome.

Incentivized

It is relatively easy to customise but the problem is sometimes it is not easy to see where this customisation is available. Also the integrations with external systems can prove problematic both during installation and ongoing development and maintenance. It's great for small companies with a simple inventory or even larger organisations with smaller product lines. And it is reasonably priced if you ar eprepared to put the time in.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The inventory management is better than QuickBooks however you give up an awful lot to get that benefit. The reporting in QuickBooks is far superior. The reporting in Inventory is terrible with every few options to customize the reports. For example, pulling in a salesperson report that factors in returns is not possible. You can't pull a report to see what items need to be picked for all open orders.

Incentivized

• It saves a lot of time being able to import the customer data.
• It saves us money by finding us the best rate (e.g. when we offer free shipping on orders).
• It can save data such as your most common box sizes.

Incentivized

• We stopped using it as it was difficult to set up.
• Zoho offers a lot of features but the depth of its functionality proves limited as your demands increase.

Incentivized