An Absolute Necessity for Multi-Channel eCommerce
December 18, 2018
An Absolute Necessity for Multi-Channel eCommerce
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ShipStation
ShipStation streamlines our shipping process, we also connect an API to ShipStation to import orders into our somewhat ancient warehouse and accounting software. We have multiple selling channels, and are always looking to add more, and that's not a concern with ShipStation, which to the best of my knowledge has integrated with every single selling channel I've ever used. The API we use is very specific to our business, as I mentioned we use an ancient, jack of all trades warehouse/accounting software, and it can be a difficult fit for eCommerce, but we've made it work using the API, in that manner ShipStation has been very flexible.
- Customer service is always very important to me; I've never had any issues getting a question answered via live chat, which is super convenient when I'm working, and can't budget time to be on the phone AND working.
- The search in ShipStation is pretty robust, it's fairly easy to find an order using pretty much any bit of information from an eBay user name to first or last name. I've never had trouble finding an order when I need.
- I like that I can save custom exports in ShipStation that help me determine my average cost of shipping, which helps me be more competitive with pricing. I just search an item number, sort by quantity, export, and I have a custom "cost of shipping" export that I just run through excel and get my average.
- ShipStation features a shipping calculator, right there, super convenient in the header. You'd be surprised to find that it's really difficult to find a good shipping calculator online, so it's nice to have it here in my shipping software.
- If I had to nitpick, I'd say that I'm not a big fan of ShipStation's new V3 UX update. It's more-or-less the same UX, only some of the data that I relied upon is now hidden elsewhere. It's not that I resist change or anything like that, I just like to get to the information I need using the least amount of clicks.
- I have some alerts set up to notify shipping when an order has been sitting in our order screen for too long, I'm just not really impressed with the alert itself, which is just a red alert in your top menu that can be easily cleared and forgotten about. I'd really like the option to be able to opt into email or text alerts.
- The account settings tab is a little random in that you have you find your automation rules on the same page you find your Subscription and Passwords, and then your user profile is a completely separate thing. It's not the end of the world or anything, but it just seems like there's not a lot of logic on what's on the Popular Settings page, but you get used to it.
- The ability to export an item's sales history + cost of shipping for each order has made it very easy for me to fine tune my pricing and be more profitable.
- Give me one place to handle all of my shipping needs, including shipping estimates which saves me time, and time=money.
ShipStation does one thing, shipping, and it does that one thing really well. You can definitely go out there and try to find software that handles both shipping and inventory, and that may work for certain businesses, but for mine, I've found it incredibly necessary to use the best shipping software, and then separately the best inventory software. Something that does both is likely not going to be as robust, and again, while that may work for some businesses, I've had better luck keeping my inventory and shipping separate.