As a Bigcommerce merchant, your top priority is your customer. You put a lot effort into creating an unforgettable customer experience both on your site and marketplaces. Your customer experience expands over the entire buying cycle – starting with visitors finding your site and ending when your products are in customers’ hands.
A very difficult part of this process is shipping. When your shipping goes wrong, it can result in lost sales. You’re probably all too familiar with dealing with lost packages, shipping items later than promised, and managing returns. It’s what keeps you up a night.
Lucky for you, Bigcommerce’s App Store is full of apps that provide you with a shipping solution. This blog post will highlight the top Bigcommerce shipping apps that will improve your shipping process and, ultimately, your customer experience.
Why You Need a Bigcommerce Shipping App
When you first started out your business, you probably could get by printing labels and fulfilling your orders by hand. It was more cost-effective and manageable when you only receive a few orders a day.
But, as your business grows, you’re realizing that your manual processes just don’t cut it anymore. When customers receive their packages late, or not at all, it doesn’t make for a good customer experience. You’ll lose your customers to your competitors who can provide this level of service (think of Amazon).
A shipping solution could make a significant impact on your business. They can help you with processes like producing and printing out labels, managing inventory, receiving discounted shipping rates, and importing your order from your site.
You’ll be able to deliver customers their orders on-time and at an affordable cost. What merchant doesn’t want to do that? It wins over more customers!
How to Compare Bigcommerce Shipping Apps
The Bigcommerce App Store provides a lengthy list of shipping apps that provide these types of solutions. But, that’s just the problem; there’s a long list of them. Finding the time to sort through them can be difficult. That’s why we started your research for you.
When comparing and contrasting apps, here’s what we take into consideration:
| Pricing* | Free Trial | Inventory Management | Number of Reviews in App Store | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ShipStation | From $25/Month | Yes, 30 Days | Yes | 45 |
| Ordoro | From Free | Yes, 15 Days | Yes | 32 |
| ShipWorks | From $14.95/Month | Yes, 30 Days | No | 8 |
| ShippingEasy | From Free | Yes, 30 Days | No | 70 |
| *Based on Lowest Tier Pricing | ||||
Each business has their own unique needs. Consider what aspect of the shipping process you need the most help with. Keep this in mind while you’re picking which app is the best for you.
Top Bigcommerce Shipping Apps
ShipStation
ShipStation helps merchants import, manage, and ship their orders, all through their cloud-based solution. They integrate with Bigcommerce and your marketplaces by automatically retrieving your orders and their information when you make a sale. Order status and tracking information is sent to your stores and customers (via customized emails). Other features include:
- Manage all USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL in one place
- Compare prices with real-time rate information
- Print shipping labels and packing slips together
- Generate and send a return shipping label with printed RMA number
- Generate reports of products you need to pick or produce sorted by name, quantity, or warehouse location
ShipStation does offer a 30-day free trial for their app. Pricing is based on number of shipments, selling channels, and users. For a merchant looking to efficiently create and distribute shipping labels, ShipStation could be for you.
Ordoro
WebsiteOrdoro is innately a shipping app that has added more advanced order management capabilities over time. With this web-based solution, merchants can integrate their systems and benefit from these features:
- Process orders as they’re placed by customers
- Automatically dispatch orders to your suppliers or draw from on-hand inventory
- Generate and print shipping labels for USPS, Fedex, and UPS
- Notify customers when orders are shipped
- Sync inventory across all your channels so that you don’t oversell
Ordoro gives sellers all the tools they need in one place. Pricing is based on orders per month, number of channels, number of users, and accessible features. If you’re looking for shipping only (no inventory management), Ordoro is more than affordable for what they offer.
ShipWorks
WebsiteShipWorks helps your process your online orders and ship them faster and easier. They integrate many of your systems to make this possible. ShipWorks automates shipping tasks so that merchants ship fasters. Other features include:
- Manage all of your sales channels in one place
- Ship orders with multiple carriers like DHL, FedEx, UPS, and USPS
- Batch print shipping labels, invoices, and packing slips
- Customize packing documents and notfications
ShipWorks offers a free 14-day trial, if you want to test it first. Otherwise, pricing includes unlimited users, workstations, locations, and customer support.
ShippingEasy
WebsiteShippingEasy does what it name implies, it makes shipping easier. Much like the other apps on this list, ShippingEasy automatically downloads your orders from your Bigcommerce sit and helps you assign shipping preferences. Other important features include:
- Access to competitive USPS rates (claim to be the cheapest)
- Real-time tracking info pushed back to your stores
- Work from a single screen for all carriers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS
- 1 Click returns by sending PDF straight to customer
Shipping Easy offers affordable paying plans. There’s a free plan for smaller merchants shipping less than 50 packages per month. Otherwise, plans are based on number of shipments and channels.
What to Do Next: Pick the Right App
Shipping is a critical to providing the best customer experience. However, it’s often a major pain point for Bigcommerce sellers. As there are many available Bigcommerce shipping apps, use this list to jump-start your research. See how one of these solutions can significantly impact your business!
Once you’ve picked an app, check out how nChannel’s multichannel solutions that can help integrate your Bigcommerce webstore to get the most out of your existing systems!
To keep up to date with information about multichannel selling as a Bigcommerce merchant, subscribe to Multichannel Insights, what you’re reading right now, to receive more articles like this one. In the meantime, read our other articles like:
- Top 5 Order Management Systems
- Best Bigcommerce Apps for Building Customer Loyalty
- Is Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) Worth the Cost?
If you have any personal experience with these apps, or have other recommendations, please leave in the comments below!
Join The Conversation