Won’t you agree that the fastest way to scale any eCommerce business is to reach new customers and expand to other geographies? Unlike retail businesses, online brands aren’t bound by the confines of a brick and mortar store, thanks to modern shipping and delivery solutions.
It’s as simple as your customers finding you, placing orders and you shipping them promptly. With the right customer acquisition strategy, a bandwagon of multiple carriers and a shipping management software you can achieve business growth faster than your competitors.
And the secret sauce of a refined shipping experience starts with multi-carrier shipping! In this article, we share with you the best carrier integration software that will suit the needs of all variants of the eCommerce business.
What’s So Special About a Carrier Integration Software?
A carrier integration software is a business solution that offers a unified platform for connecting with multiple carriers, exchanging a stream of data between them, and performing a number of shipping related functions.
With carrier integration software you can establish a secure link between your internal systems and carriers for collaborations in real-time. You’ll be able to perform everyday logistics tasks from a single dashboard.
Consider your carrier integration software as your control tower. Your everyday tasks such as getting shipping rates and comparing them among multiple carriers, generating air way bills, and manifesting orders are all done from a single platform.
Not to mention, you’ll get to track shipments, monitor and resolve shipping exceptions, manage customer experience amongst a host of other benefits.
Top 5 Carrier Integration Software with Their Features for Online Retailers and eCommerce Businesses
The first hallmark of an outstanding carrier integration software is the large number of carriers they come pre-integrated with. They have a robust API structure that supports order manifestations, scheduling pickups, etc. They should be able to optimize shipping and monitor carrier performance.
Keeping these factors in mind we have prepared a list of top five carrier integration software that goes above and beyond these basic requirements.
1) ClickPost
ClickPost is a premier shipping management solution that expertly handles multi-carrier integrations and multitudes of logistical functions. As a shipping software company, ClickPost has helped 450+ brands to scale their business, boost delivery metrics, and revitalize post purchase experience for customers.
ClickPost provides a one-stop solution for both simple and complex shipping tasks using APIs, AI and other advanced technologies. Amongst its core strengths lies order management, real-time tracking, returns and exchange optimization and shipping exceptions resolution. It comes integrated with 50 storefronts, 30+ communication gateways and 30+ WMS, OMS and ERP platforms.
Here are some of ClickPost’s carrier integration and shipping capabilities:
It enables integration with 500+ carriers within a single day and supports flexible delivery methods for 36 countries.
It automatically creates orders with carriers from a single eCommerce API for Shipping for single piece and multi-piece shipments for B2C, D2C B2B brands.
It fetches airway bills (AWB), gives an easy option for order cancellation, and prints shipping labels in bulk.
It provides accurate Estimated Delivery Dates based on zip codes and enables pick up requests for carriers.
Its ML-led carrier recommendation engine automatically allocates the best carrier for every shipment based on fixed and custom rules meeting unique business requirements.
It provides a digital proof of delivery method plus automatically reconciles cash on delivery (COD) payments from carriers.
2) Sendcloud
Sendcloud is a shipping solution located in the Netherlands that’s best known for its automated shipping amenities, especially for European brands. Sendcloud performs multiple shipping functions, from shipment tracking to handling reverse logistics.
For example, its Pack & Go feature acts as an alternative to WMS and is designed to help merchants process orders faster, create packing slips, and print shipping labels automatically. Sendcloud exhibits generous capacity for carriers and other types of integrations.
Here are of the Sendcloud’s carrier integration and shipping features:
It has 50+ carriers integrated, having many carriers with expertise of working for European consumers.
It offers shipping rate discounts, custom ERP/WMS integrations, and access to cross border shipping for a premium fee.
It automatically generates shipping labels as soon as the picking and packing process is completed and the order is dispatched.
It lets retailers schedule pick up and drop offs from warehouses or a retail store.
It enables merchants to create custom automation rules for assigning shipments with carriers automatically.
3) ShippingEasy
ShippingEasy is a smart logistics and carrier management platform that is well known for offering discounted USPS and UPS shipping rates. At best, it offers as much as 83% off of UPS daily rates and 89% of discounts for USPS commercial rates.
Apart from these two, ShippingEasy provides direct integrations with 8 other carriers, notably FedEx, ePost Global, DHL and Globegistics. Alongside carrier integrations, it can also link your accounting and ERP software, eCommerce marketplaces and inventory management systems.
Here are a couple of benefits of shipping with Shipping Easy:
It automatically prints shipping labels, packing slips, and picklists.
It allocates carriers based on a customer’s preferred delivery option while considering package weight, size and insurance needs.
It presents deep discounts on priority shipping services like Express Mail as well as on international shipments.
It provides businesses the opportunity to print and send return labels at the time of dispatching a shipment.
It presents customizable analytical reports on shipping metrics like unshipped orders, shipping fulfillment.
4) ShippyPro
ShippyPro prides itself on its automated shipping capacities for global shipping management. As a carrier integration platform, ShippyPro presents you with the choice of onboarding with 150+ carriers plus 81 sales channels. Its central feature revolves around optimizing shipping, tracking and returns.
ShippyPro has multiple use cases for fashion retailers, food and beverage brands as well as pharmaceutical businesses. It strives to cut down time wasted on manual shipping tasks and simplifies international shipping. With automated shipping it also greatly reduces any margin of errors in shipping operations.
Here are some of ShippyPro’s key shipping features:
It generously compares carrier rates across 170 carriers and creates shipping documents like order manifests and invoices.
Its Pickup Manager feature enables you to schedule pickup for carriers without manually contacting them.
It automatically consolidates orders for the same address and helps you manage Cash on Delivery orders.
It presents a AL led carrier selection mechanism that’s based on customizable business rules.
It enables you to personalize your shipping label with your brand logos, text, and barcode for easy scanning.
It lets you generate bulk shipping labels while supporting different formats like A4, A6, and PDF.
5) ParcelLab
Like other carrier integration software on this list, ParcelLab helps enterprises integrate with 350+ carriers with global serviceability. The main motto of this shipping management system is to lower operational costs and hyper-personalize your customers’ post purchase experience.
In this way, crafting memorable post-purchase experiences can be regarded as ParcelLab’s strongest suit. As such, it supports checkouts on mobiles and gives flexibility in delivery methods for customers. Apart from these, it also offers solutions for reducing WISMO (Where Is My Order) calls from customers.
Here are some of ParcelLab’s most recognized features:-
It offers Estimated Delivery Dates generated from powerful machine-learning algorithms.
It self-configures the promised delivery time with warehouses for faster order fulfillment and hastens the order processing time.
It offers end-to-end shipping communication during the post-purchase phase to drive customer engagement.
It notifies customers about when and where to collect their orders and reduces their pick-up related queries.
Conclusion
There are multiple benefits of onboarding with a carrier integration software, the least of which is enhancing your shipping performance manifold. With strong automation capabilities, these software give you a competitive edge at a time when it’s essential to scale your business. We hope our article gives you the necessary information to pair with the best version of a multi-carrier integration software.
