APIs are everywhere! They are used in weather forecasting apps, ticket booking apps, and even in third-party apps like Facebook Messenger. In fact, shipping is also no exception.
Delivering the right product on time is what differentiates a great eCommerce brand from a good one. While this seems pretty simple, managing the whole process is really tough.
It becomes even tougher for those business owners who handle hundreds of shipments every day. For them, coordinating with multiple carriers, synchronizing the order details, and tracking each shipment become hectic and error-prone.
Here, a shipping API steals the spotlight. With shipping APIs, you can perform each of these tasks in a more efficient way without any back and forth.
In this guide, we’ll discuss what exactly a shipping API is, how it works, the types of shipping APIs available, and how to choose the best shipping API?
Plus, we’ll also give you some best options for shipping APIs available on the market. Let’s start with the basics!
What is a Shipping API in eCommerce Industry?
In simpler terms, a shipping API is a programming code or protocol that enables different platforms, like your eCommerce stores, carriers, WMS, and OMS systems to work together and synchronize information with each other. This further streamlines the whole logistics process.
Take an example. Suppose you have added an EDD (Estimated Delivery Dates) shipping API to your online store.
When customers place orders or enter their zip codes, it retrieves data from carrier databases, analyzes past data, calculates the required time, and then shows the promised delivery dates on your website.
This simply eliminates the need to separately visit different systems to gather information regarding expected delivery dates. Instead, it automatically performs those tasks and displays the EDD directly on the website.
This is just an example of a particular type of shipping API. There are lots of other shipping APIs available on the market, like tracking API, order manifestation API, returns management API, and more. We will talk about them later in this article.
Top 10 Best Free Shipping APIs Used in eCommerce Industry[2024 List- with Features, Price, Pros, Cons]
If you’re still confused about what Free shipping API you should choose, let us help you ease your struggles. Based on the factors we mentioned in the previous section, we have listed the best shipping/courier/logistics APIs with their key advantages.
1. ClickPost API
ClickPost is basically a multi-carrier shipping software by nature. As of now, it has connected with more than 350 carrier partners worldwide. Brands like Puma and Adidas use ClickPost’s functionalities to improve their logistics operations.
If you go for its multi-carrier integration API, you can go live within just one day. Apart from the multi-carrier integration API, it has a number of other APIs to facilitate the shipping process. And the best part is the APIs have almost a 99.99% uptime rate; meaning, you won’t face any challenges while fetching information.
Key Benefits:
The carrier recommendation API assigns the most suitable carrier as per your shipment type and personal requirements.
The order creation API will automatically print shipping labels.
The predicted delivery date fetched through its EDD API has a >92% adherence rate.
It also has a NDR management API to handle failed deliveries.
It uses both the pull and push APIs to fetch tracking information and update customers. It also offers branded tracking options.
Through its returns management API, you’ll be able to offer a self-serve return portal to customers, track returned items, and initiate refunds.
2. DHL API
DHL is a well-known carrier partner available on the market that offers a range of Free shipping APIs for brands. These APIs are easy to integrate with and are provided as Rest APIs.
It mainly supports YAML and JSON format for API request acceptance and providing responses. Plus, DHL will give you access to the developer portal free of cost.
Key Benefits:
The location finder API will help you identify all the DHL pickup and drop-off locations.
You’ll be able to track all types of shipments.
For businesses and customers located in Germany, it offers an authentication API.
It’ll help you generate, update, and cancel shipping labels.
3. USPS API
Under the USPS API catalog, you will find a range of APIs that will help you optimize the logistics process. USPS API uses the OAUTH 2.0 framework to protect your access. Though USPS has offered versatile functionalities, it lacks comprehensive API documentation. For this reason, your developers may face difficulties while integrating the USPS APIs.
Key Benefits:
You’ll be able to validate addresses, so you can make every delivery successful.
The carrier pickup API will let you schedule pickups for orders.
Label generation (for both domestic and international shipments) and barcode creation are done by its API.
The tracking API will provide you with every detail of the shipment statuses, including scan events, date, time, and location.
4. EasyPost API
Trusted by brands like Starbucks, Nestle, and Walmart, EasyPost is one of the most powerful Free shipping APIs available on the market. Since EasyPost is a RESTful API, you can easily integrate it with your current system. Alongside these, the API is customizable, scalable, and has a 99.99% uptime rate.
Key Benefits:
It helps you create shipping labels in bulk.
It will provide you access to discounted shipping rates across multiple carriers.
EasyPost’s SmartRate API lets you improve your on-time delivery rate and optimize your logistics costs.
Track all your packages and get real-time shipment updates via its tracking API.
You will also be able to verify shipment addresses.
5. Shippo API
If you have been in the eCommerce industry for quite a long time, you have definitely heard of Shippo. It’s mainly a multi-carrier shipping platform. With the Shippo API, you’ll get access to multiple shipping solutions and add them to your current system.
In fact, you can easily integrate it with your tech stack through its client libraries that are available in multiple programming languages like Ruby, PHP, Python, NoteJS, etc.
Key Benefits:
It allows you to compare shipping rates across 85+ logistics companies and create shipping labels.
You will also get discounted shipping rates.
With the Shippo API, you will get access to services, such as package tracking, pickup scheduling, returns management, etc.
6. Easyship API
Easyship offers an easy and versatile API that you can use to optimize various logistics tasks. At the same time, the Easyship API is quite reliable and offers 99.99% uptime. In fact, it is also scalable and can even handle 50,000 shipments a day.
Key Benefits:
It offers guaranteed 91% off in shipping rates.
With the Easyship API, you can automatically create shipping labels, verify customer addresses, and track packages.
You’ll also get custom billing and reconciliation options.
It also handles pickup scheduling, box management, and tax estimation.
7. ShippyPro API
ShippyPro’s API has been written in 14 programming languages. It uses two different technologies in its API — REST and SOAP. Under ShippyPro’s API suite, you will get 40+ API methods to improve your logistics operations. However, note that it accepts only the POST method for an API call.
Key Benefits:
It’s integrated with 155+ carrier partners.
It’ll help you calculate shipping rates.
With the ShippyPro API, you can create shipping labels, track orders, and download orders.
8. ShipEngine API
ShipEngine presents itself as one of the best Free shipping APIs in the market. Its API has been connected with more than 100 carriers, which makes your shipping operations flexible. Like other shipping APIs, it’s also a REST API, meaning it’s scalable and easy to integrate.
Key Benefits:
It helps you create shipping labels, calculate shipping costs, compare shipping costs across multiple carriers.
You can track packages in real time.
Plus, you can verify the mailing address for successful delivery.
9. Flexport API
Flexport is mainly a supply chain logistics platform that offers various services, such as supply chain management, customs brokerage, freight services, and fulfillment solutions. Again, it’s a RESTful API and supports JSON format for both API calls and responses.
Key Benefits:
You can manage your inbound inventory.
It lets you track containers, SKUs, and shipments.
You can retrieve freight invoices.
You can even calculate the carbon emission rate.
10. uShip API
uShip is basically an online marketplace that connects shippers (or brands) with logistics providers. Alongside this, it offers other services such as tracking, shipping insurance, etc. The uShip API is easy to integrate with and offers comprehensive API documentation for developers.
Key Benefits:
You can fetch shipping estimates and show your customers the same.
You can show your business on the uShip maps.
Via the uShip API, you can request the protection plan.
You will get detailed updates on the shipment journey.
How to Choose the Best Shipping API for Your eCommerce Business- List of Useful Tips to Consider?
If you do a bit of research on the internet regarding shipping APIs, lots of options will pop up in the results and you’ll become confused. It’s almost like selecting movies on the weekends – lots of options but you end up watching none.
That’s why you need to be quite selective in this process. Here, we’ve given you a few tips you must do while looking for a perfect shipping API.
1. Assess the ease of integration and compatibility
If the shipping API is hard to integrate with, your developer team might face challenges while integrating it into the current tech stack. In fact, it may also lead to higher costs that can hamper your profit margin and lead to frequent technical glitches.
Read the API documentation carefully to know whether the API is easy to integrate with and compatible with your current system.
2. Evaluate its scalability
Ensure the API can handle bulk requests and multiple shipments. Otherwise, there’s no point in integrating it. That’s why check the rate limit and make sure it matches your shipping requirements.
At the same time, don’t forget to check the advanced capabilities of that particular shipping API like international shipping handling, customization options, etc. If it checks all the boxes, you can go for that.
3. Check the number of carriers it’s integrated with
An ideal shipping API will connect with lots of carrier partners across the globe.
This will help you generate shipping labels across a variety of carriers, compare rates, and track shipments no matter how many carriers you deal with. Simply put, it will give you the absolute flexibility and make your operations easier.
4. Evaluate the response speed
If the API takes longer to respond, it’ll hamper the UX. In fact, it can slow down the whole process. The perfect API must take milliseconds to a few seconds to fetch the result. If not, you must look for another one.
Who Is the Shipping API For?
From third-party logistics providers to eCommerce business owners to those staff who manage WMS and OMS solutions, everyone can leverage the shipping API.
Wondering how?
For an eCommerce entrepreneur, the shipping API will automate most logistics-related tasks and consolidate data in a single place — be it showing EDD and shipping rates on the websites, displaying tracking information on a centralized dashboard, or generating shipping labels from your preferred platform.
Now, if you’re a third-party logistics provider, you can use a shipping API to enhance your overall workflow like providing shipping updates to your clients, managing failed deliveries, and automating the product return process in eCommerce.
On the other hand, if you manage the warehouses, you can use the shipping API to automate order processing, track multiple carriers, and streamline the overall shopping experience of customers.
This means that if you’re directly or indirectly involved in logistics process, shipping API can be beneficial for you.
How Does Shipping APIs Work in the Modern eCommerce Industry?
Now that you have an overview of what a shipping API is and who it is for, let’s discuss the technical aspect of it.Typically, a shipping API works in the backend of the systems it’s integrated with.
Just like a personal assistant brings everything to your fingertips with a single request, shipping APIs fetch information in simple API calls.
When you request information from an external system (like creating shipping labels or fetching tracking information), it simply interacts with the client system, retrieves the data, and then shows it on your current platform in the supported format.
You can integrate the shipping APIs with any of your current software solutions and fetch the required information without any hassles.
Oftentimes, most people get confused between a shipping API and the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) method. Though they perform similar tasks, they significantly differ from each other. You can say the shipping API is the updated version of the EDI.
While shipping APIs use modern technologies and RESTful design, the EDI uses dated technologies. Apart from that, in the EDI method, data is exchanged in batches, while a shipping API displays data in real time. Plus, API is easier to use than EDI.
What Are the Different Types of Shipping APIs?
There are various types of APIs available on the market.
Each of them performs different functions and offers different advantages. With that being said, here are some of the common types of shipping APIs you’ll usually find:-
1. Shipment tracking API
As per a recent study, around 91% of customers want to track their orders in real-time while 70% of shoppers want to have time-to-time shipping updates on their orders.
This means that if you don’t meet their demands, you may lose most of your customers.
With a multi carrier tracking API and integration, you can perform this task most efficiently. It’ll not only fetch real-time shipping information but will also show it to your customers on an interface.
Most tracking APIs even offer multi-carrier integration.
No matter how many carriers you’re dealing with, it’ll show on-time shipping updates on a centralized dashboard. Plus, if you’ve set up automated notifications, it’ll also send real-time delivery updates to your shoppers.
2. Shipping rate calculation API
As the name suggests, a shipping rate calculation API will retrieve pricing information from the carriers you’re dealing with, calculate shipping rates based on various factors such as package weight, dimensions, and so on, and then show the shipping fees to you.
If you have integrated this shipping rate calculation API with your eCommerce website, your customers will see the real-time shipping rates on the checkout page.
This will further maintain transparency and remove customers’ doubts regarding shipping charges.
3. Address validation API
Most failed deliveries occur because of inaccurate addresses. Loqate’s study found the same. It stated that around 74% of businesses claim the wrong address is the main cause of their failed deliveries.
While you can’t ignore this problem (after all, your customers are human!), integrating an address validation API can save you from this issue to a great extent.
Whenever your customers enter the wrong addresses or zip codes, it flags the addresses and nudges them to enter the correct address, so they can smoothly check out.
4. Order cancellation API
Customers will cancel their orders, no matter how superior the shopping experience you provide them.
Now, if they need to contact the customer support team every time they cancel an order, it might hamper their experience. Plus, the support will become overwhelmed since they already have lots of other aspects to focus on.
However, with an order cancellation API, you can let your customers initiate cancellations within your eCommerce store itself. As a result, it’ll improve their shopping experience and make them loyal retainers.
5. EDD prediction API
Customers often place their orders according to the expected delivery dates. It informs them whether or not the order will arrive as per their planned timing. Simply put, it helps them in their buying decision.
Now the problem is calculating the promised delivery time according to customers’ delivery addresses and carriers’ policies is quite difficult.
But through an EDD API, you can make it easier. It automatically fetches information from carriers’ databases, calculates the most accurate EDD, and transfers it to the recipient (your store).
Hence, without visiting a separate platform to calculate shipping dates, you can show the expected delivery dates on the web pages within seconds.
6. Order creation API
Have you ever canceled your orders because of the late delivery date? The same happens with your customers as well. They want the deliveries as fast as possible.
Though maintaining customers’ fast delivery demand is a bit tough, you can make it with an order creation API.
The order creation API will automatically generate shipping labels and AWB numbers on your preferred platform. This further will save the time that you would spend going to the respective carriers’ portals to create shipping labels.
You can integrate this order creation API with your WMS, OMS, and eCommerce platforms to manifest orders within those systems and speed up the process.
7. NDR Management API
Failed Deliveries happen and there’s no way to avoid it. But how you manage this situation for a better customer experience is the real dealmaker.
With an NDR management software, you can put the whole process in automation. Once the delivery agent marks the deliveries as “failed”, it categorizes them into issue-specific buckets.
Later, it tries to fetch feedback from the customers and again shows it to the delivery agent, so they can take action accordingly.
This process eases many daunting activities like sorting the NDR cases, contacting the customers, connecting with the agents, and so forth, which further streamlines failed delivery management.
8. Returns management API
Previously, customers used to contact the brand’s customer team via email to process the returns.
After a long wait, they used to get a response from the other side, and then refunds used to take another decade. For this reason, most customers were doubtful about online purchasing.
A returns management API not only makes the process faster and easier for your customers but also simplifies it for you.
It lets you create return shipping labels, verify the return requests, set return rules, and initiate refunds — all within the eCommerce platform itself. Thus, it eliminates unnecessary back and forth and improves brand loyalty.
Latest functionalities offered by Shipping APIs
The E-commerce industry is constantly changing, and so are the shipping APIs. They are integrating the latest technologies and getting even more advanced than before.
Think of optimizing delivery routes for faster last-mile delivery or sending delay notifications to customers way before it happens. These all have been possible because of the advanced technologies used by shipping APIs. These include predictive analytics, AI models, data science models, etc.
Most of the time, some shipping APIs let you schedule delivery and pickups, validate dangerous goods, and compare shipping rates for optimized shipping costs.
ML-based shipping APIs will even give you access to a smart carrier allocation engine that will fetch the most suitable carrier based on some predefined factors such as delivery type, and your personal needs.
Apart from that, they are adopting specific security measures such as OAuth to protect shipping data.
Why Should You Use a Shipping API?
If you are still confused about whether or not you should opt for a shipping API, check the below-mentioned reasons to understand why you should definitely opt for one:
1. Improves operational efficiency
Manually handling logistics tasks is quite error-prone.
You may end up printing extra shipping labels, or overlooking potential shipment loss and failed deliveries. It not only shakes up your bottom line but also leads to poor customer experience.
If you add shipping APIs to your tech stack, you can handle all these tasks more efficiently.
It’ll consolidate every functionality and information in your current system and automate most tasks like order creation, EDD prediction, etc. This simply means better order fulfillment and less confusion.
2. Optimize shipping costs
Most shipping APIs give you access to functionalities such as shipping rate comparison and discounted shipping rates. In fact, most of them offer discounts on carriers’ shipping labels.
Over the course of time, it’ll lower the overall shipping costs and improve your profit margin. Another aspect you can consider is pricing.
Almost every shipping software lets you opt for a particular shipping API, such as EDD API, rate calculation API, or shipment tracking API. This “pay for what you use” model basically saves the money that you had to invest for unnecessary functionalities if you would go for the whole software suite.
3. Saves time
As an eCommerce business owner, you need to take care of lots of things at the same time. These may include creating a business plan, launching a new product line, solving customer problems, and more.
Now, if you invest most of your time in tasks, like creating shipping labels, tracking orders, and initiating product returns, when will you get time to complete those?
Though these tasks are equally important, they are quite recurring and need constant switching among multiple platforms. Shipping APIs can easily take care of it.
Within seconds, they will automatically perform all these tasks without requiring you to switch to multiple systems. This further saves time, which you can invest in more crucial aspects of your business.
4. Improves customers’ satisfaction
If you take care of your customers, they won’t think twice about purchasing from your brand next time. These shipping APIs play crucial roles in improving customers’ shopping experience.
They provide on-time delivery notifications to shoppers, show them accurate EDDs, automate the returns process for them, and do much more.
In simpler terms, they improve customers’ shopping experience and give them a reason to come back. And increasing retainers means improved annual recurring revenue.
How to integrate a Shipping API with your system: A step-by-step Process?
At this point of time, we’re assuming you have decided on the shipping API you want to integrate with. But exactly how will you do that? Follow the below-mentioned steps:
Step 1: Obtain API access
First things first, sign up and create a developer account on your selected API providers’ platforms. Next, request access to the API key and other credentials from the provider.
Step 2: Carefully read the API documentation
Every API provider offers developer documentation. It covers everything, such as the functionality, integration guidelines, request format, usage instructions, authentication methods, etc. Check them carefully.
Step 3: Decide on a plan and implement integration
After that, craft an implementation strategy like outlining technical resources, choosing a programming language, and developing a strategy for error handling. Once done, write the code and integrate the API endpoints.
Step 4: Test the integration
Next, test whether the integration is successfully done. If any error pops up, mitigate that on the spot and keep the process running.
Conclusion
If you want to grow your business to the next level, you can’t avoid integrating shipping APIs with your tech stack. They are the one-stop solutions that can help you scale without any compromise on profits. You’ve already seen how. Hope our detailed guide has provided you with the nitty-gritty details about shipping APIs and helped you start your API journey. Happy shipping!
