An In-Depth ShippingEasy Review: Everything You Need to Know

Have you come across ShippingEasy before? If not, never fear because you're in the right place. This ShippingEasy review is going to break down everything you need to know about this platform. So, hopefully, by the end of this blog post, you'll have a better idea of whether this solution meets the needs of your business.

Does that sound good to you? Fab. Let's dive straight in!

Who's ShippingEasy?

In case you hadn't gathered from ShippingEasy's name, ShippingEasy is a shipping software (Duh!). Their mission is to make your order fulfillment process more manageable by automating as much of the procedure as possible.

This solution is a software-as-a-service type bundle delivered as a web-based app. Headquartered in Austin, TX, ShippingEasy truly excels when it comes to streamlining the shipping experience.

How do they achieve this?

ShippingEasy provides native integrations with virtually every major ecommerce platform. It's through these integrations that ShippingEasy can launch its automated shipping system and provide you with steep postage discounts. For instance, if you opt for USPS, you could enjoy savings of up to 46%.

Best of all, you can process all your orders from each and every one of your sales channels — all from the convenience of one dashboard.

ShippingEasy Review: How Do I Use ShippingEasy?

You'll be pleased to hear, ShippingEasy lives up to its name. It's effortless to use. In fact, the entire process of an order takes less than five minutes.

The interface is simple to navigate, and because it's nothing short of intuitive, it doesn’t take long to get up and running. Before you know it, you'll be using ShippingEasy to the fullest.

No apparent bugs are plaguing the system, and all the menus and features are clearly labeled — what's not to love?!

So, how does it work?

Firstly, you start by importing your orders into ShippingEasy from whatever ecommerce solution you're using. For instance, if you have a Shopify store, you just enter your Shopify URL, and this should automatically redirect you to your Shopify admin panel.

You'll then need to install the ShippingEasy app from the Shopify app store. Once you've downloaded the plugin, select “Sync” inside of ShippingEasy, and your Shopify orders should transfer without you having to do anything else.

When you can see your orders inside of your ShipEasy account, click on the ones you want to fulfill and then select “Create Shipments.” Now, hit the “Shipments” tab. This is the point where you can set your shipping parameters, i.e.:

• Your chosen shipping carrier
• Your postage rate
• Packaging type
• Weight of the delivery

You get the idea.

Once you've finished with that, you can opt to buy and print your shipping labels. Or, you can skip this for now and head straight to making your payment. If you decide to take a look at their printing page, you'll have the option to print the following materials:

• Picklists
• Shipping labels
• Packing slips

Once you've printed the necessary documents, you’re then ready to ship your customer(s) orders.

Top Tip: Set up shipping rules to help you automate the process. Once you've done that, just hit the “Buy & Print” button on the “Orders” page. This will automatically purchase and print your shipping labels and/or packing slips for you.

Handy Hack: You can also use ShippingEasy to filter and create custom views for your orders. This makes locating specific customer orders far easier for you and your team. Not only that, ShippingEasy makes it simple to sort, combine, split, and re-combine customer orders. Gone are the days where those sorts of customer service queries were a headache!

What Does ShippingEasy Automate?

We've touched on ShippingEasy's automation features, so other than printing out shipping labels automatically, what does ShippingEasy have to offer?

In short, all of the following:

• ShippingEasy can automatically map carriers based on the delivery preference of your customer's.
• You can create shipping rules for parcels as per their: weight, delivery preference, package size, etc.
• You can opt to add insurance to specific types of shipments automatically

Just to name a few.

ShippingEasy Review: ShippingEasy Features

The features below are included in all of ShippingEasy's paid-for plans:

• Alexa Skill: If you own an Amazon Echo device, you can use Amazon Skill to play your order info aloud, send shipping labels to the printer, find out how many orders need to be fulfilled, ask for shipping insights, etc. all via voice command.
• A free Stamps.com account
• Multi-channel synchronization: You can manage orders from all sales channels in real-time.
• Automatic and branded confirmation emails (complete with tracking info).
• A shipping calculator: View real-time rates and services from multiple carriers
• Batch-print shipping labels
• Custom forms for international shipments
• You can send scan-based return labels and/or send return labels upon request.
• Access to discounted shipping insurance
• When an order's placed, you can print shipping labels automatically
• Create custom integrations with an API.

What about inventory management features?

Here they are:

• You can manage your inventory across all your sales channels.
• Set low stock thresholds and alerts
• Assign products to your suppliers (this comes in handy when re-ordering stock).
• Create purchase orders inside of your dashboard.

ShippingEasy Review: The Pros

• Top-notch customer service: Loads of reports say ShippingEasy's customer support representatives are helpful, friendly, and very fast to get back to you.
• You only need access to a web browser and an internet connection to access ShippingEasy's platform
• It's intuitive to use
• ShippingEasy’s automation features save you tons of time, reduce the likelihood of human error, and speed up the entire shipping process.
• The access to Commercial Plus rates with USPS is a huge perk!
• ShippingEasy boasts excellent reporting features

ShippingEasy also has several native integrations, which makes it a breeze to connect with a variety of online marketplaces, shopping carts, shipping carriers, etc.

Below we've listed some of the more popular ones:

• Shopify
• Amazon
• Walmart
• eBay
• WooCommerce
• BigCommerce
• Volusion
• PayPal
• Stripe Relay
• Xero
• Intuit Quickbooks
• Stitch Labs
• FedEx
• UPS
• USPS
• DHL

This is a condensed list. There are tons of other ShippingEasy integrations, but we won't bore you with them here.

In addition to that, ShippingEasy also provides an API, so you can build customized integrations to connect with whatever other software you use to run your business.

We just mentioned a second ago that ShippingEasy provides outstanding reporting features, so let's explore that in a little more detail. You'll find a tab inside of your ShippingEasy dashboard that provides a quick snapshot of the state of your shipments. There's also as a tab where you can view more comprehensive reports, on the following data points:

• Complete shipping
• Shipping destinations
• Shipping services
• Shipping margin (all, domestic, and international)
• Unshipped orders
• Product sales

In addition to all the above, you can also run your own customized reports.

ShippingEasy: The Cons

• ShippingEasy’s interface doesn’t adapt to the size of all browser windows.
• There are a few reports of billing after cancellation: Some users who canceled their ShippingEasy subscription were still billed monthly.
• Some customers say that a few of ShippingEasy's features need improvement. Namely, speeding up the data entry process and that the customization of their packing slips could be improved.

But to be fair to ShippingEasy, they pride themselves on having a very active features requests page. This allows them to tackle issues before they become a more significant problem.

ShippingEasy Review: Customer Service

We mentioned customer service in the pros part of this review. ShippingEasy‘s customer support is second to none — there's quite a lot to cover here, so we've given it its own section.

As you'll soon see when we start talking about pricing, the level of support you're entitled to varies. This hinges on the paid-for plan you’ve opted for. With the free program, you only get access to the knowledge base and community forum. As such, you can't access any form of personal support (Email, live chat, etc.)

But, never fear, both the amount and the quality of their online documentation is astounding. More often than not, once you've consulted with this resource, you won't need to contact the support staff. But, if you do, and you've subscribed to a paid-for subscription, users say ShippingEasy provides timely and helpful responses.

Other than ShippingEasy's support center, here's a list of their other customer service channels:

• Shipping Resources: This does what it says on the tin. Here you'll find all the info you need about things like shipping rate changes, tables, international shipping, etc.
• Community Forum: Here, you can post your questions or browse through issues already posted and solved by other users.
• Share Feedback: Click this to report a bug or request a feature.
• Blog: This is where ShippingEasy posts about its product updates. You'll also find lots of articles with handy hacks on how to conduct efficient and cost-effective shipping.
• Contact customer support agents: You can connect with their customer support staff Monday through Friday, from 8 AM to 6 PM CST, via phone, email, or live chat.

ShippingEasy Review: How Much Will ShippingEasy Set You Back?

This is probably the part of the ShippingEasy Review you're most interested in. So, you'll be relieved to hear, ShippingEasy provides excellent value for money.

They base their fees on the number of shipments you send a month. So, pretty much, the more you ship, the more you pay. Here's a more detailed look at all their pricing plans:

Starter (Free)

At no cost, you can send 50 shipments a month. But, you're only entitled to the self-help knowledge base and community forum, you can't access any other training or form of customer support. You also can't customize the shipping labels.

The Basic Plan

For $29 a month, this is what you'll get:

• 500 shipments a month
• Live chat, email, and phone support and access to their knowledgebase
• Exclusive setup and training
• You can ship with all of their available carriers
• Discounted USPS rates
• Customizable shipping labels

The Plus Plan

For $49 a month, you'll get everything in the Basic plan, as well as:

• 1,500 shipments a month
• Advanced and dedicated training
• Discounted USPS cubic discounts

The Select Plan

For $69 a month, you'll get everything in the previous two bundles, plus:

• 3,000 shipments a month
• A dedicated customer success advisor

The Premium and Enterprise Plans

Last but not least, for $99 a month, you'll get everything mentioned above, but you're also entitled to a whopping 6,000 shipments a month. It's also worth noting; there's an Enterprise plan. This is designed for businesses that need to make more than 6,000 shipments a month. This will set you back $149 a month, and for that money, you can ship an unlimited number of orders.

For An Additional Monthly Fee…

If you want to extend the number of ShippingEasy features available to you, you can subscribe and pay a monthly fee to access their:

• Marketing tools
• Customer management tools
• Inventory management features
• Amazon product review tracking tool

Let's circle back to ShippingEasy's customer management tools; what does this include?

• Multichannel customer management: You can track customers on several sales channels and monitor customer activity and communications.
• Customer segmentation (this allows you to send more customized marketing materials to specific sections of your audience)
• Email marketing tools

So, be sure to consider that as you start to customize your ShippingEasy paid-for plan.

Ready to Start Using ShippingEasy?

Having done our research and weighed everything up in this ShippingEasy review, it appears ShippingEasy is an excellent all-around app. At the time of writing, this solution is just going from strength to strength. Users love that the interface is incredibly easy to get to grips with, the software's smooth-running, and the customer support is impeccable.

Like any software-as-a-service platform, ShippingEasy isn't without its flaws. But, all of the ones we've come across and listed in this review don't appear to be major red flags. Not to mention, the team at ShippingEasy is continually working to improve the software, so we predict only bigger and better things from ShippingEasy later down the line.

Have you ever used ShippingEasy before? Or, are you about to use it for the first time? If so, we would love to hear your thoughts, concerns, and opinions in the comments box below. Let's kickstart the conversation. Speak soon!

The post An In-Depth ShippingEasy Review: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.

from Ecommerce Platforms https://ift.tt/38pq7c6
via IFTTT