There are many shipping software for small business and entrepreneurs looking to grow their shipping functionality and automation. How do you know which one is right for your business? That’s what we’re going to cover in this article, so that you can make an educated decision on what free shipping software will best suit your business needs.
If you’re looking for the best shipping software for small business then you’ve come to the right place. There are always lots of reasons you might want to find one that’s free though, because who likes spending money if you don’t need to!
OrderCup
OrderCup scored 3.94 out of 5 on our assessment, largely thanks to its capable free starter plan and excellent ease of use. The software is great for accomplishing the basics—like managing shipments, comparing rates, and organizing multichannel orders.
OrderCup displays live shipment status updates in an accessible, icon-coded format. (Source: OrderCup)
While it lacks the accessories and extra features of its competitors, OrderCup is the most affordable option on our list. It’s a great choice for small-scale sellers and those wishing to test how shipping software fits into their selling strategy.
In our evaluation, OrderCup scored points for its top-notch customer support, simple dashboard, and robust international shipping functionality. It was docked for its lack of integration options and undeveloped resource library.
OrderCup Features
- Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive USPS Commercial Plus rates and discounted shipping insurance. OrderCup works with your own negotiated rates, as well.
- Shipping perks: Every account receives access to free pickups, free shipping supplies, and free global address verification.
- Integrations: OrderCup has 36 direct integrations, including 19 popular ecommerce platforms and solutions like Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Magento, WooCommerce, Etsy, BigCommerce, Walmart, PayPal, and more. Connect your USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon, Canada Post, Purolator and UK Mail accounts for streamlined shipping. No API is currently available.
- Automation: Create automated defaults, pre-defined package types, and profiles for your shipping methods. OrderCup has sophisticated filtering to categorize order and shipping rules to automate processing—plus automated insurance rules to decide which orders to insure for how much.
- Order management: All OrderCupplans come with basic order management features such as batch processing, CSV entry, manual entry/editing, returns management, and more.
- Inventory management: Manage your stock by using OrderCup’s product catalog support with warehouse assignment options and automatic syncing through multiple channels.
- Marketing: Send and automate branded outgoing emails, packing slips, and tracking notifications.
- Peripheral hardware: OrderCup supports web-based direct printing of labels, customs forms, and packing slips to most thermal and laser or inkjet printers, plus zero-configuration scale and scanner support on PCs and Macs.
- Customer service: Support is available to all plans seven days a week, 7 a.m. – 6 p.m. Pacific time—plus a separate Europe-based support center operating 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Greenwich mean time. Contact staff through email, phone, live chat, or live screen sharing.
- Online resources: Reference OrderCup’s video library and blog.
- Highly rated: OrderCup is rated 4.9/5 from some 300 user reviews on the Shopify App Store, and 5/5 from about 20 reviews on the BigCommerce App Store.
ShipStation
ShipStation beats our other recommendations in the number of carriers its shipping software supports. It offers far more plug-and-play integrations with fulfillment centers, freight companies, and international carriers.
Since these types of shipping services are typically used by mid- to high-volume ecommerce sellers, this impressive feature doesn’t weigh as heavily for small business needs. However, it’s nice to know you can quickly scale to meet freight and international shipping demands as needed.
Like our other picks, ShipStation also offers wonderfully intuitive order processing and multicarrier shipping rate comparison screens. You can easily access and print order invoices, packing slips, and shipping labels—individually or in batches—and send shipment tracking data back to sale channels.
ShipStation’s advanced tagging feature makes managing orders and shipments more efficient.
(Source: ShipStation)
It stands out from the competition in its robust returns management features and mobile app offering—which earned ShipStation significant points in our evaluation. The software was docked for its steep learning curve and bleak online reviews. Ultimately, it earned a score of 3.81 out 5.
ShipStation Features
- Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive USPS Commercial Plus rates, discounted UPS rates, DHL Express Worldwide Shipping Discounts, and more.
- Integrations: ShipStation integrates with 53 shipping carriers including USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as 70 of the top sales channels and 215+ other ecommerce platforms and solutions. Open API is also available.
- Automation: ShipStation supports setting product defaults and preset groups, service mappings, and automation rules that apply preset actions to selected orders.
- Order management: All ShipStation plans come with standard order management features—plus a robust returns management platform with a branded returns portal for your customers. Pick and pack features are also included to minimize packing errors.
- Inventory management: Basic inventory management features are accessible from ShipStation’s web or mobile app, including catalog support, stock allocation, inventory alerts, and syncing.
- Marketing tools: Create a branded experience by customizing labels, packing slips, outbound emails, and tracking pages.
- Peripheral hardware: Use thermal/laser printers, scales, and barcode scanners through ShipStation Connect—the company’s proprietary connectivity application.
- Customer service: Support staff is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. Central time. Phone support is only available to top-tier, Enterprise plan users. Chat support is available to Bronze plans and higher. Email response times may exceed one business day.
- Online resources: Reference ShipStation’s large integrations help guide, workflow guides, troubleshooting guide, mobile help guide, FAQ, forum, YouTube tutorials, and webinar library.
Ordoro
Like our other picks, Ordoro offers great shipping functionality—but where this software really impresses is in advanced inventory management and automated purchasing features that seamlessly integrate with its shipping system.
These features earned it major points in our evaluation, but the software was docked for its unaffordable pricing and lacking range of plan options. Ultimately, Ordoro earned a score of 3.62 out of 5.
Ordoro’s rate-shopping tool isn’t as easy to use as our other picks, but will still help you find the best rate for every package. (Source: Ordoro)
Its robust integrations with the top dropshipping marketplaces makes Ordoro a must-have for dedicated dropshippers and retailers supplementing their offerings with dropshipped goods.
While its wide-spanning features are powerful, they come at a significant cost. Ordoro is the most expensive plan on our list by far, and many key features are only available on the Pro plan, which will run you $499/month.
Because of this, we recommend Ordoro for high-volume and/or high-margin sellers who are wishing to use the software for more than just shipping management.
Ordoro Features
- Discounted shipping rates: All plans receive USPS Commercial Plus rates and discounted shipping insurance.
- Integrations: Ordoro integrates with eight shipping carriers including USPS, FedEx, UPS, and DHL, as well as 34 other ecommerce platforms and solutions. Open API is available on the Pro and Enterprise plans.
- Automation: Ordoro provides advanced automation features to program rules and maps into your shipping workflow. Dropshippers can set up manual, semi-automatic, or fully-automatic dropshipping.
- Supplier management: Assign suppliers to products, track specific costs, customize workflows, and allow access to a vendor portal. Enterprise plan users can access supplier and third-party warehouse direct integration.
- Order management: Manage returns, receive and restock goods, initiate RMAs (return merchandise authorizations), and view orders from all sales channels from your dashboard. Plus access built-in address validation and barcode scanning.
- Inventory management: Pro plan users have access to advanced inventory management features, including multichannel inventory sync, real-time inventory tracking, stock alerts, allocation, and one-click P.O. creation. Multichannel sellers can link product listings on various channels to a “master product” in your Ordoro inventory catalogue.
- Marketing tools: Create a branded experience by customizing labels, packing slips, outbound emails, and tracking pages.
- Peripheral hardware: Ordoro supports USB scales, plus scanner and printer connectivity.
- Customer service: Austin, Texas-based support staff is available by phone or email Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Central time. Limited email support is offered on weekends.
- Online resources: Ordoro is in the process of building out a guide library that covers shipping, fulfillment, and inventory management topics.
Easyship
Are you running an eCommerce business but confused about which shipping partner to choose?
Try this powerful shipping software – Easyship – built to help you grow your business, save money, delight customers, save time, etc. This cloud shipping software lets you filter your search by the fastest, best value, cheapest, etc.
Easyship offers a tracking and shipping experience at an affordable price compared to courier companies that charge so much for a single package. It will show you 250+ courier services from DHL, UPS, USPS, and more so that you can save up to 89% of the package rate you want to send to your customers.
Easyship integrates with leading international couriers, allowing you to boost revenue via selling worldwide. Manage everything from shipping a product, generating labels, comparing quotes, monitoring finances, scheduling return pickups from a single tool, and automating your shipping needs.
In addition, their shipping consultants will tailor a perfect strategy to fulfill your business requirements. Enhance customer experience by providing them with all the details from the time you receive the orders to delivering a package that includes sharing the tracking id of the shipment to their emails or SMS.
Easyship has a solution for all business types to spend a minimum on shipping and growing their revenue more. Whether you are a startup or an established business, Easyship solution is perfect for every need.
For startups, it comes with a free plan where you can ship 100 packages every month. When you grow your business, you can go for a paid plan for increasing the shipments limits.
Shippo
Ship smarter with Shippo shipping software and grow your eCommerce business. It provides you best rates possible from top couriers and allows you to manage everything to get a better shipping experience in a single place.
Shippo connects with many courier services like FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS, and more. Connect your store to sync your sales channels so that you can easily manage your orders. Keep your customers up-to-date and send them notifications and tracking details.
Generate print labels for shipping as well as for return automatically for free. Shippo partners with dozens of top store platforms and 85+ global carriers so that you do not have to integrate anything and start your work immediately.
Get your shipping software that has everything for you to give you a professional-level shipping experience and deep discounts for free. For automation workflows and batches, you can go with higher plans starting from $10/month and take a free trial of 30 days.
Shopify
Send your products using simple tools that scale with eCommerce business and save up to 88% on shipping with Shopify shipping. It helps you fulfill every order faster by buying and printing shipping labels to prepare the packages in advance.
Manage everything in one place, including products, inventory, and customers, and fulfill your day-to-day orders faster. Start quickly with Shopify shipping by skipping the setup process, define default rates during checkout, and prepare your packages without any special pieces of equipment.
Streamline your shipping tasks from fulfilling orders to creating USPS SCAN Forms and arranging pickups with DHL and UPS. Whatever the carrier is, you can track every shipment which is accessible through Shopify.
Manage your shipping costs on the same bill you take during subscriptions. In addition, offer your customer discounts during checkout, such as free shipping fees, etc. You can also protect your shipments by adding insurance coverage at the time of buying shipping labels. Be always ready for international shipping with discounts and built-in custom forms.
Try Shopify for 14 days, learn about the services it offers, and choose a perfect plan.
ShippingEasy
Set up ShippingEasy in minutes and save your time on shipping. It is a powerful shipping software that helps you grow your business, access discounted UPS and USPS shipping rates, and print the labels in no time.
Whether you sell on a marketplace, in multiple places, or on your website, ShippingEasy keeps all the records in a single place so that you can ship cheaper and faster. It integrates with many eCommerce platforms to import orders from the sites you sell. Additionally, you can automate the process to spend more time on your products to attract more customers.
ShippingEasy saves your money on UPS and USPS labels to create a bottom line and invest in your eCommerce business. With the intuitive interface, you can quickly get everything to start immediately. Reclaim your customers with a better service and brand your entire shipping process by customized emails, logos on labels, and branded tracking with social media and web links.
ShippingEasy’s Customer Marketing tool lets you quickly set up promotional and automated emails to increase your sales and garner reviews. You can also automate saved selections, shipping rules, buy and print, instant labels, Amazon Alexa voice shipping, auto-split orders, etc. Besides, pack the products with customizable packing slips, bar codes, pick list, warehouse location, etc.
Manage your product via product catalog support, product image support, assign product categories, product bar-code support, etc. In addition, get options like combine, split, and recombine orders, view product images, digital and physical orders, arrange order columns, edit orders, categorize orders, and more for order management.
ShippingEasy integrates with unlimited shopping carts and marketplaces, such as Quickbooks, Public API, Inventory Management, Listing engines, and EDI so that you have everything you want to register higher growth.
The price for shipping 50 shipments every month is $5/month. Choose your plan according to your shipping needs and take a 30-days free trial.
Shippit
Shippit is a shipping software that saves money and time and gives a fantastic experience to your customers. It is a cloud-based multiple carrier shipping software that fulfills your orders and allows you to track your shipments at any time from anywhere.
Whether you have an enterprise or a small startup, Shippit powers a more straightforward delivery process by providing different options you need to ship with ease. Offer multiple delivery options during checkout to convert more sales and utilize automated shipping and decent packaging so that your customer never questions the process.
In addition, inform your customers of every detail, from shipping to sharing tracking details over their emails or phone. To get started, you need to create an account by giving store details and email addresses, connecting your single or multiple stores via easy-to-setup extensions, and start shipping with pre-negotiated rates.
Grow your online business at a starting price of $49/month and avail yourself of a 30-days free trial.
Conclusion
Being a small business owner is no easy task, but it’s not impossible either. With hard work, perseverance, and careful planning you can not only succeed, but thrive no matter what type of industry you choose to enter. But it doesn’t hurt to have the best tools at your disposal. Luckily for small business owners, there are plenty of incredible software programs on the market designed specifically for their needs.