Shopify has supercharged its shipping and end-to-end fulfillment system, now fully built into the Shopify platform.
Shopify merchants can now ship with top carriers like FedEx, DHL Express, UPS, and USPS at the lowest rates, print unlimited discounted labels, and manage every step without leaving Shopify. Overall, the new tools speed up order processing, cut shipping costs, and protect against errors for merchants. This update is largely focused on improving Shopify’s shipping product.
Separately, the Shopify Fulfillment Network has also expanded its 3PL partnerships with global partners like Amazon MCF, BigBlue, DHL Fulfillment Network, GoBolt, Mayple, and Stord—connecting merchants to the right logistics partners for any scale.
“One is we are changing our focus from just merchants with simple shipping needs to merchants with more complex shipping [needs],” Vibhor Chhabra, director of product for shipping at Shopify, told Retail Brew.
Overall, Chhabra said, Shopify is taking a very “partner-centric approach” with shipping now: “We used to have a limited set of partners in the US and outside markets, but we developed a new platform for shipping, which makes it very easy for us to add new partners in any country in the world.”
Chhabra said Shopify’s global shipping partners are essential because they offer merchants the choice they need, and give shipping providers access to Shopify’s merchants, and this updated platform is where both sides can easily connect.
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“As the economic and the trade scenarios change, we want to make sure that we have equipped merchants with the right tools to enable them to rapidly respond to changing needs,” Chhabra added.
Adding complexity: Shopify has also upgraded the platform to address clients and merchants that operate at more scale and have advanced needs.
Chhabra said the shipping updates are geared toward merchants shipping products on their own. “This could be a small merchant, this could be a large merchant. So shipping serves that set of customers,” he said.
The through line, Chhabra said, is that as merchants grow, they often patch together shipping tools for things like address validation, insurance, and delivery predictions. With these new upgrades, it’s all baked into one service at no extra cost beyond the Shopify subscription, except for labels.
According to Mark William Lewis, founder and CEO at commerce agency Netalico, Shopify is trying to keep merchants on the platform longer, but lingering trust issues with logistics can prove challenging. He added that once a Shopify store hits a couple hundred orders, “most people plug-in from ShipStation or some ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning].”
“[Shopify is] realizing that a lot of people are paying a lot of money for other systems outside of Shopify, and they’re like, ‘Why couldn’t we do that?’” Lewis said.