ShipStation

We love shipstation! It allows us to manage all of our brands in 1 shipstation account. We find the shipping prices are usually better than Shopify shipping as well.

I have used Shipstation for 4+ years. I liked Shipstation despite its quirks. Two weeks ago they overfilled my Stamps.com by $800 account due to their system error when we tried to ship and refill our account. When your Stamps.com account balance is too low, a window will pop up to refill it. We recharged with $200, or so we thought, but we got the prompt again that we didn't have enough balance and we needed to purchase more. Did it. .system error - same thing. Little did we know their purchases were delayed by 20 to 30 minutes and each time we pressed the buy button, it was purchasing more shipping and creating a shipment, but not showing the shipment or updating the balance in our account. So 5 transactions, $200 each -$800 more than needed. I only found this with our credit card transaction review. We called them and they refused to refund me without canceling my Stamps.com account. They were very interested in how this happens, so guessing they were debugging their system error. We didn't need $1000 shipping, so after we reached out to them and tried to resolve it, we contested with our credit card for $600 of that. Shipstation was very quick to shut my account down. If there is anything I can say about Shipstation is that system of shutting off a customer's account is very quick and efficient. Good job. After we realized our account was shut down, we called back in and they said the only way to get reactivated was to bill back the $600. Without options and needing to ship, we caved and said go ahead. Start the clock, it took them another 7 days before we could ship. This service feels like they really don't want me as a customer or think overcharging and holding hundreds of dollars of customer money is good business. Will I recommend Shipstation - No Way - something is broken over there. did I before this? Yes. I wasted over 6+ hours of my time over 7 days resolving Shipstation's screws ups and bureaucracy in getting my account turned on. I don't know if there are better options at this point, but you can be sure I am scheduling time to figure it out. If you want to count: 7 calls over 7 days to get this resolved. 6+ hours of my time. On several calls with primary support, the agent said they couldn't resolve my issues - Only the people at XXX number could resolve this. Then when I called the XXX number, they said they couldn't resolve the issue either and to call back the original number. I asked for a supervisor, said there is none and to call back the regular number. Did that, waited on hold again asked for a supervisor, agent said no for 15 minutes until he spent the time reviewing my case and asking all the same questions. Never got to speak with a supervisor. I run a business - like all people who have a Shopify account. Stuff happens, but when it does having your account shut down for a system-critical service is a real issue. If you do use their services, have a plan in place for when you have issues and expect multiple-day downtimes. Expect no apologies. Expect no one to take responsibility. Expect a lot of broken promises and wasted follow-up. Also, they sent me a survey to ask how they did. After starting, I realized it would have taken me over 30 minutes to complete it. I opted to spend that time here to let potential customers know about my experience. Update 6/23/2022 - Shipstation/Stamps management reached out to me by phone/email to understand this issue better and see what went wrong after seeing this review. They are going to look through their support strings and try to figure out what went wrong here and try to make it right. There is someone at the other end of the line here listening at least. Update 10/23/2023 -We have used shipstation as a backup and for very specific shipping needs, but find that shopify rates are the same or better in most instances. If you use UPS and UPS misses a $200 overnight first - you can try to get a refund from Shipstation, but they have a weird form, zero follow up and say that if UPS approves the refund, we will see a refund - just did an quick check against our and I have never seen a refund - at least 3, likely 5 submission this year. Seems like they give you a place to push buttons with zero follow up. They don't have any paper trail. Still don't recommend these guys - they will stay as a backup for us unless they don't like this review. If you are another vendor, don't reach out to me to solicit based on this. I am covered.

I WOULD AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS!!! Worst company I have ever dealt with in business. They do not have any phone numbers for support, so if there is an issue, it could take weeks for them to resolve it. I am now going on three weeks of not being able to ship with UPS. How can a business operate like this? I also had another issue where we could not print labels to a remote printer and no one ever resolved that issue within 45 days. We lost tremendous business because of ShipStation.

Great all around integration, we have no import or tracking update issues in the two years we have been using Shopify and Shipstation. Customer service with Shipstation is invaluable with new packing slips and report export questions we find useful all year. Shopify would not be as productive or fun for that matter without the two together.

UPDATE: RATED ARE GLITCHY AND MY BILL WAS INCREASED FROM GRANDFATHERED PRICE TO $100 MORE THAN THE PRICING SHEET SAYS. CHAT DOESN'T WORK, NOR DO THE PHONES AND EMAILS TAKE FOREVER TO GET A REPLY. THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT RESPOND QUICKLY ARE THE SALES TEAM WHICH ONLY TALK TO POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS CON's: 1) The automatic import of orders every hour was discontinued by shipstation without informing anyone so that they can create a instantaneous import for which they have no idea when it will be available. 2) Recently there have been a lot of glitches. 3) The new layout is missing stuff that the old layout had. 4) You can't assign a item to a package so when the tracking number is sent to shopify it marks the entire order as fulfilled even if you only shipped 1 of the 5 items on the order.