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An unbiased comparison of Top 5 ecommerce courier platforms in India

By | Jun 22, 2018 |0 Comments

Supply change has strategic importance in the success of any great company. This fact becomes even more pronounced when you are considering theecommercecourier services that form the backbone of the industry.

With the recent boom ofEcommerce, it is natural that many courier services have also come up in the market to cater to the huge requirement of sending out millions of orders placed across various online platforms in India. Timely and reliable delivery of shipments to the customers is the biggest concern of any online shopping site.

Sadly, the logistics part of Indianecommerceis still not well developed and leaves much for asking. Etailers have to keep trying various options and in the due course suffer customer grievances and lost orders if they happen to choose wrong logistics partner.

With the growing number ofEcommercesites, it becomes imperative that they get access to the most trusted and fast courier services. Let us try to understand the different logistics solutions anetailercan try.

Things to consider when choosing anecommerceshipping service

When you are planning the delivery chain for yourecommercewebsite. You basically have three choices;

Set up and in-house Shipping Service

This idea is very fascinating and also gives you full control over your supply chain. However, the upfront cost and planning for setting up a new supply chain could become a drain on your business.

Outsourcing your Supply Chain

Using this method you can negotiate a deal and prices with a reliable courier company and hand over your logistics to them. However, as newecommercebusinesses have to part away with a major amount of funds to pay the upfront fees charged by reputedecommercecourier partners. Also, if you have low order volume initially your average shipping rates might be quite high.

Going for Shipping Aggregator

Shipping aggregators are platforms that offer an umbrella of shipping services. They usually have a host of domestic and international shipping companies on board and offer discounted deals without any upfront cost or hassle of dealing with each of the courier partners. They usually havesubscriptionmodel or some of them even offer pay-as-you-go model of shipping.

Why areecommercecourier aggregators the best choice for theetailers?

Ecommerceshipping aggregators have a clear advantage over the other two methods of setting up the delivery chain for an online portal. On one hand, they eliminate the cumbersome paperwork and upfront payments and on the other, they simplify and automate the whole shipping process at the fraction of the cost needed to set up an in-house delivery department.

On top of this, they reduce manual effort by automating the shipping process to a great extent. Manual and time-consuming tasks like shipping label generation, pick-upscheduling, shipment tracking etc are all automated and simplified thus sparing a lot of time and headache for the entrepreneurs. They also offer multiple choices of shipping providers which are otherwise very costly to afford for SMEs.

Top 5ecommercecourier service aggregators in India: An in-depth Review

Shipping has the potential to make or mar anecommercebusiness. Hence, it is very important to thoroughly analyze the available shipping aggregators on their relative merits and drawbacks. Let’s dive in and check some of the most reliable services forecommercedeliveries;  

ShipKaro

ShipKaro is one of the most promising and reliable shipping aggregator services forEcommerce. This shipping platform offers three pricing plans, namely Individual, Business and Enterprise to cater to the requirements of SMEs as well as the biggerecommerceplayers. These plans give the freedom to go with a monthly subscription based plan or pay-as-you-go model.

ShipKaro integrates 12 shipping channel partners for domestic as well as international shipping. Some of the most popular and trustedecommercecourier partners like FedEx, Aramex,Delhivery, Xpressbees, EcomExpress are a part of the platform. An etailer has the choice to integrate any one of these or choose multiple logistics partners from the platform to create a robust and streamlined supply chain.

ShipKaro also offers a wide coverage to 20000+ PIN codes and all the parcels are available at a discounted rate when compared to the usual market rate of any of these logistics partners. Along with this, ShipKaro offers a host of features that automateshippingprocess. ShipKaro givesetailersthe freedom to sell anywhere(popular marketplaces, own website, social media pages etc.), upload or sync orders in bulk to the platform and arrange to ship by choosing the most economical shipping partner from the multiple options available on the platform.

It also simplifies the wholeecommerceshipping process by automating pick up scheduling and generating shipping labels. Multi-product orders can use the partial fulfilment service to send different items in the order using different shippers. Automatic logistics management helps in customizing shipping rates.

One of the most in-demand features for Indian etailers is COD and ShipKaro offers full COD support. Recently they have also started a weekly COD remittance cycle which is very good for any business to have their COD money at their disposal within a week.

Shiprocket

Shiprocket has been offeringecommerceshipping services toetailerswith a network of 8 of shipping partners like Aramex, FedEx, BlueDart etc. It covers around 20000 Pincodes and also offers discounted shipping. Shiprocket offers four pricing plans namely Lite, Basic, Advanced and Pro which are based on different order volumes.

Alike ShipKaro it offers multiple courier partners however the network of partners is narrower as compared to ShipKaro and it also does not offer the freedom to integrate any logistics company of choice.  

Shiprocket also has COD support and a 14 day COD remittance cycle.   

Zepo Couriers

Zepo couriersofferse-commerce courier services with a network of 6 logistics companies like FedEx, BlueDart, Aramex,Delhiveryetc. It covers a total of 15000 Pin codes across India. It offers 3 plans for its customers namely, Standard, Professional and Premium which have the one-time setup fees of 25000, 50000 and 75000 respectively.

Zepo courier also offers discounted shipping rates but unlike ShipKaro and Shiprocket it does not offer monthly subscription plan or pay as you go service. This is a major drawback for new businesses who are opting for shipping aggregator to save upfront costs.

Alike ShipKaro and Shiprocket it also offers the benefits of discounted shipping, shipment tracking, multi-location pickup etc.

Zepo also supports COD and has a 14-day remittance cycle for Standard and Professional plans whereas a 7-day cycle for the Premium plan.

Shyplite

Shipliteecommerceshipping aggregator works on a pay as you go model and offers uniform shipping rate for all the shipping partners onboard its platform. Since it has a uniform pay as you go plan it is good for small businesses, however, medium and largeetailersprefer a more categorized plan which offers them some premium services based on their additional requirements. The single pricing plan is also more in favour of smaller players as usually the bigger players as it does not offer the economies of scale to the enterprise and high order volume clients.

There are around 8 shipping companies in the Shyplite panel namely, FedEx, BlueDart, Gati,Delhivery, DTDC/Dotzot, GoJavas, Ecom Express and a few others.Shypliteoffers shipments to 15000 pin codes for prepaid, 11000+ pin codes for COD & 12000+ pin codes for Surface.

Shipyaari

Shipyaari is one of the oldest e-commerce shipping aggregator platform and offersshippingto 21000 pin codes for prepaid orders and 8000 Pin codes for COD orders. They have 3 plans that are based on monthly,half yearlyand annual subscription model. The Startup Plan, Advanced plan and Pro plan each have different rates and they have 4 domestic and 2 international carrier partners for each plan.

Shipyaarioffersdrop shipping and COD under each plan. Alike the other courier aggregator platforms they also offer bulk upload, discounted shipping and multi-location shipping. However, they do not have the multi-location pickup and international shipping for the pay-as-you-go Startup plan.

Conclusion

As we see each of the above shipping service providers has its own sets of benefits and some visibly fair better in terms of features and services. However, the final decision lies with the business owner and his unique requirements.

I hope that with a detailed comparison of the features, service areas and membership plans of the top 5ecommercecourier service aggregators in India,etailerscan make an informed decision and choose the best suitable one for their business.


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