Extra $20 month to add Fedex to my list of carrier accounts

ShipStation is really blowing it. We got the same email, but ours is going up $30/mo. ShipStation is obviously not listening to customers (or does not care what small customers think). The forced upgrade/migration to the V3 has been brutal on our order processing times and we continue to have issues that they haven't addressed.

Here's the email we received:

Dear Valued ShipStation Merchant,

By default, ShipStation offers discounted rates for USPS, UPS, GlobalPost, and DHL Express without any carrier setup required. Customers that take advantage of the ShipStation rates avoid any additional fees.

You’re welcome to continue to access your carrier accounts that we support, but beginning in thirty days, you will be charged a monthly service fee of $30.00 to do so.

Looks like we're going to be moving to Shippo or EasyShip. ShipStation really seems to be chasing small customers away.

ShipStation seems to want us to abandon our previous accounts with carriers so we can do everything through them. If I need to file a claim, I want to do it through my account with USPS/FedEx, not with ShipStation as a middleman. I am frustrated by this change and will be looking at alternatives. 

Hello @shipping, @brendan1, @ctobin, @Sliceworx, @socialnetwork, and @Johnny2000, 

First off, thank you all for being a part of our community and for taking the time to share with us. 

We appreciate your feedback and understand that pricing changes can be challenging. Our #1 goal is to continue improving the ShipStation application to help your business ship more efficiently. All feedback is being shared directly with all involved teams as it is provided to us. 

That being said, If you would like to speak with a member of our team directly, please DM me email address or phone number. We will make sure a team member is in contact as soon as possible. 

-Erin: Your Friendly ShipStation Community Manager 

My upcharge letter is $40/month.  Looks like it's based on subscription tier or volume or some combination thereof.  Wonderful...

We just cancelled our subscription.  Too many other options at this point and it's clear they are trying to get rid of 3rd party account access. 

If shipstation decides to keep this we are looking else where, we only have one that we really use that is "outside" of their carriers and it is Canada Post which is one that they support but because it is our account they still want us to pay the fee, its cheaper with our account why would we use theirs!!!

Finally got an answer from support saying that fee is different based on different subscription tiers.

• Starter: $5
• Bronze: $20
• Silver: $30
• Gold: $40
• Platinum: $60
• Enterprise: $95

Before anyone switches - check out the shipping rates charged by other carriers and available features.  I know additional fees sting and I'm not happy about it, but some of them (Pirateship) aren't integrated as smoothly with all platforms and some of them don't offer API access which may or may not be important depending on what you're doing.  Also I just compared a 7x7x7 5 lb package going to zone 2 on Shippo and it was $8.31 vs $7.13 on ShipStation.  I don't know if SS charges less per label because of our tier (Gold) vs lower tiers but there is a pretty significant cost difference per label.

Not saying don't switch if it makes sense, but don't do it just because you're angry and make sure you check out all available options.  Good luck to all

This is ridiculous. I hope a ton of people leave this platform. Yeah, the rates are good for what they provide, but why are you charging us $20 more for something you DON'T provide??? Give me a break.

I just had a long, worthless chat with Shipstation support. I can understand them wanting us to use the built-in integrations, but they do not offer FedEx so if we want to continue to ship some packages with FedEx our fees will increase 67% with just a few days warning. I don't know how they expect anyone to find this acceptable.

Ours is raised $40... What are we actually getting for that? Our negotiated rates with FedEx and UPS are beating SS's, why should we be penalized for that? 

SS is forcing all the users to use their carrier services and charging extra to use our own carrier accounts. I think what they will do next is increase their own carrier rates which is already a black box with no transparency on transportation charges and other fees. Might as well leave this platform now before they sneakily raise the fees again. 

ok let's list all the competitors to start exploring - here's a few. What programs out there have address validation like Shipstation - most of them state they do until you test their system. One is EasyShipping - if you place an address into their system knowing there should be an apt. number yet you don't use it. EasyShipping still approves the address. So what programs have a great address validation down to unit/suite etc.
Ordercup
EasyShipping
ShipRush
PirateShip
Shippo
StarShipIt
ShipWorks (owned by Shipstation)
AfterShip
DesktopShipper

This is terrible. Seriously. Raising rates is one thing... restricting your service to force people onto your shipping account is another. I hope it hurts enough for you guys to change. Good luck.

We're definitely disappointed on this substantial rate increase, especially with such short notice... we wouldn't mind exclusively using UPS from Shipstation (for the most part) although we'd miss FedEx's One Rate pricing... however, UPS from Shipstation doesn't seem to support COD. We're now evaluating other shipping services that don't place a surcharge on connecting accounts; going to avoid any owned by Auctane.

Hello Community Members, 
 

First off, we want to thank you all for being a part of our community and trusting us with this feedback. 

We know that changes like this do come with impact to all of your businesses. This change was made with the intention of adding value but driving down costs for all of our merchants by being able to offer the best pre-negotiated rates that might normally not be available for all users. 

We still do understand that you may want to use your own carrier rates alongside the ShipStation feature set. By introducing this monthly fee, we can cover rising infrastructure costs, invest in faster feature development, and continue to offer you great support while we actively seek out the best deals for our entire customer base. 

Our focus is on maintaining the quality you expect and introducing new features that will help you increase operational efficiency, saving both time and money.

We welcome all feedback and want you to know that everything being said is being discussed and shared internally. That being said, the ShipStation Community is not the place to find information or recommendations about other shipping logistics platforms. Please refrain from using this forum to source information about other platforms. 

-Erin: Your Friendly ShipStation Community Manager. 

Also peeved at this new few to use our own negotiated account rates, especially after recently hiking the subscription fee with very few improvements to the platform that are barely noticeable to me as a user. Annoyed that to see what adjustments have been made by the carrier when purchased through Shipstations UPS account has to be found on Stamps. It's a nightmare and so not user-friendly. Challenging those adjustments was even more of a PITA. 

I'll be moving back to PirateShip. I like that you can easily find and challenge carrier adjustments on their reports portal and labels that aren't used with USPS are automatically submitted for a refund. While I know I cannot use our UPS/Fedex accounts here, the USPS rates are much better here than with Shipstation as a majority of our orders are shipped with USPS.

I have messed with most of the competitors since this announcement and have solved our issue. Will be able to use shipstation for only orders shipped where their rates (shipstation) are lower. Found another platform that will not cost us anything to ship using our UPS account (we get much better rates on heavier items). Both platforms have the exact same discounts with UPS.

Both platforms work well with our webstore and when an order is shipped by either shipping platform it updates on both.

The only thing now keeping us with shipstation is their address validation which is the best that we can find so far. Many other shipping platforms do not verify down to unit/suite number - they will tell you they do until you test out their platforms. Address correction fees are not cheap so better to use both platforms and they work well together.

No need to pay extra fees when there are solutions out there.

 

We too today have had an increase notice - shocked at the price increase for our plan. We're going from the 49/month to 65/month base rate (I could accept that as the cost of everything is increasing), but the real killer for us is the non-carrier shipment fee of 0.13/Shipment - all our shipments are deemed non-carrier shipments, all-in-all i've calulcated that the cost of running shipstation for our business will be increasing by a minimum of 270% against what we're currently paying. This is a ludicrous increase and I think we'll have no option but to look at alternatives. 

Ship Station's carrier rates are not competitive, which is disappointing. As a result, I have no choice but to rely on my own Canada Post rates. However, I'm dismayed to find out that they have requested an additional $30 monthly fee. This practice appears to be a form of price gouging, and it is completely unacceptable.

Our increase was $60 to use our own courier - on top of a 60% increase in the monthly fee.    That was on one account.  Going to check the others we have.

I think price changes are fine and costs are inevitably going to increase. But I think they could have done it a little more professionally. On a gold tier, the cost is not going up by any normal typical percentage, its $69-$99, while decreasing shipping limits from 3,000 to 2,000, and adding a $40 fee. As others have stated? What are customers getting out of it? In the end, the overall monthly costs to ship our products, it's not a big deal. It just stings as there is only 1 month notice with a significant change in price. So it's more about the principal. I don't think that's good business practice on how to treat your customers. How about some fair warning, and a slower ramp up to you're desired price maybe?

It looks like this went into effect for new accounts on May 17, 2023 and on top of the monthly fee, there's also a $0.08/label fee as well: https://help.shipstation.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408953242395

Seems Shipstation is committed to this new pricing policy and our feedback will likely not change much, if anything at all.

It was the straw that broke the camel's back for us. We've given a lot of business for years to ShipStation but not anymore. There are a lot of other platforms, including shopping carts like Shopify with built-in buy shipping label feature, that offer a similarly discounted shipping rate. We've been wanting to move away from ShipStation since forced transition to buggy V3 and this additional fee is the tipping point. You know it is time when they stopped listening to their customers.

They just raised our carrier fee $60 a month and the subscription went from $99 to $149 - that is almost DOUBLE combined!!! And all we did was use THIER carrier partners listed for the last 10 years - on their platform! I am thinking of contacting the FTC. They apparently want a monopoly and are doing a bait and switch on us. I just read (above here in this thread) that Auctane owns MOST of the shipping platforms. How is that NOT a monopoly???? Another customer on a different thread mentioned they are price gouging and I agree 100%. There is ZERO services being added for this EXTREME cost increase! 

They keep changing the platform for the WORSE with glitch filled, hard to navigate fields and difficult to read text dashboards and yet keep charging more!!! I hope Fedex, UPS and other carriers sue them for doing this monopoly / punishing people and forcing them to pay double for the same access they should have been grandfathered in to!  Plus that email was vague and we all have NO IDEA who shipstation's actual carriers are because their partners page lists them all!!!!!