1) Introduction
Don’t you agree that a good eCommerce business journey starts with the best shipping software? While the market is saturated with many shipping solutions, Pirate Ship is a name that comes up regularly for its negotiated shipping rates and order tracking facilities.
Many customers have already bestowed four and five-star ratings to Pirate Ship, but for many other merchants, it is not enough. If you also want to explore other options for Pirate Ship, you are at the right place. Let’s take a detailed look at the Pirate Ship alternatives.
2) What is Pirate Ship?
Pirate Ship is a cloud-based SaaS solution. It assists businesses in purchasing postage and printing shipping labels for USPS and UPS shipping at incredibly discounted rates.
Pirate Ship does not charge the businesses for these discounts. This makes it a popular choice for eCommerce merchants to ship their parcels at affordable prices.
That’s not all. With Pirate Ship, businesses can print their shipping and return labels in multiple formats from any printer. Pirate Ship supports order tracking in various sales channels and auto-validating addresses.
Pirate Ship offers ready-to-use email templates for bulk customer notifications and unlimited shipping labels. Their USPS-friendly SCAN service scans all packages. They also have an integrated customs service to help with international shipping.
3) Top 10 Pirate Ship Alternatives and Competitors [2024 Updated List]
As excellent as Pirate Ship is, there are always areas where businesses have to seek other choices that uplift their goals. There are softwares that provide multi-carrier integrations other than USPS and UPS. While others streamline a better returns service and manage RTOs. We have listed ten such Pirate Ship alternatives:
3.1) ClickPost
ClickPost is a prominent multi-carrier shipping software company with global operations. It offers a variety of shipping solutions that streamlines and automates both your forward and reverse logistics.
As Pirate Ship’s competitor, ClickPost scores high in providing a post-purchase customer experience and helps brands reduce their RTO rate. It monitors thousands of orders from a single dashboard.
Features:
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ClickPost offers easy and fast integrations with over 200 global carriers, storefronts, and WMS within 24 hours.
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ClickPost’s AI-based carrier allocation engine effectively configures business preferences to automatically allocate the best carrier for each shipment.
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With its API-based shipping portal, ClickPost creates orders and waybills for all couriers.
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Its push and pull APIs extract order status from carriers in real-time, help track shipments, and update customers via a branded tracking portal.
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Has NDR (Non-Delivery Rate) and NPR (Non-Pickup Rate) management portals to solve delivery exceptions immediately.
Pros: ClickPost’s API brings real-time tracking updates for businesses and customers.
Cons: It may not be helpful for small and medium businesses with low monthly shipment volumes.
3.2) Shippo
Shippo is a popular alternative for Pirate Ship as shipping software. Shippo runs on shipping APIs to integrate businesses with over 85 global carriers, marketplaces, 3PLs, WMS, and eCommerce tools. Additionally, it supports multiple sales channels with its end-to-end shipping capacities.
Features:
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Shippo offers discounted shipping rates for prominent carriers like DHL, UPS, and branded shipping and packing slips.
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Supports splitting orders into multiple shipments when inventory is in different warehouses and refunds from carriers for unused labels.
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Shippo provides pre-filled customs documents for speedy international shipping label generation and paperless commercial invoices.
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Shippo automates address validation, order tracking, and notifying customers with webhooks.
Pros: Pro in address verification and order processing.
Cons: Requires a system for manual address input.
3.3) Stamps. com
Stamps.com operates in the same vertical as Pirate Ship making it a popular Pirate Ship competitor. It offers on-demand postage and fast shipping label generation for small businesses. It works in collaboration with USPS with the motto to digitize their back-office services.
Features:
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Stamps.com offers good discounts and free postage with cheaper stamps than postage meters during its trial period.
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It has waivers for fuel and residential surcharges, no carrier bill, and negotiated rate for most popular US carriers.
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Its tools like Rate Advisor, Switch and Save, and Best provide the optimal shipping price according to carrier speed.
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Offers pre-paid return and pay-on-use return labels and package tracking with email notifications and a branded tracking page.
Pros: Supports shipment label printing from home printers.
Cons: Limited carrier integrations.
3.4) ShipStation
ShipStation’s specialty as Pirate Ship’s alternative lies in its order and inventory management capacity coupled with shipping services. ShipStation’s shipping services effectively find the appropriate carrier rates, print shipping labels, and provide branded packaging.
Features:
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Its Rate Browser shows the best rates for pre-negotiated deals, quick discounts across various carriers, and fast packing slip scanning.
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It also allows businesses to print labels in real-time with barcode scanning and have their logos printed on their labels for branding.
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It handles all customs paperwork for international shipping, including shipping manifests, customs declarations, and pick lists.
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It offers customized returns portals and additional email templates for quick customer notifications and a branded tracking page.
Pros: Tracks inventory and updates status of stuck shipments.
Cons: Less effective for businesses with high shipment volumes.
3.5) Easyship
Easyship is cloud-based shipping software with order fulfillment services. As a Pirate Ship competitor, Easyship provides a high discount rate of almost 91%, with couriers like USPS, UPS, and DHL. This makes it a suitable option for domestic and international shipping.
Features:
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Calculates shipping rates for all weight dimensions with over 250 carriers to offer the best value at no additional cost.
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Easyship handles customs clearance, import duties, complicated taxes and provides a global warehouse network.
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It also offers branded tracking experience, customized packing slips, and emails.
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Online stores can set their own shipping rules and print shipping and packing labels.
Pros: Easy to print packing slips, customs forms, and shipping labels.
Cons: Needs proactive customer service with fast response time.
3.6) EasyPost
EasyPost is hailed as a simple shipping API, but its functions cover all areas of shipping needs. Its RESTful API suite has many API solutions catering to shipping rate, creating shipping labels, tracking, and address validation. It also gives detailed reports on shipping KPIs.
Features:
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EasyPost offers affordable shipping rates, instant discounts, and international shipping services at pre-negotiated shipping rates.
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EasyPost’s Tracking API provides real-time updates to customers with branded tracking pages and estimated delivery dates
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EasyPost’s API creates shipping labels and automates the process when you enter the details of your order.
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Easypost’s Address Validation API allows businesses to validate U.S. addresses to reduce delivery errors and refund requests.
Pros: Easy to use API functionalities.
Cons: Requires more courier integrations and courier services.
3.7) Sendcloud
Sendcloud is a common name amongst European businesses and an excellent Pirate Ship competitor for those looking to expand into the European market. It integrates smoothly with online stores with its various plug-and-play integration options under 2 mins.
Features:
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Integrates with popular carriers like DHL, DPD, GLS, and FedEx, eCommerce platforms including Shopify, Amazon, and WooCommerce.
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With its automatic mode, businesses can process orders and generate shipping labels, print labels, and pack slips with scanner mode.
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Sendcloud has special checkout facilities for WooCommerce customers, like opting for the desired delivery dates and a service point map at checkout.
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Sendcloud streamlines the returns process with returns rules, offers different returns, and displays return analytics for a better return strategy.
Pros: Provides custom shipping tariffs.
Cons: May have tracking issues occasionally and errors on the tracking page.
3.8) Shipping Easy
Shipping Easy is another Pirate Ship alternative in providing cheap USPS, UPS, and FedEx shipping rates at no additional cost. Shipping Easy manages all aspects of shipping from shipment tracking. Its services include multiple sales channel integrations, marketing, and reporting.
Features:
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Provides access to USPS Commercial Rate for affordable shipping charges and discounts on heavy but small packages.
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Integrates with major eCommerce carrier companies, shopping carts, and eCommerce platforms, including Shopify and Amazon Seller Central.
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Automated shipping like label printing, creating rules, adding insurance, and mapping carriers according to the customer’s delivery preference.
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Real-Time order tracing, automating email notifications for customers, and printing return labels.
Pros: Offers a free subscription plan with useful features.
Cons: It doesn’t support PayPal as a payment method.
3.9) ShipWorks
ShipWorks caters to high-volume eCommerce merchants by combining fulfillment services with shipping. It offers efficient order routing, order creation, and inventory management. ShipWorks fulfills orders by integrating with various WMS, ERPs, and ODBC integrations.
Features:
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Has in-built ODBC data source for integrating with any eCommerce platform and importing orders
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Offers batch processing, fast label generation, and verifying orders with a single barcode scan.
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Creates rules for shipping and choosing carriers based on multiple metrics like package weight, size, and shipping methods.
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Data storage and backup for high volume shippers, with automatic data backup backs in their cloud storage and hard drive of the business owners.
Pros: Easily manages orders and updates their status stat.
Cons: It is not a cloud-based system.
3.10) Narvar
Narvar’s motto is to help retailers retain customers with efficient shipping and return experience. It focuses heavily on customers' post-purchase experience and assists businesses in managing their returns effectively.
It has many touchpoints where businesses can interact with customers like Facebook Messenger, email, SMS, etc.
Features:
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Provides businesses with estimated delivery dates during checkout to reduce cart abandonment.
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Narvar’s customer tracking page is customized according to brand image, order details, customer’s locale, and embedded tracking pages on the website.
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Handles returns and exchanges for businesses with branded return portal, collection of customer requests, and assigning drop-off locations and scheduled pickups.
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Extensive and multi-channel notification system to reduce ‘‘where is my order’ calls, early notifications about predictive delays, and data analysis.
Pros: Customizable to business needs.
Cons: Needs a more supportive customer team.
4) Features to Look for while Choosing Pirate Ship Competitors
Usually, selecting a shipping software warrants serious scrutiny of a business. You have to keep in mind shipping volume, marketplace integration and international shipping. So, if you are thinking about shifting your business towards Pirate Ship’s alternatives, there are a few things to consider:
4.1) Services Offered
Pirate Ship’s primary highlight is its wide selection of carrier rates and discounts. Therefore, Pirate Ship’s alternative must be at par or offer better service in negotiating and calculating shipping rates. You can also check if it offers convenient label printing, discounts, and excellent order tracking.
4.2) Level of Integrations
A business interacts not only with couriers but inventory management softwares, ERPs, 3PLs, etc. If your chosen Pirate Ship competitor offers easy integrations with all these agents, you can rest assured with your supply chain management.
4.3) Shipment Tracking
Shipment tracking is a fundamental part of any shipping operation. You may find Pirate Ship’s alternatives offer better notification systems and tracking solutions like ClickPost or Shippo. They notify businesses of delivery exceptions and resolve NDRs immediately.
4.4) Reporting and Analytics
A business is incomplete without a thorough evaluation of how effectively its shipping carriers perform. You may also want to know the number of returned orders and its causes.
Softwares that offer a detailed overview and data analysis will help you in vital decision-making and strategy creation.
4.5) Pricing
Software services are offered at different price ranges. To find the best Pirate Ship competitor, you can consider their price and its impacts on your bottom line.
5) Conclusion
Pirate Ship’s services encompass major shipping facilities. From calculating the best shipping rate to optimizing delivery with order tracking. However, many other high-end software solutions go above and beyond these tasks.
Pirate Ship’s competitors negotiate and calculates the best shipping rates. Some of them also manage delivery exceptions, give accurate tracking, estimated delivery dates, etc.
In this regard, we hope our list will help you decide on an excellent Pirate Ship alternative like ClickPost that will enhance business operations and make your customers happy.
Interested in knowing more about ClickPost?
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