Multi-Carrier Shipping Software: How to Choose the Right Platform
How to Evaluate Multi-Carrier Shipping Software
Different customers have different expectations. Every package shipped is an expression of your brand promise.
Consumers want their orders delivered fast and accurately. Wholesale partners want their shipments delivered according to their routing guides, on-time, and typically using their own carrier accounts.
These are some of the most common use cases for multi-carrier shipping software. These are some of the most common problems that multi-carrier shipping software is built to solve.
In this guide, we’ll explain what multi-carrier shipping software is, what it should really do, and how to evaluate different platforms to make the right decision for your operations. Throughout, we’ll share insights from helping 500+ warehouses improve shipping outcomes, lower costs, and improve margins.
What Is Multi-Carrier Shipping Software?
Multi-carrier shipping software that integrates with multiple shipping carriers, eCommerce platforms, Order Management Systems, and ERPs to compare shipping carrier rates, generate shipping labels, and track shipments in one centralized interface.
In its most basic format, a multi-carrier shipping system replaces carrier specific portals and enables the shipping across multiple carriers from 1 system.
A small sample of scenarios that a multi-carrier shipping platform helps with:
- Lower shipping costs by comparing the shipping costs to get your package from Point A to Point B within 1 system,
- Use different carriers for different types of products. For example, a food retailer may use one carrier for shipping cold-packed perishable food around the country but use a different carrier to ship shelf stable items.
- Deliver better customer experiences. Leverage the strengths of each carrier and get your products to your customers on time.
The Carrier Landscape Has Changed
The three major domestic carriers have all signaled, in separate ways, that they are not trying to be everything to everyone.
FedEx is upfront about their focus on specialized shipments instead of lightweight, low-margin shipments: “If you’re shipping T-shirts, FedEx might not be for you,” explained Chief Customer Officer Brie Carere. Their rate structures and surcharges reflect their preference for higher-value, heavier freight and B2B shipments.
UPS is strategically moving away from small e-commerce volume and aiming to increase volume for small-to-medium sized businesses and healthcare. According to the CFO, UPS expects to ship fewer T-shirts to residences, and is content for let Amazon and USPS take that volume.
USPS fills a gap for lightweight, small parcels. USPS Ground Advantage can be the most cost-effective option available for anything under a pound. For companies where the margin per order is thin, USPS is a carrier that you should be leveraging.
Then there are regional carriers. OnTrac acquired LaserShip in 2021, creating a national network that covers a significant portion of the U.S. population, from coast to coast. OnTrac’s speed and cost profile is competitive, supporting its inclusion in a multi-carrier diversification strategy.
GLS is another regional option with a growing footprint and a strong reputation in specific markets.
Regional carriers don’t necessarily replace national carriers, but they can help companies diversify their carrier strategy and lower shipping costs with smart business rules through multi carrier shipping software.
Why Every Shipment Doesn’t Fit the Same Carrier
To understand why carrier selection matters so much, look at what happens when the wrong carrier and method are selected repeatedly.
Consider a B2B supplier and distributor shipping a mix of boxed products and lightweight envelopes. Many of those envelopes weigh under one pound. All these packages and envelopes were being shipped via their primary carrier because their legacy shipping software was integrated with 1 carrier only. With a multi-carrier solution, they would have been able to route boxed products through their main carrier, and envelopes via USPS saving a sizable amount of money.
Regional Shipping Performance Can Vary
One of the benefits of a multi-carrier strategy is being able to optimize for shipping zone and regional performance.
Transit times, pickup reliability, and damage rates all vary by geography. The same carrier can have a very different on-time delivery rate for orders delivered to the Midwest versus the Northeast. The origin of the shipments can play an outsized role in on-time deliveries.
This is especially true for regional carriers. For example, some regional carriers’ strengths are concentrated in specific geographic areas. When shipping a package within their core region, the transit time and cost are hard to beat.
Future Proof Your Growth and Distribution Center Locations
With growth comes expansion, moving to larger warehouses, and adding additional distribution centers. Shipping software should be able to grow and adapt to your reality.
Even within the same city, location specifics matter more than most shippers anticipate.
A home goods and lifestyle brand had a warehouse situated about 400 yards from a major carrier distribution hub. Daily pickups were consistent. Service was reliable. Better than what most other shippers reported about the carrier.
Then they moved to a larger facility, still in the same zip code, but no longer close to that hub. Their carrier stopped offering daily pickups. The service experience changed completely despite being in the zip code. As a result, this company moved most of that volume to a different carrier.
They had to switch carriers and update all their shipping processes and business rules accordingly. With ShipJunction’s multi-carrier shipping software, they were able to connect to their new carrier quickly, update shipping rules to reflect their operational reality, and limit disruption caused by juggling a multi-carrier mix.
Why Use Multi-Carrier Shipping Software
At its core, multi-carrier shipping software connects your order management system or ERP to multiple carrier accounts and brings shipping into a single screen to ship everything.
Ship Each Order with the Right Carrier
Not every shipment is the same, and the optimal carrier for one order may be the least optimal choice for another carrier. Multi-carrier shipping software offers companies the potential to match each order to the right carrier and service level based on factors like rates, package weight, destination, order value, customer type, and any other business specific rules.
How multi-carrier systems actually ship each order correctly ranges from manual high click count processes, to fully automated decisions. Typically, a company’s order volume will dictate where on this manual-to-automated spectrum they need their system to operate at.
As business needs change (like adding a regional carrier, adjusting how lightweight parcels are handled, onboarding a new retail partner or third-party shipping account), you should be able to make these adjustments quickly without retraining or technical support.
Lower shipping costs
Comparing rates across carriers is time-consuming when it requires logging into separate portals for each one. Multi-carrier shipping software consolidates that process. Rates, service levels, and delivery timelines are centralized in one system, so teams can make better decisions at the point of shipment without switching between portals and screens. Most warehouses that use ShipJunction for multi-carrier shipping lower shipping costs by 10-25%.
Optimize for Customer Experiences
Not every customer has the same expectations, and not every order carries the same urgency. Multi-carrier shipping software gives companies the flexibility to prioritize speed, reliability, or cost depending on the order. Again, this is accomplished on a spectrum from manual to automated.
The best multi-carrier shipping software simplifies shipping across multiple customer types and SLAs, including delivery windows for wholesale and retail orders, ship-by dates for eCommerce holiday season, using a 2-day priority shipping method for perishable goods, or selecting a regional carrier for shipping in specific geographic zones.
Track Packages for All Carriers in One System
Multi-carrier shipping software aggregates tracking data from all carriers. Your team has access to all this tracking data within the shipping system, but how usable it varies. Ideally, you want your system of record, the ERP, or your order management system, to be updated in a timely manner with tracking details.
With the best multi-carrier shipping systems, operations leaders can start to see patterns across carriers. Which carrier is generating the most exceptions? Which carrier is consistently missing transit times during peak? That aggregate visibility turns tracking from a reactive customer service task into a tool for making better routing decisions.
Simplify Training and Onboarding
This is the piece that doesn’t get enough attention. Every major carrier has its own portal, its own UI, its own quirks. Training a new hire to ship using UPS WorldShip is a different process than training them on FedEx ShipManager, which is different from USPS Click-N-Ship, which is different from any regional carrier system.
Multi-carrier shipping software stops the bouncing between carrier portals from the pack-and-ship workflow. Your shippers work from one system. The software communicates with the carriers in the background. It shouldn’t matter if you ship with one carrier or five. Ideally the workflow is the same.
3rd-Party Carrier Accounts
B2B and wholesale shippers often bill freight to a customer’s carrier account, ship blind, or manage multiple accounts. EDI shipping for retail and drop shipping often requires shipping with different carriers and accounts compared to their own website orders.
When selecting a multi-carrier shipping system, you need to consider the whole matrix of requirements that come with EDI fulfillment such as multiple carrier accounts, billing type such as 1st Party, 3rd Party or collect billing, reference field data requirements for EDI 856 (Advance Shipping Notice), and changing the address of where the package ships from.
Increase Shipping Capacity
As order volume grows, fulfillment demands grow with it. Manual steps in the shipping process — carrier selection, rate lookups, label generation, packing slip collation — consume time that adds up across hundreds or thousands of shipments. Manual steps may be economically and operationally viable today, but plan for your growth or even seasonal spikes.
Select a multi-carrier shipping system that scales with your business in terms of being able to automate processes and has flexibility in adapting to new business requirements with flexible workflows. With the right system, teams ship more orders in the same amount of time, without adding headcount or extending hours.
Silent Shipping Bottlenecks: The Hidden Cost of Swivel Chair Integrations
Swivel chair integrations are manual workarounds that fill gaps when various software solutions are needed to accomplish a unit of work. In shipping, that usually means the shipping software isn’t handling everything it should be, and people continue to key in data, copy pasting across platforms, or comparing carriers and rates in different portals. Carriers get added, volume grows, and the gaps get papered over with manual steps that nobody formally decided to keep.
It shows up in frustrating ways that cause inefficiencies and results in margin leak from suboptimal rate shopping and packing. A shipping team shipping with two or three carriers through their platform and handling the third outside of it. Third-party shipping accounts managed separately because the software never supported them. Each workaround looks small in isolation. Across a full day of fulfillment, they add up.
Here are some ways that swivel chair integrations in shipping operations cause margin leak:
- Retraining and tribal knowledge. When shippers have to use multiple carrier portals, every new hire needs to learn multiple carrier interfaces. What seems like one training about shipping carriers is three of four trainings rolled into one. Each with different UI, different keyboard shortcuts, and different error messages. The onboarding cost is hidden, and this cost multiplies each time a new hire joins the team.
- Lower throughput. Toggling between systems slows things down. It adds clicks. It adds decisions. At low volume it’s manageable. With a significant spike in orders during peak seasons, an extra 10-20 seconds clicking around for each order turns into thousands of dollars in labor and delays in fulfillment.
- More exceptions and mis-ships. Manually comparing and clicking around to choose the right carrier and shipping method can be inefficient and drive costs upward. It takes time to compare rates manually, and during volume spikes, people are more prone to mistakes when under pressure and time constraints.
- Limited future flexibility. When you decide to add a carrier, or drop one, or adjust service levels in response to rate changes, the workflow must change too. If your shippers are working in carrier portals, any change to your carrier mix is a retraining event. In multi-carrier shipping software, it’s a configuration change that ideally does not impact your operational processes.
Who Benefits Most from Multi-Carrier Shipping Software
Not every shipping operation is at the point where this is a pressing need. But certain profiles push you there faster.
High-volume shippers: By using a multi-carrier shipping platform higher in automation features, companies shipping hundreds and thousands of packages benefit the most by increasing shipping capacity without adding headcount while also nearly eliminating all errors and mis-ships.
Mixed shipment profiles: If you ship a wide range of items in terms of weight, size and item count, no single carrier is going to be the right answer for every package. If you’re also selling and shipping to a mix of DTC and B2B customers, there are additional shipping accounts and carrier requirements that have to be handled. The more varied your shipments, the more a distribution center will benefit.
Companies with regional shipping patterns: If a meaningful percentage of your volume ships within specific regions, regional carrier options can create savings on those lanes. But capturing that value requires the infrastructure to route accordingly.
Companies scaling their carrier mix: Adding a new carrier without a unified platform means adding complexity to your workflow. Adding it within multi-carrier shipping software means adding a configuration and focus on flowing all carriers through the same workflow.
B2B and wholesale shippers: Third-party billing, blind shipping, and compliance with retail partner routing guides add another layer of complexity. Choose a multi-carrier shipping system that handles those workflows without requiring separate processes.
Bring Your Own Carrier Accounts (BYOC)
A critical distinction: multi-carrier shipping software that supports your own negotiated carrier accounts gives you the benefit of your rates. You’re not being forced through a broker rate card. You bring your UPS account, your FedEx account, your regional carrier accounts, and choose software that works with all of them.
Shipping on a broker’s ‘discounted rate card’ provides initial savings and simplicity but at the expense of control and long-term leverage. On a broker’s rate card, your shipping volume strengthens the broker’s leverage. Your shipping volume is your business asset, and you should own the relationing it creates with the carriers.
How to Choose the Best Multi-Carrier Shipping Software for You
Here’s the truth: there is no universal best software for every company. It depends on your business strategy, current situation, and how you envision your next stage of growth. With that said, when you’re looking at multi-carrier shipping software, these are the capabilities we’ve seen to improve shipping outcomes and deliver ROI.
Features and Capabilities
- Single interface for all carriers: The workflow at the pack-and-ship station should be the same regardless of which carrier a shipment is routed to.
- No-code shipping rules engine: Can you build rules based on the criteria that matter to your business, like DIMs, zone, order source, carrier, service level, declared value? Can rules be stacked and prioritized? This is the core of shipping automation platforms. If the rules engine is limited or complex to use, it will be hard to enforce the right business rules to lower shipping costs or enforce carrier rules for certain customers.
- Native shipping carrier integrations: Direct integrations with the carriers you use, without middleware or third-party connectors. Prioritize software with direct integrations to shipping carriers for performance and platform stability.
- Bring your own carriers: Make sure the platform supports your negotiated rates. Your shipping volume is your business asset and allows you to own the relationship with the carriers.
- ERP and eCommerce integrations: Prioritize direct connections to your system of record such as NetSuite, Shopify, Amazon, or other order management systems. If the system uses third-party connectors, those orders and tracking updates will sync on a delay. Ask vendors whether their integrations are native or connector dependent. The difference matters most during peak season, or the cost of delayed updates is high particularly with EDI order fulfilment and chargebacks.
- Shipping label and custom document support: Not every shipment ships the same way. Custom packing slips, gift messages, combo labels, BOLs, and GS1/UCC-128 labels are common requirements across different order types and channels. Evaluate whether the software generates and prints all your required docs and shipping labels in the right formats, from the same workflow. If there are different processes to generate and print shipping labels for different orders, that is an area of inefficiencies that cause bottlenecks during peak season.
- Batch printing and shipping: For high-volume operations or subscription businesses, the ability to pre-generate and bulk-print shipping labels for hundreds or thousands of orders at once is a significant throughput lever. Every package should have business rules applied automatically for every order so that each order is still processed and optimized individually but at a bulk scale.
- Reporting and Analytics: You should have visibility into shipping costs, carrier performance, delivery exceptions, service-level usage, and fulfillment throughput. The best one makes it easy to see where margin is leaking, which carriers are underperforming, which rules are driving savings, and where operational bottlenecks are forming. It should help you make better decisions about carrier mix, service levels, regional routing, packaging, and future warehouse strategy. Additionally, ShipJunction shows individual shipper or shipping lane performance, making it easier to coach and manage to performance and metrics.
Multi-Carrier Shipping Software Is Easier than Flying
When you book flights, you compare airlines, tickets prices, flight paths, number of stops, service-level, and class. Few people are 100% loyal to Delta for every trip because sometimes United has a better route and sometimes Southwest has a better price to western states. People compare, consider different pros and cons, and pick the best option for that specific trip.
The best multi-carrier shipping software does that for every package you ship, automatically, without your shippers having to think about it, and without creating a different workflow every time you add a carrier to the mix.
The companies that do this well ship more packages with the same team, spend less per label, and have a fulfillment operation that can absorb growth without falling apart at the seams.
See How ShipJunction Does It
ShipJunction is a multi-carrier shipping platform built for eCommerce brands, distributors, manufacturers, and online retailers that ship at high volume. Through configurations and automations, we help companies protect their margins by optimizing carrier usage, lowering shipping costs, increasing shipping capacity, and speeding up training and onboarding of full-time and seasonal employees.
Our shipping rules engine handles carrier selection automatically based on your business logic. Our platform supports most shipping carriers, connects directly to NetSuite, Shopify, and Amazon, and runs every shipment through one interface regardless of how complex your shipping environment is.
If you’re evaluating multi-carrier shipping software for your operation, we’d like to show you how easy it is with ShipJunction. Schedule a meeting with our team to learn how you can protect margins and improve customer shipping experiences.
