Well ship station has lost their minds.
Maybe Elon Musk took over, I can't be sure.
I have the platinum plan at $99.00/mo with five users and we add a sixth users for $5.00

Now in 30 days they are going to $149.95 (50% increase) and they will begin charging $60.00 per month if I use my own UPS account. This is basically another 60% increase.
That's going to double my bill with them every month.
It just baffles me that a company would do this. It's bound to encourage them to look at alternatives. Like me.

So what are some of you using, that are based in the US?

David

Hi Dave,

Until a few months ago we were using ShipStation but paid Vince to integrate ShipTheory into ECT which is now a native feature and has been well worth it.

Their support is UK based but to be honest they beat ShipStation in every area and we havn't looked back.
ShipStation was always having issues like not having enough server resource after holiday weekends and not being on top of courier API changes.

I had an newletter from ShipTheory only today and one of the articles was about Scrub Daddy who are US based and using them with great success so it might be worth you signing up for their 14 trial and running it along side ShipStation. They were also happy to extend the trial for us when Vince was setting everything up.

They integrate with UPS and their Saturn package is 85GBP for 3000 shipments but you only get 3 users for that.
You might be able to add extra users.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at options when we wanted to move away from ShipStation and they seemed the best fit.
Easy to setup rules etc so it's just as automated as ShipStation was for us.

[url]https://shiptheory.com/[/url]

Regards,
David

Hi David, thanks for that. It does seem like a good alternative and I expect in a few days, I'll setup a trial.

Our UPS rep says she is getting hit pretty hard with people asking about alternatives, so it seems ship station has caused some folks to be upset.

She replied with these alternative for anyone interested.
She also says UPS can help cover integration with these.

UPS Digital Connections - PluginHive https://www.pluginhive.com/ups-digital-connections/

UPS Customer Technology Program | ShipRush and UPS CTP | Descartes ShipRush https://shiprush.com/ups-digital-connections/

UPS Digital Connections - ShipWorks https://www.shipworks.com/upsdigitalconnections/

StarShip® and the UPS® Digital Connections Program - Shipping Software (vtechnologies.com) https://www.vtechnologies.com/ups-shipping-software-ctp/

Thanks,
David

Hi David, I am ready to start the trial run for ShipTheory, but they do not have ECT on the list of carts. How did you set it up?

David

Hi David,

ECT connects to Shipthroery via their API:
https://shiptheory.com/developer/#shipment

The code needed is in the latest v7.5.8 stability release and at least one version before that.
You can check if you have the code by doing a search for 'shiptheory' in /vsadmin/inc/incorders.php/asp

The below setup is for PHP and I believe you are on ASP but the include settings are easy enough to change.

Firstly in ECT Admin > Shipping Admin > Shipping Methods click on the Ship Theory Admin button and add your Shiptheory email and password.

If you now go to Orders Admin > View Orders select the orders you wish to import into Shiptheroy in the left column checkboxes and then using the Action Select dropdown you should find ShipTheory at the bottom.

Upon selecting this you will see a prompt asking if you want to import and clicking OK will import into Shiptheory.

The way we have this setup is to do the same once the order is complete in Shiptheory so repeating the same process then gets the tracking numbers and updates the order status.
Basically if Shiptheroy returns a tracking number the order will be updated with that number.

I realise that you may want to have ECT order statuses update automatically upon shipping which is how we used to use ShipStation but because of what we ship we set Shiptheroy to mark all orders as requiring approval before booking with courier so we manually go in and weigh item then select what bag size/service etc.
90% are correct using the rules we have setup but we just like to double check.

I seem to remember that if you set things up differently you can import orders, have them book the courier and update ECT all in one but we often have to modify the service used so prefer to do the separate update.

Once you have imported into Shiptheory I would recommend clicking the rocket icon in the top left as this loads the newer advanced dashboard rather then the legacy one.
Then click the waiting to ship column to see your orders.
You can customise what columns to show here in the settings.

There are two columns you will see which are Shipment ID and Order ID.
These are both required and Shipment ID has to be unique which is why the ECT Order ID goes in there and not into Shiptheory Order ID column.
For Order ID we use our company name and we have two stores feeding into Shiptheroy so in includes.php/asp you can set:
$GLOBALS['shiptheoryreference']='Company Name'; allowing you to easily see which store the order is from in Order ID column.
These two ID's also print on some shipping labels.

There are two more settings you may what to use:
$shiptheoryshippedstatus=4; - I think this is 3 by default
$shiptheorytrackingstatus=6;

When a new order comes into ECT it's marked as New Order (Status 3)

What we have done is setup Order Status 4 as 'In Production' so as soon as we import new orders into Shiptheory they update in ECT to the new shiptheoryshippedstatus of 4 which makes it easy to see newer orders as the existing ones are now marked as In Production.

Once the courier has collected we then filter for 'In Production' orders, select all the checkboxes, re-sync with Shiptheory at which point tracking numbers get added, status gets updated to whatever you have set in $shiptheorytrackingstatus and dispatch emails get fired off to customers (if setup to do this in ECT admin).

There are some more settings you will want to add to your includes.php/asp file which adds your ship from address as this is used for the return address on some shipping labels for example:

$GLOBALS['shiptheorysender']=array(
"company" => "Your Company",
//"firstname" => "Julian",
//"lastname" => "Smith",
"address_line_1" => "Any House",
"address_line_2" => "Any Road",
"city" => "Any City",
"postcode" => "or ZIP",
"country" => "GB",
"telephone" => "0000000000", //required by RM
"email" => "your[at]email.com" //required by RM

Please note: Users in the UK using Royal Mail will need telephone and email settings because at time of writing this the label will fail without these two.

A list if these settings are available in the API linked above as you may need different ones set and you will notice I have commented out the names as these are not needed in our case.

I think I have covered everything you will need to get you going but please post if you need any other pointers and I will do my best to help.

Regards,
David

Hi David,

I forgot to mention that if you right click > view shipment on an order in Shiptheory and scroll down you will see a history log of the order and this can sometimes be helpful if things do not quiet work as expected as errors are show here.

Regards,
David

Hi David, thanks for the detailed instructions.
I'll give it a go.

David

Hi David,

No problem. Shout if you need any pointers.

If you are testing on live site then I added a load of test orders and then in Private Order Status added the text No Import.

Then in ShipStation added a rule to not import the order if No Import was present.

This way you will not get your ShipStation dashboard full of test orders when it syncs.

Regards,
David

Hi David, I have this connected to my dev site, so no harm to my working store.
I have sent a question to Vince on this, but it looks like no shipping service is being passed to ShipTheory.
So that is hitting a brick wall for me right now.
Unless you know something I don't
All orders are being imported under "ignore" status with no rules in place.
I was hoping to use rules to map our shipping services.

We don't want employees having to select a ship service in ShipTheory as that might lead to errors, having them select a different service than what the customer paid for.

David

Hi David,

I seem to remember I had this problem too but for us I used the ship price and postcode to map the shipping service although we do have two that are currently the same price so we have to change when this happens but it's rare for us.

I'll be honest and say I was meaning to ask Vince about this but I've been busy with other work so it keeps slipping my mind.
It seems it's available in the API so it just needs to be passed from ECT to work.

Using the service since the initial integration has highlighted improvements that would be helpful like the one you mentioned but I guess this is the case in general with software.

The other thing is the individual product price on each order.
The order value total is correct but if you scroll down in Shiptheory the individual product value doesn't seem to include any option pricing although this may just be with dependent options.

Again not a big issue for us until we need a customs declaration.
I have asked Shiptheory about this and each time a product gets imported it just gets updates if the SKU already exists so the value can be changed with each order.

Perhaps if Vince is checking in he can look at these two areas.

Shiptheory will mark as ignore status if it doesn't match any rules:
https://support.shiptheory.com/support/solutions/articles/24000038608-shipping-statuses

I seem to remember we connected one of our courier accounts where we can easily cancel shipments to help set things up.

One thing you may also want to look at is the small grey Advanced Settings tab in the bottom left when setting up rules.
They keep this small on purpose to stop things getting messed up but you may find this handy as we certainly did.

Regards,
David

Hi David
I don't seem to have received an email from you but there does seem to be a field, "channel_shipservice_name" in the API and I could try adding the service name to that. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information about it in the API.

Vince

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Hi Vince,

Thanks for the message. I never got around to sending an email as work keeps getting in the way but it would be very useful if we could get the tweaks made as we have found the Shiptheory service very good.

I agree there is not much but it looks like that just gets included in the shipment_detail info being passed to Shiptheory although I have found this which may be suitable:
https://shiptheory.com/developer/#delivery-services

[quote]When booking a shipment, if you pass a delivery_service your shipment will skip shipping rules and book the shipment with the carrier that owns the specified delivery service.[/quote]

I'm not sure if this would work for David.

Regards,
David

I have just checked the rules setup in Shiptheory and we can set custom text on Shipping Method.

So we can say if 'Shipping Method' is 'Equal' to 'Some Text' then apply the rule and within this we can also set weights etc.

[quote]Shipping Method - Not to be confused with shipping service! The shipping method is information that will be passed through to Shiptheory from your channel, usually specified by your customers upon purchase. You can use custom shipping methods in order to match a rule within your Shiptheory account, but please bear in mind that the shipping method selected for the shipment must match exactly with your rule in order to process successfully.[/quote]

So if we can simply get the name that shows in the Delivery Method on the ECT order passed to Shipping Method then I think that should work for what David is trying to do.

Regards,
David

ShipTheory support says API Shipping Method should do the trick.

I was able to connect with Vince so between this thread and my communication with him, hopefully we can get this sorted.

Thanks,
David

Hi David, after Vince worked some magic, we are getting the ship service moved over to shiptheory.
However, the scale feature is not working with UPS and they cannot tell me when it will be fixed.
We cannot enter a box size in the shipment page and we do have some boxes that we cut-down (adjustable boxes) to save on dimensional weight.
ShipTheory does not currently support pounds and ounces, nor US date format.

I'm not sure if we can make it work - I have two days left on my trial.
In the end, it seems ShipTheory is best when you only ship one item per order and you know all of the details before hand and you can make it just create labels completely automated. Unfortunately, that's just not how our business works.

Are you all manually entering your weights, or have you been able to connect a scale to the service?

Thanks,
David

Hi David,

We use Dymo USB scales which work fine when we click the scales button.

That said most orders come in with the correct weight so we do not have to use them with every order but it is most days they get used.
You do need to install some software just like with ShipStation to get the scales talking to Shiptheory.
https://support.shiptheory.com/support/solutions/24000003373
I am not sure why they are not working with UPS but that does seem odd but perhaps whoever you spoke to misinformed you.

We are currently using DHL as our main service so cannot advise on the UPS setup but this link seems to suggest you get to choose your weight units:
https://support.shiptheory.com/support/solutions/articles/24000067555-connect-your-ups-account-to-shiptheory
As we only use weight and not dimensions these are not settings we have used I'm afraid as I know all our boxes fall within the services we use.

We are the same as you with not wanting to make use of the full automation and we want control over the booking with courier and label printing etc.
You can do this for each rule under Advanced Settings > What should happen when this rule matched?
by setting it to Mark shipment for approval in the drop down.

Now when each order is imported 99 times out of 100 it has the correct weight and matches the correct courier service required but importantly doesn't get booked with the courier.
To do this we simply right click the order and print the label at which point it books with courier and out comes the label.
Before we click the label button if we have more than one box we simply enter this number in the order window which by default is 1.
We can also change the service if we want to or in fact anything about the order before it's booked with courier.

Regarding the trial they were fine to extend for us when we told them were needed more time for development so if you still wish to give them a try I am sure they will be OK with this. I think I asked for another 30 days and they can see you are only doing dev testing and not putting through '000's of orders.

Regards,
David

Hi David,

Just had a look around our admin and I see you can setup package sizes:
https://support.shiptheory.com/support/solutions/articles/24000026829-using-package-sizes

I guess these are predefined settings you can then apply to rules so maybe you could have your boxes setup in there removing the need to enter box sizes on an order.

There is a note saying it will only work with couriers that have the feature available so this will need to be checked with Shiptheory/UPS first but could be an option for you.

Regards,
David

I just came across this shipping alternative.

https://www.pirateship.com/

Currently I'm using ShipStation also.

From what I gathered PirateShip does NOT charge you for using it if I read it right.

Their rates are the same as ShipStation.

Patrick

Hi David

quote:

---

Just had a look around our admin and I see you can setup package sizes:
https://support.shiptheory.com/support/solutions/articles/24000026829-using-package-sizes

---

Yes, we can se all of our box sizes, but we do modify boxes sometimes, by cutting them down to save on carrier dimensional weight. In these cases, we need to enter an alternate box size on the fly, like we can in ship station.

Hi Patrick, thanks. I'll check it out.
Ship station has issued me a two month credit as they know I'm not happy and looking at alternatives.
This month, they did not add the UPS fee either, so maybe they will not do that as I'm sure they've gotten push back from a lot of users. Not to mention, my UPS rep says she was getting slammed with people who use ship station upset of them adding a fee for using their own account.
Perhaps UPS threatened them with chopping their discounts if they start doing that.

:::EDIT::: I see the pirateship forces you to use their accounts to ship. That's how they get paid. This is good for folks who do not have strong negotiated rates in place. However, our UPS negotiated rates are lower across the board than Ship Station discounts they pass on to users. When checking this, I did see their discounts are pretty good and would be a savings for many companies. However, we ship over 120 tons per year with UPS, so we've been able to negotiate some really big discounts with them.

David

It's understood that changing payment provider can be painful, but you might consider using PayPal to take advantage of their free Shipstation integration.

Our fulfillment team finds the PayPal/ Shipstation workflows to be a big time saver - integrated address checks and corrections are excellent - and you can't beat the label pricing.

Hi Paul, we have strong (UPS) negotiated rates in place.
Our negotiated discounts beat the ship station discounts and the paypal>ship station discounts.
With our shipping volume, we would not realize any savings in this scenario.
In a single day, we would pay more in shipping costs (their discounts versus ours) than our current monthly fee we pay ship station.

Paypal processing fees are too high - they are no longer competitive.
I was processing millions a year through them before we switched to square.
Square gave us a much better rate, and they refund the fees when you process a refund, something paypal stopped doing.

Thanks,
David