Review of Shipmonk Fulfillment 3PL Experience

Shipmonk Fort Lauderdale — Pictured: Shipmonk’s Fort Lauderdale fulfillment center

I first leveraged Shipmonk’s fulfillment services in the winter of 2020 (peak covid pandemic) on a project for Nonna Enterprises Inc that involved the direct-to-consumer fulfillment of imported Italian olive oil bottles. It was an incredibly challenging project with a unique (and heartwarming) story. I’ll write another post dedicated to this business case, but in this post, let’s focus on Shipmonk as a 3PL provider. This will be an honest review, so you’ll know the good, the bad, and the ugly. And let me just say- every business has its problems, especially ones that are in hyper-growth mode, and reviews can be misleading. The most crucial part is knowing how to weather a storm and create solutions to common 3PL problems.

So…let’s get into it.

tl:dr (too long, didn’t read)

First, know that Shipmonk was founded in 2014; so they have some years of experience under their belt and they’re not brand new to the fulfillment game. At the time of writing this they have about 7 US locations and have recently opened their Canada and Mexico locations, as well as ROW (rest of world) with a footprint in the UK, and plans to expand to South America, China, Singapore, and Sydney, Australia.

One of the main appeals to Shipmonk is their fulfillment software and user-interface. It’s fresh, easy to use and intuitive, and integrates seamlessly with eCom platforms like Shopify. My experience with them was via a Shopify app.

They’re competitive with shipping rates, as a large 3PL would be. But there’s much more to 3PLs than having the best fulfillment or storage cost. Keep reading to find out…

Shipmonk Fact Sheet — Source: Shipmonk Press Kit

pricing of fullfilment

You can check out Shipmonk’s pricing yourself on their website. Their pricing is determined by your monthly order volume. Their first tier covered zero to 500 monthly orders and is as follows:

First Item Pick Fee Per Order: $3,00

Additional Item Pick Fee: $0.75

Promotional Inserts: $0.20

When an item is returned they’ll charge you $2.00 for the return and 50 cents per additional item in the box that needs to be put away.

pricing of storage

Shipmonk categorizes storage into “bins” and “pallets”. Bins will be on the picking floor, making it easy for pickers to quickly grab the items. Think of bins as a place that holds your loose inventory. Pallets will hold boxes that may be sealed up and hold multiple items. Or, if your item is large enough and can be easily stacked and picked from a pallet, they will use a pallet.

Here’s where some cost optimization can happen; and this isn’t something that they will necessarily reach out to you for. Staying on top of how your inventory is stored is very important and can save you tens of thousands per year. It involves monitoring your storage costs and asking for audits when necessary.

other notable prices

special projects like counting inventory, repacking, bagging, assembling multi-layer boxes, and really any labor task is considered a “special project”. They bill at $45 per person-hour (so if there are two people doing a project that takes an hour that’s $90). They do give you a quote of projects and breakdown first, which allows you to assess and confirm if you want the project done.

I used the special projects team to “kit” my product that included a 3-piece corrugate setup which was an outer mailer box, a cradle for my olive oil bottle, and a flat protector sheet. The special projects team assembled the box from flat corrugate that I had shipped to them on pallets. The box assembly, placing an olive oil bottle in the box, and sealing it with water-activated wet tape was all part of the special project. Moving the materials in and out of the special projects area is also included in the hourly rate.

container unloading for “free loaded” cargo that needs to be palletized is charged at $300 per 20 foot container and $500 per 40 foot container.

minimum pick & pack fee is $250 a month. If you’re shipping more than 83 items per month, you’ll hit this minimum.

packaging materials can be included if needed and they range from $0.15 to $2.00.

my biggest challenges

If your business has a complex project that requires special projects, any 3PL is going to be a challenge for you. This is where a savvy operations manager or consultant comes into play. My biggest challenge was having a direct contact point inside Shipmonk; when you hit a certain account size they’ll give you a dedicated “happiness engineer”, but in my case this person changed several times over, leaving me to explain the nuances of my product and business lots of times.

how I saved a small family business $15,000 in billing errors

Unfortunately, I was also overcharged for international shipments at the DHL carrier level. I actually don’t know if this was a Shipmonk issue or a DHL issue (I’m told it was a DHL coding issue), but I had to aggressively “fight” to get resolve here. This is the prime example where having a consultant or advisor work with you will help. What I do is like insurance for the founder or the business- I’ve been through these situations so many times I know exactly what to look for and how to find these issues quickly before they snowball.

ecommerce fulfillment consultant saves company $15,000 — luckily, I’m in contact with the founder and executive team of Shipmonk, so I can expedite support for sensitive issues like this.

As you can see, I identified one country in particular where my duties/tax charge was extremely high. So many things need to happen when you identify and need to investigate- shipments need to halt, service-level-agreements need to be updated, the issue needs to be escalated to senior management on both the 3PL and carrier.

If you’re doing this type of a brain-scramble to fix the situation for the first time, you’re likely in over your head and starting to sweat. $15k has been debited from your bank account, you’re being put on hold, calls aren’t being returned, and you’ve explained your issue 17 times across different people, companies and ahhhh you want to pull your hair out. I hate this situation, but actually enjoy this type problem-solving and ultimately resolution. When you “know where all the bodies are buried”, as one mentor likes to say, you can get each group on the same page and assist them to do their job more efficiently and accurately.

overall rating and recommendation

Unfortunately for you, or should I say fortunately, you’re not going to find an arbitrary star rating review here that you can pin up against other 3PL’s. The bottom line is- do you have a direct line into their executive team when you need to “use the Bat-phone” (hope you know that Batman reference), are they competitive enough with fulfillment and shipping rates, is their software easily integrated to your eCommerce platform, and is their software UI easy to use (and can you view or pull data easily from it).

The answer to the questions above- yes, Shipmonk has all of those things, and if you’re an eCommerce brand that needs a 3PL they’re a great solution.