Top 10 3PL Companies for E-Commerce Businesses
Today, more and more companies are operating nearly or completely online. This means great shifts in their logistics: they need their goods to be transported, stored, and packed. Third- party logistics offer these ready business solutions. 3PL companies are automated, well-equipped, and reliable. They are trusted all over the world and we are ready to put you in touch with them.
How Not to Get Lost in PLs
You may come across not only 3PL, but also 4PL and even 5PL. What is the difference between them and which services do you need?
4PL is referred to management of all points supply chain. Besides transportation, storage, and VAS, it involves following services:
- planning
- supply maintenance
- logistics analytics
- project management
- financial control
5PL is a relatively new phenomenon in the industry that reflects the totally integrated logistics solution to cover the entire supply chain from beginning to end. The 5PL providers will source the services you need and negotiate contracts for you acting as logistics operators.
Actually 3PL is enough for most small online businesses as they may delegate the most tedious duties to service providers while focusing on their core activities. Third-party logistics providers undertake supply chain operations to help a company’s product to reach its customers. They deal with storage, transportation, and offer such value-added services as pick and pack, assembling, inventory management, etc.
Third-Party Logistics Companies in Europe and the USA
1. ShipBob
This is an American company that also operates in Europe. To partner with it, you need to connect your store, import your products, and then send your inventory to them. You’ll obtain the best-in-class ecommerce fulfillment services with your inventory stored in any combination of its fulfillment centers. As soon as a customer places an order, it is shipped from the nearest fulfillment center. ShipBob offers express shipping, holistic reports, order management system, etc.
2. FedEx
FedEx is another company that operates both in the USA and Europe. It provides a door-to-door e-commerce service, offers sustainable packaging, and deals with returns.
3. Red Stag
Red Stag is focused on shipping heavy items that require special treatment. It is integrated with all major ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and others to obtain customer’s orders automatically. The clients can also obtain the number of solutions optimized for them.
4. Rakuten
This is a branch company of Rakuten Group, one of the leading ecommerce companies headquartered in Japan. It gives an opportunity to retailers on Shopify to store, pack, and ship orders without their active participation. They offer solution to optimize and control their clients’ shipping experience, expense, and service of D2C and B2B fulfillment. Besides integration with Shopify, Rakuten offers SmartFill, its own online customer software that allows to control your inventory.
5. DHL
DHL is one of the recognized global market leaders in the logistics industry. This German company is a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL Group. DHL deals with urgent cargo, provides a track and trace system, and the DHL Express Mobile App to facilitate the interaction with the clients.
6. DCL
DCL Logistics is a modern 3PL provider that offers an advanced fulfillment platform to its clients and provides services for many major Silicon Valley organizations. They work with clients of all sizes offering them ecommerce fulfillment, retail and B2B logistics, reverse Logistics, Amazon fulfillment Services, kitting and assembly.
7. ShipMonk
This company specializes in 3PL for ecommerce fulfillment offering personalized order fulfillment services that are especially demanded by small and midsize e-businesses. They support pick and pack, cost-effective and flexible shipping, powerful software, intelligent storage and warehousing, returns management, custom packing procedures, and delivery protection.
8. Whitebox
Whitebox is also perfect for small and midsize e-businesses providing them with full-service marketplace management solutions with main focus on Amazon. They offer packaging, shipping support, inventory management, reporting, and returns management.
9. Omni Logistics
This 3PL provider runs dozens of warehouses all around Europe, the USA, and Asia. The advanced technologies practiced there allow to handle a large volume of orders in the shortest possible time. You may obtain custom kitting for your product needs, shrink wrap of final kits, full quality assurance testing, and custom packaging support.
10. Shipwire
This company performs in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and North America. Shipwire provides incredibly fast shipping in those areas where their warehouses are closest to their clients’ customers. Shipwire picks, packs, and ships the orders for online businesses ensuring smooth day-to-day operations.
Practice Makes Perfect
Just like any business approach, there are both advantages and disadvantages of each option of doing logistics. And we can find great examples of successful operators who run their businesses without errors and remarks. When we speak about such operators we usually mean Amazon. The secret of their success is in their program called FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). It allows everyone to utilize Amazon’s immense infrastructure to ensure ecommerce fulfillment for their own customers. Generally, with FBA you need just to deliver your inventory to Amazon, advertise your goods for sale on their platform, and Amazon will take care of the rest: pick, pack, deliver, and even customer service.
But not only giants like Amazon may demonstrate the impressive performance. WELL PACK is such a company that always focuses on the best practices. We provide our clients not only with standard 3PL services but also strive to introduce new procedures like reusable plastic box cleaning. We are always in search of new innovative solutions to facilitate your performance.
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