Actionable insights and inspiration for eCommerce merchants and marketers
Elevate your eCommerce game with expert tips, data insights, and inspiration from the best in the business. This blog is your resource for thriving in an omnichannel world, retaining more customers, and mastering the post-purchase experience.
By submitting this form, you agree to AfterShip’s privacy policy.
Top Parcel Consolidation Software for 3PLs & Retailers in 2026
You've been told the answer to rising shipping costs is parcel consolidation. But before you re-engineer your pack stations, ask what that really costs you: the added sorting labor, the workflow changes, and the delay risk when one order in a consolidated box gets held. There's a way to lower cost-per-shipment in 2026 that doesn't touch your warehouse layout. That way is carrier portfolio optimization: choosing the most economical carrier and service for every shipment from one platform, instea
Which Tracking API is Best? The Developer's Guide for 2026
Your on-call engineer was just paged at 3 AM. The tracking API you rely on is down again, and thousands of 'Where Is My Order?' tickets are flooding your support desk. The root cause of most post-purchase pain is an unreliable, poorly documented API rather than a missing feature. The tracking API you can build on wins on three things a skeptical developer can verify - uptime you can hold a vendor to, webhook delivery that retries instead of giving up, and documentation that gets you to productio
Tired of the UPS Tracking Page? Here Are Better Alternatives
Why the Default UPS Tracking Page Is Failing Your Brand Your brand is nowhere in sight, the status reads 'In Transit: Departed from Facility,' and the only next step the page offers is a UPS account - not a way back to you. Your customer clicked "Track My Order" in your shipping email and landed on ups.com. For a Shopify brand shipping 1,000 to 20,000 orders a month, that page turns a simple delivery question into a support ticket and hands the post-purchase moment to the carrier. The best UPS
5 Best ShipTheory Alternatives for UK & EU eCommerce Brands
The renewal notice is in. Customer service spends its day answering order-status questions, marketing wants the post-checkout experience to look like the brand, and finance still cannot see which carrier earns its rate. Your brand has outgrown a tool whose job ends when the label prints. The real gap sits between four disconnected systems and one shared data layer. This guide ranks five ShipTheory alternatives on how well each one closes that gap, for UK and EU brands shipping 1,000 to 50,000 o
Recent articles
Top 7 Return Management Tools for Retailers in 2026 (Ranked)
Your returns process is probably costing you more than you think. It's not just the shipping labels and refunds; it's the hours your CX team spends on status updates, the warehouse space tied up in unprocessed items, and the customers you lose forever after one bad experience. Choosing the right software isn't about finding a returns portal: it's about choosing a new business strategy. Those costs sit in three separate budget lines, so nobody manages the total: CX time on status tickets, wareho
Returns Platform Pricing: A 2026 Guide for Growing Brands
Your returns volume is finally high enough to be a problem, and now you are staring down quotes from returns platforms where the pricing makes no sense: one publishes a ladder, one publishes a starting price with no limits attached, and one publishes a single plan. Each of them is marketed as one of the best returns platforms for eCommerce, which tells you nothing about what it costs. The pricing model matters more than the price, because it decides who absorbs the variance when your return volu
Return Magic vs Returnly: The Independent Alternative for 2026
The Comparison That Already Resolved Itself If you are comparing Return Magic and Returnly, the comparison has already resolved itself. Return Magic shut down in July 2022 and Returnly stopped processing returns in October 2023, so neither is a platform you can buy. What is worth your time is why they died, because the reason narrows your shortlist faster than any feature table. Both were acquired by larger companies, and both were switched off by the owners who bought them. Two shutdowns insi
Returnly vs ShipTheory: The Verdict for Unified Ops
You are here because you are comparing Returnly and ShipTheory. That is a reasonable place to land, and it says something good about how you are thinking: you have found real breakage in two separate workflows, returns and shipping, and you want both of them fixed. A Returnly vs ShipTheory shortlist usually lands on your desk under pressure. Your CFO wants the shipping line item down this quarter, your CX lead wants the returns experience fixed before peak, and both of them expect one answer fr
Top 5 Returns Platforms for DTC Brands: An Honest Ranking
Your returns spreadsheet is costing you more than you think - not just the hours your team spends processing RMAs, but the customers you lose to a clunky, slow refund process. If you're starting to feel that pain, you're ready for a dedicated returns platform. The right one depends on your growth stage - and for brands planning to scale, AfterShip Returns is the strongest all-around choice. When Manual Returns Fail: The 3 Tipping Points for Growing Brands Nobody goes shopping for returns soft
Returns Software Pricing: The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About
Why Returns Software Pricing is Designed to Confuse You You're trying to compare returns software, but the pricing is a maze. One buries an annual contract in a FAQ accordion, another publishes only a 'starting at' floor, and a third has a 'free' plan that feels too good to be true. How do you calculate what you'll actually pay at the end of the month? The answer is total cost of ownership, and the 'cheapest' option is usually the most expensive one. Total cost of ownership includes software f
Get the week's best eCommerce content
By submitting this form, you agree to AfterShip’s privacy policy.
Get the week's best eCommerce content
Tips, tricks, and eCommerce inspiration from the industry’s top experts.
By submitting this form, you agree to AfterShip’s privacy policy.