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.

The 5 Best Returns Platform Alternatives for Scaling DTC Brands in 2026

Your returns portal works, but your return rate isn't dropping. Your customers can print a label, but your WISMO tickets are still sky-high. If you're looking for an "alternative" to your current returns tool, the problem might not be the portal - it's the silo it operates in. Most shortlists get built on portal features. How the return page looks, how quickly a shopper gets a label, how many conditions the workflow engine will accept. Those questions all have answers, and none of them tells yo

Eugene Oh September 07, 2026

Narvar vs Loop vs Happy Returns vs AfterShip: 2026's Ranked Verdict for Enterprise Retailers

You're not just choosing a returns tool; you're deciding your post-purchase strategy for the next five years. A point solution fixes one step of that journey; a unified platform runs all of it on one data layer. For scaling brands, the unified platform is the durable choice. Somewhere between 1,000 and 50,000 orders a month, returns stop being a support task and become an operations problem. The spreadsheet stops reconciling. WISMO and WISMR tickets ("where is my order", "where is my refund") s

Eugene Oh September 07, 2026

Returns Software Alternatives: An Honest Review for 2026

Your returns software should make your job easier, not just create a new set of problems. If you're tired of rigid automation, limited carrier options, and surprise fees, you're in the right place. For scaling mid-market brands the answer in 2026 is AfterShip Returns, on carrier flexibility, automation depth, and a connected post-purchase platform; Loop, Happy Returns, and Narvar each fit a narrower profile. Why Choosing the Right Returns Software Feels Impossible in 2026 If you run operation

Eugene Oh September 07, 2026

Tired of Route Fees? 3 Free Alternatives Explored

Open your Shopify billing and the shipping protection line is one of the easiest to resent. A debit lands every week and reads like a subscription you signed up for and forgot about. Most of that money was never yours. It is the protection fee your customer already paid at checkout, sitting in your balance for a few days on its way to the provider. Route bills merchants weekly, and its own pricing page says package protection does not cost merchants anything. Both of those are true at once, whi

Eugene Oh September 07, 2026

Recent articles

How to calculate volumetric or dimentional weight

What is volumetric weight Volumetric weight is also called dimensional weight, which is calculated from length, width and height with a volumetric divisor. Each courier can have a different volumetric divisor for calculating volumetric weight. Below you can find the volumetric weight formula or also called dim weight factor. What is volumetric weight calculation formula Each courier may have a different volumetric weight calculation, below are the formula FedEx and UPS calculate volumetric we

Teddy Chan January 22, 2016

What is Address Validation? Does Postmen support it?

Postmen API does not support address validation for now as we are still focusing on integrating more carriers for label printing and rates calculation. In this post, I am going to tell you different options for address validation in the market that you can choose from. What is address validation? To be precise, address validation is also called address verification, address suggestion or address correction. In general, it refers to Street-level address validation which returns single or multipl

Teddy Chan December 17, 2015

Shipping labels 102 - paper size, label format and printer choices

Fulfillment Wednesday today will tell you how to setup your printer, and what label size and format you should choose when printing electronic shipping labels (i.e. online labels) with thermal printers and desktop printers. Label paper sizes & Printer Type In general there are** 2 different paper sizes** for shipping labels: Paper SizePrinter TypeCourier 4" x 6" Thermal printerUPS, DHL, FedEx, USPS, Royal Mail 8" x 11.5" (~A4)Laser or inkjet printerAll couriers Basically 4x6 paper size

Teddy Chan December 16, 2015

Shipping labels 101 - 3 ways to create shipping labels online

Fulfillment Wednesday yeah - it is my favorite day as I got to learn what matters for an online retailer shipping an order. Today I will go through different options of creating shipping labels online. What are shipping labels Shipping labels basically detail the delivery information like ship from, ship to, package description, dimension, weight, customs, billing info. Shipping labels are also called waybill or consignment note depending on the shipping company. Usually the courier has a sp

Teddy Chan December 09, 2015

Product Updates

English translation for China Post and China EMS tracking

It has been a while since we wrote about AfterShip features (sorry for being lazy on marketing ;). We now switch to ghost [https://ghost.org/] platform for our blog and hopefully forcing ourselves to write more. While we grow our team to now 23 people (in which 21 are developers), the team has been working hard to rewrite AfterShip API [https://www.aftership.com/] and upgrade to v5. We have learned a lot in the last 3 years and it is time to clean up the codes and make the system more scalable.

Teddy Chan November 30, 2015

What is manifest, end of day form, scan form?

Today is fulfillment wednesday, which I will go through issues, questions or topics we came across when shipping. Today's topic is manifest, which is also called end of day form or scan form for some carriers. What is manifest? Manifest is sort of a confirmation list of shipments that you're going to ship that day. In general, carriers require shippers to print out a manifest form at the end of the day and pass to the carrier - which carrier will verify the list of shipments. Some carriers a

Teddy Chan November 25, 2015

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