Shipping is a necessity for e-commerce stores, but it shouldn't be confusing, overly expensive, or limited to a few carriers. That's why we recommend working with shipping providers: companies that offer quality shipping software, partnerships with multiple carriers, and subscription fees for fast shipping times. Sendcloud is one of these providers, and the company appears to offer a long list of benefits to merchants looking to save on shipping and offer customers fast shipping options. In this Sendcloud review, we dive into pricing, features, and other elements like customer support and user experience.
Read on to find out if Sendcloud is right for your online business!
What is Sendcloud?
Sendcloud Reviews - Home
At its most basic, Sendcloud is an online shipping platform. Essentially, this means:
This is a company that provides software to connect your online store to shipping companies.
They provide access to tracking, returns, label creation, and pick and pack tools.
Users can get discounted shipping with top carriers.
However, Sendcloud goes a few steps further by offering a robust network of global and regional shipping carriers. For now, Sendcloud only caters to Europe; so they serve online businesses in Europe and allow fast shipping to Europe and internationally.
In addition to standard shipping provider offerings, Sendcloud offers the following:
Discounted shipping rates on global and regional carriers.
Offer multiple shipping methods in your checkout module.
Integrate with top ecommerce platforms .
Option to ship with multiple carriers.
Automatically create labels.
A unified, easy-to-use shipping software for managing the entire process.
What locations can Sendcloud support?
Sendcloud provides shipping software and services to businesses in most of Europe, with carrier partners available in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, France, Italy, Spain and more.
The company plans to add more countries and carriers in the future, and is currently expanding into the US; they have a sign-up form on their website to receive updates as they become available.
Sendcloud Review: Best Features
We've touched a few from Sendcloud, but now it's time to explore them further. This section expands on what we've already said, but it also highlights what Sendcloud truly makes it unique.
Intuitive, automated shipping workflow
Throughout our Sendcloud review, we realized that automation is key to the overall functionality of the platform, as how much of the processes merchants would typically handle manually are automated. You can ship your products in minutes and link your online store to print shipping labels in bulk and receive carrier recommendations for each order, as well as the fastest and cheapest shipping methods.
Users also have the option to configure shipping rules, where you can assign specific shipping methods, add insurance, or incorporate other actions based on factors such as customer, shipping destination, package weight or value.
Shipping Rules
Sendcloud continues to automate the process and additionally lets you print scannable picking lists and packing slips. This way you can combine picking and effort with printing labels and avoid mistakes. It's up to you how to set up this process, using a barcode scanner or just the weather on your computer screen. Just click or scan, all connected to print labels.
Here are some other parts of the system that can be automated:
Return Instructions
Trace messages and code generation
Select shipping method at checkout
Scheduled pickup and drop-off depending on carrier
Automatically generate customs forms to send products internationally
Overall, everything from direct integration with your ecommerce platform to custom automation rules comes together into a fairly intuitive shipping process, especially for those looking to scale up or spend more on business email list development. Multi-time online store.
Hassle-free returns
Ideally, online stores wouldn't have to worry about returns at all. But we know that's not realistic, so we'd like to see shipping platforms and fulfillment networks that handle returns for you, or at least provide a returns portal so you don't have to program it yourself or spend more money on other software.
Sendcloud covers merchants in the returns space and see how it has a complete returns portal for your customers to access and take the right steps to get products back to your warehouse.
You can customize this module and place a link to it on your website, giving customers the option to exchange their purchase, return it, get store credit, or request a refund. There are also features that accept in-store or point-of-service returns if you offer through your business.
We also noticed looking at our Sendcloud to see if there was an API to build your own returns portal with customizable fields and full control over the process. Beyond that, the default returns portal has tons of customization tools to add your own branding, specify possible return types, and display return policies for maximum transparency.
Returns Section - Sendcloud Review
Finally, the Sendcloud Returns module includes an analytics dashboard to understand your return rate and what methods people prefer to use to return to your store. So, returns are fairly automated Sendcloud, they allow you to customize as needed, and there are ways to use analytics to improve your returns process and prevent them from happening in the future.
Multiple delivery options in checkout module
As of this article, Sendcloud offers customers a simplified checkout experience with the WooCommerce checkout plugin, but you can also use the API or link to one of the many other ecommerce platform integrations.
Overall, the checkout customizer offers options to display multiple shipping methods, times, and carriers. It seems conditional that one of the customers will get a recommended shipping carrier and method based on their location and order, while the other might see something slightly different.
It's also interesting that merchants can let customers choose the delivery date that works best for them. For example, a user might end up choosing to go out for four days on the shipping page because they won't be in town for the next few days.
Checkout module with shipping date selection
Several other features come with the Sendcloud checkout portal, including point-of-pickup delivery options, pricing options, and more.
Some unique products include:
Delivery on specified day
Next day delivery
Conversion Optimized Delivery
We also noticed that you can combine shipping methods and carriers in the checkout section so that customers get the best option.
Brand Tracking (and several other brand elements)
All pricing plans from Sendcloud receive some kind of branded tracking email, including items like your logo and business colors in all emails sent to customers for tracking.
Email Builder features quick design tools to fully customize how emails appear when sent to customers.