Scalability is critical to the success of growing e-commerce platforms, software providers, and retail brands alike. As you continue to bring new customers and users on board, it can be challenging to focus on both providing a valuable user experience and maintaining integrations that provide key functionality for your application or platform.
Let’s say, for example, that your business provides an inventory management system for high-volume shippers with a built-in shipping solution. Integrating shipping carriers with your app requires costly development and maintenance. The need to stay ahead of competitors that offer discounted rates and faster delivery times further distracts from your app’s core offerings.
You need a solution that seamlessly fits into the framework of your existing shipping feature and that allows you to focus on doing what you do best: helping merchants and fulfillment providers ship efficiently.
Enter ShipEngine’s Partners API
The ShipEngine Partners API allows you to programmatically provision, manage, and act on behalf of other ShipEngine accounts. Once accounts have been created for your customers through the Partners API, they can access ShipEngine’s shipping APIs directly through your platform.
The Partners Program provides the administration tools that enable your customers’ access to the ShipEngine APIs in a white-labeled environment.
With the Partners API, you can:
- Create new ShipEngine user accounts for your customers
- Manage your accounts’ API keys
- Query your accounts
- Enable and disable your user accounts
There is no limit to the number of accounts that you can create and act on behalf of. We currently support Partners API users with anywhere from five accounts to 100,000+.
How does ShipEngine help customers create and manage shipments?
The first step is implementing the ShipEngine Carrier Connect API in your platform. Your customers then input information for their carrier accounts in their instance of your app (for example, entering their UPS account number and address in a modal in their account settings).
The information entered is passed back to ShipEngine through the Carrier Connect API. This eliminates the need for your customers to access their own separate ShipEngine dashboard to link their carriers to your app.
Communication between your customers’ carriers and your shipping solution is facilitated by ShipEngine’s integrations with those carriers, relieving you from spending resources to build and maintain those integrations.
Through ShipEngine’s shipping APIs, your customers can easily:
- get carrier rates
- validate addresses
- create labels
- process batches and multi-package shipments
- track shipments
All of these features are available to your users without them needing to navigate away from your platform.
White-labeling allows you to completely own your brand experience.
With the Partners API, your customers’ use of ShipEngine inside your app can be white-labeled. This means that they won’t have the ability to peek behind the curtain and see “powered by ShipEngine” stamped anywhere on your site. Their experience with your brand and business is kept consistent and seamless—no redirects, no third-party presence.
We will never reach out to your users directly. This allows you to take an administrative role, handling all of the communications and logistics associated with these user accounts, including billing.
How our Partners API compares.
Unlike our competitors, our Partners API is designed to be simple and intuitive, with the core functionality of our API made available through just a handful of endpoints. In as few as two API calls, you can set up your customer’s ShipEngine account and start shipping for them.
What support does ShipEngine offer for Partners API users?
ShipEngine is committed to your success in using our products. When you get started with the Partners API, you will meet a dedicated implementation project manager and account manager who walk alongside you during setup and even after integration and launch.
We ensure that you always have easy access to personalized support during your integration process and throughout your entire experience with ShipEngine—including a dedicated Slack channel. You will also have exclusive access to the Partners API developer hub, documentation, and API reference.
The ShipEngine Partners API is the perfect solution for platform users and developers looking to provide a cost-effective, low-maintenance shipping solution to their customers at scale.
Interested in using the ShipEngine Partners API? Contact [email protected] to learn more.
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