Sellbrite: A ShipEngine Success Story

It’s hard to maintain listings across different marketplaces.

It’s hard to prevent overselling across different marketplaces.

And it’s hard to perfect fulfillment across different marketplaces.

This is why Sellbrite exists.

In 2014, Sellbrite launched with an ambitious mission: to give e-commerce merchants the solutions to the problems listed above. Today, Sellbrite remains a leading cloud-based channel management platform. It integrates with Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, Shopify, BigCommerce and other leading marketplaces and shopping carts. Using Sellbrite, merchants can:

• Create and manage listings
• Control inventory
• Fulfill orders

No more exhaustion from managing multiple marketplaces.

No more overselling and dealing with the fallout.

No more fulfillment challenges.

But, ever since its 2014 launch, Sellbrite has always looked for ways to perfect its products and better serve its users.

The Challenge: Helping Sellbrite Scale Along With its Users

By 2017, Sellbrite’s users were making 15,000 monthly shipments. Sellbrite offered a basic feature that let clients buy shipping labels. But, unfortunately, Sellbrite’s feature was a little too basic. Sellbrite needed a robust shipping solution that would do three things:

1. Offer access to more carriers
2. Offer features beyond label purchasing
3. Offer the ability to scale along with its most successful customers

The Solution: Integration With ShipEngine’s APIs

The solution: shipping APIs. But finding the right shipping APIs isn’t easy. Sellbrite first tried a shipping API option that allowed users to generate labels. But the API didn’t offer as many carriers as needed, and it provided only one feature. Sellbrite still needed access to more carriers and multiple features to help satisfy its users’ most pressing needs.

ShipEngine launched a set of shipping APIs in 2017, and Sellbrite made the decision to switch. Integration with ShipEngine would allow Sellbrite to offer access to a range of carriers, offer multiple features that users had requested, and offer the ability to scale with its most successful users — power users who had built significant businesses using the platform. Overall, integration with ShipEngine created the seamless user experience that Sellbrite’s leadership team had envisioned.

The Process: Working Together for Successful Integration

Sellbrite planned to swap out its existing API for ShipEngine with limited disruption to its users. The switch required only slight updates to the Sellbrite user interface, and the vast majority of its sellers didn’t notice the change. The initial integration included four of ShipEngine’s APIs:

• Registration
• Carrier Connect
• Shipments
• Labels

Construction of the initial integration lasted a few weeks. ShipEngine offers clear and concise documentation, which helped accelerate the process. To the extent that issues emerged before, during or after the launch, Sellbrite team members were able to connect with ShipEngine in person, by phone or via Slack to resolve them.

Later, Sellbrite also integrated ShipEngine’s Manifests API, which gives users the ability to create and print SCAN forms directly in Sellbrite. Again, Sellbrite worked with ShipEngine’s team to ensure the success of the Manifests integration. Sellbrite and ShipEngine have also worked together in the months since initial integration to solve problems around international shipping and changes to carrier options.

When we needed a specific shipping solution, ShipEngine delivered. Our users now enjoy access to discounted shipping rates, optimized international shipping, worldwide carrier support, rate visibility, global address verification and more. Best of all, this is a dynamic solution — ShipEngine can help our customers scale their growing businesses.

Brian Nolan, Sellbrite Co-Founder & CEO

The Result: Lower Costs, Fewer API Calls, More Features

Sellbrite integrated ShipEngine’s APIs in an effort to enhance its user experience and to save its customers time and money. The specific benefits of Sellbrite’s integration with ShipEngine are more widespread, though, including:

Limited Development Costs: ShipEngine’s support team and documentation helped limit development costs during integration. Once the API integrations went live, minor issues emerged, but they were quickly resolved through responsiveness and collaboration.

Fewer API Calls: Integrating ShipEngine also led to fewer API calls than when using alternatives. Fewer calls translate to users spending less time purchasing labels and taking other actions. Seconds and fractions of seconds may not seem like much, but they add up over time for users making hundreds of shipments a day. Sellbrite even saw an increase in the number of labels purchased after integrating ShipEngine’s APIs — from about 15,000 shipments a month to 18,000 monthly (plus even more around the holiday season).

Increased Conversions: Sellbrite also uses features made possible by ShipEngine to increase conversions. About 20% of Sellbrite’s customers use the built-in shipping label feature, which represents a value add it delivers to customers at no additional cost. In essence, ShipEngine powers a critical feature that Sellbrite uses to convert customers who are looking for an end-to-end, multi-channel solution.

More Shipping Options: Finally, Sellbrite is able to add support for new shipping options due to its ShipEngine integration. For example, users can now fulfill eBay Guaranteed Delivery and Walmart 2-Day Shipping orders by purchasing labels directly from Sellbrite.

The benefits pass along to Sellbrite’s users, too. Merchants using Sellbrite enjoy:

• USPS Shipping Discounts: Sellbrite users can save up to 40% on USPS postage through ShipEngine’s partnership with the postal service.
• International Shipping Optimization: Merchants using Sellbrite can more easily expand their e-commerce businesses globally with automated international customs forms and invoice paperwork.
• Worldwide Major Carrier Support: Merchants can ship with the top global carriers, including UPS, DHL, FedEx and USPS.
• Visibility Into Carrier Rates: Sellbrite users can see rates for multiple carriers in a single rating request. This allows them to quickly choose the best shipping option for each order.
• Global Address Validation: Sellbrite users can avoid delays and surcharges when shipping domestically or internationally.

ShipEngine was the right solution for an ambitious company that has always challenged itself to do more for its users. Today, ShipEngine’s APIs are helping Sellbrite convert more prospects, offer more carriers than ever before, and scale along with its largest and most successful users.

Are you interested in trying ShipEngine? Get your free API key and start exploring.