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Does anyone know of a cheaper alternative to Amazon FBA?

by sean83
6 replies
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I run a Shopify store, and am looking around for fulfilment, a lot of people mention Amazon FBA, but they are so damn expensive!

Surely there must be a good cheap alternative? I've looked at Alive Fulfilment, they seem good and look like they integrate well with Shopify, has anyone had experience with them?
#alternative #amazon #cheaper #fba
  • Profile picture of the author DWaters
    I am suprised that you feel that Amazon's FBA business model is "so damn expensive". They provide outstanding shipping to the customer, deal with all customer satisfaction issues such as returns and refunds and list products on their site that gets HUGE buyrer traffic and has lots of loyal cutomers and consumer confidence. How could you get all that at any cheaper price? I do not believe you can for the simple reason that NO site has as much buyer traffice as Amazon and they do so much so well for their third party FBA sellers.

    If you source your products correctly the fees that Amazon charges are relatively miniscule.

    There may be cheaper alternatives but I feel certain they are significantly inferior to selling on Amazon.com
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  • Profile picture of the author onlinecommerce
    Even using Amazons fulfillment for your own site is not very expensive. You have to remember the FBA quote they provide includes the cost of shipping and their fulfillment costs which may make it appear high but is actually quite low. Really it is not that expensive the cheapest other places you can find charge $2.50+, $1 for each additional item plus what ever the cost of shipping is. The cost of shipping is not cheap unless you are shipping first class mail for very light items, otherwise you are looking at like $6+ for shipping anything else parcel post. Since amazon gets crazy good UPS rates they can be cheaper in a lot of situations.

    Only for very small items that can be shipped first class mail amazon FBA may be a dollar more expensive. Amazon FBA is $5.95 for a small item under 1lb. The cheapest other fulfillment company will be about $5 ( $2.50 fullfillment + $2.50 first class mail (7oz) ). So in this situation Amazon is $0.95 more expensive but in many other solutions it will be cheaper if the package is heavier

    If you want to ship internationally you should not use Amazon and a fulfillment house that ships USPS so you can use first class mail international.
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    • Profile picture of the author DWaters
      Originally Posted by onlinecommerce View Post

      Since amazon gets crazy good UPS rates they can be cheaper in a lot of situations.
      .
      I do not claim to be a shipping expert but it is correct that the UPS rates to ship items to Amazon's warehouses are lower that anyone else can get. That saves you a big chunk of money right there. Of course the item getting shipped to the customer is NOT something that you need to be concerned about.

      Even when I am doing other shipping, such as with ebay I try to have nothing to do with USPS.
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      • Profile picture of the author OnlineStoreHelp
        All fulfillment houses have pros and cons. Amazon gets you great cheap shipping but their storage fees are high so if you don't have good turn over, you will see it there. That being said, just about every major city within an hour drive will have some type of fulfillment operation. This is one of the few times where Yellow Pages can be your friend.

        The other disadvantage to Amazon is they will back door you on all your best selling items. So while there are advantages there are distinct disadvantages as well. Of course if you are selling on Amazon they have those UPC/EAN numbers all ready.
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        • Profile picture of the author sean83
          Originally Posted by OnlineStoreHelp View Post

          The other disadvantage to Amazon is they will back door you on all your best selling items. So while there are advantages there are distinct disadvantages as well. Of course if you are selling on Amazon they have those UPC/EAN numbers all ready.
          How do you mean they backdoor your best selling items? sounds a little corrupt and shady to me.
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      • Profile picture of the author onlinecommerce
        Originally Posted by DWaters View Post

        Even when I am doing other shipping, such as with ebay I try to have nothing to do with USPS.
        I mainly sell on my own site but never had really had problems with USPS. Probably 6000-7000 domestic USPS shipments and the amount of shipments that went missing I can count on one hand. There are packages that get delayed and arrive later then expected but eventually arrive. I don't see the strong aversion so many have towards USPS..

        Originally Posted by OnlineStoreHelp View Post

        All fulfillment houses have pros and cons. Amazon gets you great cheap shipping but their storage fees are high so if you don't have good turn over, you will see it there.
        Yes if your inventory doesn't sell out within a year the storage fees are insane (40x increase), might as well just ship it all back to yourself. They don't want to have to deal with dead inventory. Their normal storage fees is pretty normal $30-$40 for a pallet (4x4x4) per month.
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