How to Choose a Fulfilment House (3PL) for Your Shopify Store

SHOPIFY E-COMMERCE

October 24, 2026

LAST UPDATED ON October 24 2026

Key Takeaways

Only Amazon Multi Channel Fulfilment publishes a full UK rate card, from £3.26 a unit for pick, pack and delivery; Gonini publishes an entry price of £499 a month plus usage with indicative pick fees of £0.60 to £6 an order, Huboo an entry point of £1,500 a month, and James and James, fulfilmentcrowd, ShipBob, Green Fulfilment, Cloud Fulfilment and Ogden quote only.
Volume decides the shortlist: Gonini takes brands from 100 orders a month, Green Fulfilment from 300 to 500, James and James typically from 1,000, Ogden states no minimum and Amazon MCF is pay as you go; below 100 orders a month, packing in house is usually cheaper than any of them.
A fulfilment bill has five lines, platform fee, goods in, storage, pick and pack, and postage, and the cheapest headline pick fee is routinely undone by storage billed per cubic foot per week and by long term storage charges, which at Amazon MCF start after 271 days.
On Shopify a fulfilment house connects as a fulfilment service app with its own location; stock held there cannot be assigned to any other location at the same time, which is why a 3PL plus a shop plus Amazon needs planning before go live, not after.
Delivery communication is part of fulfilment and it is where cancellations are won or lost: one client used WhatsApp to message customers before each delivery so they could make changes, cancellations dropped by 24% and a declining retention rate reversed.
The UK is a 4.2 billion parcel market growing 7.1% a year on revenue of £13.2bn, with unit revenue per parcel down 7.3% in real terms, according to Ofcom's 2024 to 2025 post monitoring report, so a 3PL's negotiated carrier rates are worth more each year.

Quick Answer

Choose a fulfilment house by matching three things: your monthly order volume to the provider's minimum, your product type and customer locations to its warehouses, and your real order mix to a quote built from the five cost lines (platform fee, goods in, storage, pick and pack, postage). Then check the operating terms that decide whether customers notice: order cut off time, same day despatch rate, picking accuracy, returns handling and the notice period. For a Shopify store, confirm the provider connects as a fulfilment service with its own location before you move stock. Prices below are the providers' own, read on 24 October 2026.

What a Fulfilment House Does
When to Outsource
How Fulfilment Houses Charge
UK Fulfilment Houses Compared
How It Connects to Shopify
Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Moving In and Moving Out
Why Matters Perspective
Frequently Asked Questions
Final Thoughts
Related Articles

A fulfilment house, or third party logistics provider (3PL), stores your stock, picks and packs each order as it arrives from Shopify, hands it to a carrier at its negotiated rate and handles the returns. Done well it frees the founder from the packing bench and makes next day delivery normal; done badly it puts a stranger between you and every customer. This guide explains how the houses charge, what the main UK providers publish, how the connection to Shopify works, and the questions to ask before you move a pallet.

What a Fulfilment House Does

Green Fulfilment's definition is as good as any: the full cycle from receiving and storing stock to picking, packing and shipping each order, and the difference between a warehouse, which stores for the long term, and a fulfilment centre, which turns orders around the same day. The provider receives your stock against an advance shipping notice, books it in, stores it on shelves or pallets, receives each order from your store automatically, picks and packs it, labels it with the cheapest suitable carrier service, despatches it, feeds the tracking number back to Shopify and processes the returns. You keep the customer, the website and the marketing; they keep the stock.

The market they sit in is large and getting cheaper per parcel. Ofcom's post monitoring report for 2024 to 2025 counted 4.2 billion measured parcels, up 7.1%, on revenue of £13.2bn, with average revenue per parcel down 7.3% in real terms. A fulfilment house buys that capacity at volume; a brand sending 200 parcels a week does not.

When to Outsource

The five steps in choosing a fulfilment house, from counting orders to a 90 day review.

The providers' own thresholds tell you where the market starts. Gonini sets a minimum of 100 orders a month, Green Fulfilment says it suits brands shipping at least 300 orders a month on its FAQ and around 500 on its pricing page, James and James typically works with brands shipping 1,000 or more orders a month, Ogden states no minimum, and Amazon MCF charges per unit with no commitment. Below 100 orders a month the arithmetic rarely works: a platform fee of £499 spread over 80 orders is £6 an order before anyone has picked anything.

Outsource when packing takes more than a day a week, peak season needs temporary staff, you are shipping from a home or a unit with no loading bay, or you want to sell on Amazon, TikTok Shop and your own store from one stock pool.
Stay in house when orders are under 100 a month, products are personalised or fragile enough to need your hands, or margins cannot carry £2 to £3 an order on top of postage.
Either way, own the delivery conversation: one client used WhatsApp to message customers before each delivery so they could make changes, cancellations dropped by 24% and a declining retention rate reversed.

How Fulfilment Houses Charge

Gonini's pricing page sets out the five components every provider bills in some form: a platform subscription, inbound receiving, storage, pick and pack, and carrier shipping, plus optional services such as returns, kitting, branded inserts and loss protection. Huboo's costs page describes the same structure in five elements without unit rates. The published figures are below; everything else is a quote.

Line	Published figure	Provider and basis
Platform or minimum	From £499 a month plus usage; from £1,500 a month	Gonini; Huboo (entry points)
Pick and pack, one item	£0.60 to £0.90 small; £1 to £2 medium or fragile; £2 to £6 large; £1 to £2 kitted	Gonini, indicative UK ranges
Pick, pack and deliver	From £3.26 a unit; examples £3.27 to £4.39 standard (2 to 3 days) and £3.60 to £5.04 expedited	Amazon MCF rate card
Storage	£1 to £2 a shelf and £2.50 to £5 a pallet per week	Gonini, indicative UK ranges
Storage	£0.56 to £1.37 per cubic foot per month, higher October to December; long term fee after 271 days	Amazon MCF rate card
Multi unit discount	Up to 25% on orders of more than one unit	Amazon MCF
Set up and exit	No set up, integration or exit fees; month to month	Gonini

Sources: Gonini, Huboo and Amazon Supply Chain UK, all read on 24 October 2026; Gonini calls its ranges indicative rather than a rate card, and Amazon's page prints no effective date. A worked example from the indicative figures: a brand shipping 500 small orders a month on Gonini's entry plan would pay £499 platform, about £375 in picks at £0.75 each and about £130 for 20 shelves at £1.50 a week, roughly £1,000 or £2 an order before postage and goods in. Postage is the largest line and the one no provider publishes, because it is the negotiated carrier rate they compete on; ask for it per service and per weight band.

UK Fulfilment Houses Compared

Nine providers with UK operations, in no particular order, with what each publishes on its own site. Figures are the providers' claims.

Provider	UK sites and entry point	What it publishes and offers
Huboo	Two centres at Severn Beach, Bristol, plus Netherlands, Spain and Texas; from £1,500 a month	Five element pricing without rates; Shopify integration and 35 plus channels; TikTok Shop certified; beauty, food, subscription boxes, supplements, toys, electronics
James and James	Northampton, plus Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Ohio; typically 1,000 plus orders a month	Quote only; claims 98% same day despatch, 99.5% accuracy, booking in within 24 hours, next day to 95% of the UK; carriers Royal Mail, Evri, DPD, Parcelforce, Yodel, DHL, UPS
fulfilmentcrowd	Six UK sites: Lutterworth (503,000 sq ft), Irlam, Wigan, two in Chorley, Lincolnshire; 17 worldwide	Quote only; chilled storage, dangerous goods and Soil Association sites; direct Shopify and Shopify Plus integration with real time stock
Gonini (formerly Bezos.ai)	UK, EU and US warehouses, towns not named; from £499 a month plus usage, 100 orders a month minimum	Entry price and indicative ranges; 9pm cut off for same day despatch; 99.9% picking accuracy guarantee; month to month, no exit fees; live in 72 hours
ShipBob UK	UK among 50 plus locations worldwide, town not named	Quote only; free software and integrations; standard packaging free; claims 99.97% accuracy and 99.6% on time; kitting, B2B and EDI
Amazon Multi Channel Fulfilment	Amazon’s UK network; pay as you go	Full rate card; unbranded packaging; 100 plus integrations including Shopify; Amazon claims sellers using MCF with FBA lift Amazon.co.uk sales 29%, its own figure
Green Fulfilment	Glasgow hub and Venlo; from 300 to 500 orders a month	Quote only; B Corp since June 2024; batch and expiry tracking; 80 plus integrations; eco packaging
Cloud Fulfilment	Gosport, between Southampton and Portsmouth	Quote only, three billing streams; fashion, books, beauty, pet, sport; carriers Royal Mail, Parcelforce, DPD, DHL, Evri
Ogden Fulfilment	Keighley, Saltaire and Skipton, Yorkshire; no minimum orders	Quote only; Amazon Prime and TikTok fulfilment; Shopify through Mintsoft; two hour query response seven days a week

Two names you may see in older lists are missing because their sites could not be read on 24 October 2026: Zendbox blocks automated reading and the Prolog domain now redirects elsewhere. Service claims such as same day rates and accuracy are self reported; ask each provider for the last three months' actual figures and the credit they pay when they miss.

How It Connects to Shopify

Shopify's developer documentation describes how a fulfilment house plugs in: the provider's app is a fulfillment service, Shopify creates a dedicated location for it automatically, orders for stock at that location are sent to the provider as fulfilment requests, which it can accept or reject, and you can ask to cancel before shipment. One rule shapes everything: an inventory item connected to a fulfilment service location cannot be connected to any other location at the same time, so a product held at the 3PL cannot also show stock at your shop or a second warehouse without a transfer. Plan the split before go live.

The Shopify App Store 3PL category listed 24 apps on 24 October 2026, including Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime, ShipBob, Hive, Cubbo and Shopify's own Shopify Fulfillment Network app, launched 9 February 2024, rated 3.6 from three reviews, which routes merchants to Flexport, ShipBob, Shipfusion and ShipMonk. Shopify sold its own logistics business to Flexport, announced in Flexport's note of 4 May 2023, so Shopify no longer runs warehouses itself. Huboo, James and James and fulfilmentcrowd connect through their own integrations rather than App Store listings, and fulfilmentcrowd's Shopify integration routes orders automatically with stock and tracking fed back. If you are also moving platform, our WooCommerce to Shopify migration guide covers the order.

Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Cut off and despatch: the latest order time for same day despatch (Gonini publishes 9pm), the same day rate over the last quarter, weekend despatch, and what happens in the week before Christmas.
Accuracy and credits: the picking accuracy rate and what you are paid when a wrong item ships; James and James claims 99.5% or higher, Gonini guarantees 99.9%.
Storage billing: per shelf, bin, pallet or cubic foot, weekly or monthly, seasonal uplifts (Amazon charges more from October to December) and long term storage fees.
Goods in: the advance shipping notice format, booking in time (James and James says 95% within 24 hours, Gonini 48 hours on average) and what they charge for pallets that arrive unlabelled.
Returns: who inspects, who restocks, what it costs per return and how fast the refund can be triggered in Shopify; our returns statistics show why this line matters.
Contract and notice: term, notice period, exit fees and who pays to move the stock out; Gonini and Amazon MCF publish no long term commitment, the others do not publish terms.
Carriers and rates: the services offered by weight band and the rate per band, with the surcharge list.
Channels: Amazon Prime, TikTok Shop, wholesale and B2B orders from one stock pool, and whether each costs extra.
Product handling: batch and expiry tracking for food, supplements and cosmetics, chilled storage, dangerous goods, fragile and personalised items.
Registration: if you sell for or import on behalf of a business outside the UK, the house must be approved under HMRC's Fulfilment House Due Diligence Scheme, which covers goods imported from outside the UK and stored for sellers established outside it; trading without approval carries a £10,000 penalty and a criminal conviction.

Moving In and Moving Out

James and James's onboarding guide gives honest timings: steady state within two or three weeks for a typical set up, several months for a complex one, stock booked in within 24 hours of arrival against the advance shipping notice, and a settling in period of around 90 days after go live. Gonini claims new sellers can be live in 72 hours. Use the gap: send a small first consignment, place test orders from your own store, check the tracking appears in Shopify and the customer email, and only then move the bulk. Put a review date in the diary for day 90 with the same questions you asked before signing, and keep your product data (weights, dimensions, barcodes, batch rules) in your own system so that leaving is a transfer, not a rebuild.

Why Matters Perspective

Our view is that most brands outsource fulfilment about six months late and choose on the pick fee, which is the smallest line on the bill. The right order is volume, fit, operating terms, then price, and the operating term that matters most is the cut off time, because next day delivery is now the expectation and a 2pm cut off loses the evening orders that make up much of ecommerce. Delivery messaging is the other half: one client used WhatsApp to message customers before each delivery so they could make changes, cancellations dropped by 24% and a declining retention rate reversed.

We set up the Shopify side of fulfilment for clients, from locations and fulfilment service apps to the delivery emails and WhatsApp flows, from Brighton. We are a Shopify Select partner with Verified Skills across development and marketing, and a Klaviyo, Recharge, Awin, Meta and TikTok partner. Retainer clients are billed one month in arrears and are not tied into long contracts, and development projects carry a 3 month guarantee. If you want help choosing or connecting a provider, see our Shopify agency page or email us.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a fulfilment house cost in the UK?

Only Amazon MCF publishes a full UK rate card: from £3.26 a unit for pick, pack and standard delivery, with storage of £0.56 to £1.37 per cubic foot a month. Gonini publishes an entry price of £499 a month plus usage, with indicative picks of £0.60 to £0.90 for a small item and shelf storage of £1 to £2 a week, and Huboo an entry point of £1,500 a month. James and James, fulfilmentcrowd, ShipBob, Green Fulfilment, Cloud Fulfilment and Ogden quote only. All figures as published on 24 October 2026.

How many orders do I need before using a 3PL?

Providers set their own floors: Gonini takes 100 orders a month, Green Fulfilment 300 to 500, James and James typically 1,000 or more, Ogden has no minimum and Amazon MCF is pay as you go. Below about 100 orders a month a platform fee spread over few orders usually makes in house packing cheaper.

What is the difference between a fulfilment house and a 3PL?

Nothing in practice. Fulfilment house is the UK term, third party logistics provider or 3PL the international one, and both mean a company that stores your stock, picks and packs orders from your store and ships them through its carrier accounts. A warehouse stores stock long term; a fulfilment centre turns orders around the same day.

How does a fulfilment house connect to Shopify?

Through a fulfilment service app, which gets its own location in your Shopify admin. Orders for stock at that location are sent to the provider automatically, it accepts or rejects them, ships, and sends tracking back. Stock at a fulfilment service location cannot be assigned to another location at the same time, so split your inventory deliberately.

Does Shopify have its own fulfilment network?

Not any more. Shopify sold its logistics business, including Deliverr, to Flexport in May 2023. The Shopify Fulfillment Network app in the App Store, launched in February 2024, connects merchants to third party providers such as Flexport, ShipBob, Shipfusion and ShipMonk rather than to Shopify warehouses.

What should I check in a fulfilment contract?

The order cut off time and same day despatch rate, picking accuracy and the credit paid for errors, how storage is billed and whether it rises in peak season, goods in and returns charges, carrier rates by weight band with surcharges, the contract term and notice period, exit fees and who pays to move stock out, and whether the provider is approved under HMRC's Fulfilment House Due Diligence Scheme if you handle goods for overseas sellers.

Final Thoughts

Choose on volume, fit and operating terms, and treat the pick fee as the tie breaker. Get the quote on your real order mix across all five lines, check the cut off time and the accuracy credits, connect the provider as a fulfilment service with its own Shopify location, send a test consignment before the pallets, and review at 90 days. The provider that publishes its prices is not necessarily the cheapest, but it is the easiest to hold to them.

If you want the Shopify side set up properly, see our Shopify agency page, read our WhatsApp marketing guide for the delivery messages, or email us.

Ayo is the founder of Why Matters and Head of Marketing. With over 20 years of experience in ecommerce, digital marketing and commercial growth, he has helped hundreds of Shopify brands build, launch and scale their online stores. Why Matters, a Shopify agency based in Brighton, is a Shopify Select partner and a Klaviyo, Recharge, Awin, Meta and TikTok partner.About Ayo Connect on LinkedIn

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