Two problems, not one.
An order leaves Cin7 Core and comes back with a tracking number on it. How it gets there is either a carrier app buying a label against stock you still own, or a warehouse somewhere else holding your stock and running its own system. Those are not the same question, they do not have the same answer, and the difference between them is most of what this page is for.
Who is holding the stock decides everything else.
Almost every shipping conversation we have starts as one question and turns out to be two. The test is simple: at the moment the label is printed, whose shelf was the item on?
You still own the stock. You need a label.
The order stays yours from end to end. Cin7 Core holds the stock, your team picks and packs it, and a carrier app buys the label, gets you a rate at the quote stage and posts the carrier and tracking number back onto the order. This is a connector, a mapping exercise and an afternoon of setup, and it is the part of the subject that behaves like a product decision.
Somebody else owns the shelf.
A third-party warehouse holds your stock and runs its own system, which may talk over email, CSV, FTP or something else entirely. There is no native integration to any of it. Getting the two systems to agree is a project with rules, filters and edge cases in it, and it is why we would normally treat it as a later phase rather than a go-live task.
Plenty of businesses only ever have the first problem, and some have both at once for different parts of the range. What causes trouble is answering the second one as though it were the first.
The apps, and how each one reaches Cin7 Core.
Which app you can use matters rather less than how it gets to Cin7 Core, because that is what decides who fixes it when it stops. Most of these are built-in connectors. One is not, and that difference is worth seeing rather than being told.
Built into Cin7 Core and switched on from its own Integrations area. You map your carriers, give your locations real addresses and your products real weights and dimensions, and Cin7 maintain the connection at their end.
- Amazon FulfilmentFBA and Multi-Channel Fulfilment, natively connected
- ShippitAustralian carrier coverage
- ShipRushA native label and carrier app
- ShipStationThe multi-geography option, and an order source too
- ShipTheoryUK-focused, with a carrier list that suits one geography
- StarshipitRates and labels across Australia, New Zealand and the UK
No built-in tile. The connection runs on a Cin7 Core API key, configured at the other end and set up either by us or by the party who already holds that relationship.
- Starshipit WMSWarehouse management, one WMS account to one warehouse
In the picture, and we have not done the work to say how it connects. We would rather name it and stop there than describe a connection we have not verified ourselves.
- EasyPostA label and carrier app, named pending a confirmed mechanism
Choosing between them is a geography question.
Not a feature comparison. Your carriers come first, your carriers follow from where you ship, and the app follows from your carriers. Our own comparison card has said as much for years, so here it is rather than four logos and a shrug.
Shippit
Australian, and built around Australian carriers: DHL, Fastway, Couriers Please, StarTrack and Australia Post. If your parcels move inside Australia it is a short list to choose from.
ShipStation
US, UK and Australian operations, with UPS, FedEx, Royal Mail, Parcelforce, Fastway, StarTrack and Australia Post among them. The one we would look at first when the parcels genuinely leave one country.
ShipTheory
UK-focused. Royal Mail, Parcelforce and the domestic carriers around them. The carrier list is narrow enough that we would rarely put a multi-geography business on it, which is why it sits outside our usual comparison rather than inside it.
Starshipit
Australian-based and covering Australia, New Zealand and the UK, with Australia Post, DHL, Fastway, Royal Mail, Couriers Please, DPD and Sendle among the carriers. The middle option when you ship in more than one of those three.
Carrier lists move, and pricing moves faster, so treat the above as the shape of the decision rather than today’s specification. What does not move is the order of the questions.
Two products with one name, and they are not the same thing.
Starshipit is a shipping service: rates at the quote stage, labels at the ship stage, tracking back onto the order. Starshipit WMS is a separate product, a warehouse management add-on that runs against a Cin7 Core API key with registered webhooks rather than a connector you switch on inside Cin7 Core, and one WMS account maps to one warehouse.
They get confused constantly, usually on a call where somebody has been quoted for one and is describing the other. The mechanisms are different, the scope is different, and we would want to know which of the two you mean before saying anything about effort.
- ✓ Rate quotes need real addresses on every location
- ✓ And weights and dimensions on every product that is quoted
- ✓ Carriers are mapped between the two systems, not assumed
- ✓ One shipping service is set as the default for label printing
- ✓ Pick one fulfilment route and stay on it, to avoid conflicts
There is no native 3PL integration. Not for us, not for anyone.
One way or another a 3PL is third party to Cin7 Core. They might work over email, CSV, FTP or something of their own, and none of that is a connector you switch on. The honest starting position is that this is a build, and the useful question is how big a build.
Export a shipment list
Cin7 Core exports a 3PL shipment list as a CSV from the sales screen, covering only the orders where the ship stage has been authorised. It is not elegant and it is not automated. For a business sending a handful of consignments a week it is often the right answer for longer than people expect.
The API, plus a middleware party
Cin7 Core has a full open API, and almost everything in the system is reachable through it. The practical route is not to build against it from nothing but to use a party who already holds a connection at both ends, and a body of existing 3PL and EDI relationships to draw on.
Orders out, shipments back
The connected party reads orders through the API, filters them down to the ones that qualify, pulls the detail across, converts it into their own format, does the physical work, then sends the changes back with carrier and tracking details attached.
No built-in tile. The connection runs on a Cin7 Core API key, configured at the other end and set up either by us or by the party who already holds that relationship.
- Crossfire Cloud EDI/APIThe middleware route to a 3PL, and to EDI trading partners
- SPS CommerceEDI for retailers that mandate it
Enabling the API is the easy part.
Turning the API on is a subscription option and a key. That is genuinely the simplest portion of the work, and it is the part everybody asks about. The hard part is the filters and the rules: making sure the connected party never picks up a sale in the wrong warehouse or at the wrong stage, and deciding what happens on a part shipment, on a change to an order after it was authorised, and on a return.
Underneath all of it is a source-of-truth problem that does not go away. Cin7 Core holds your inventory value and feeds your ledger. The 3PL holds the boxes. There is never a live connection between the two, so at some point Cin7 Core says five and the warehouse says three, and what the business does about that has to be decided before it happens rather than during.
Which is why our standing position is that digital 3PL integration is almost always a later phase. Go live on a process people can actually run, prove the data is clean, then automate the handover once you know what the rules should be. Doing it the other way round tends to automate a set of rules nobody had agreed yet.
- ✓ Which warehouse and which order stage qualify
- ✓ What a part shipment does on both sides
- ✓ How a change after authorisation is safeguarded
- ✓ How returns come back in, credit notes included
- ✓ Who reconciles a stock disagreement, and how often
- ✓ What happens on the day the connection stops
Two of the apps above are order sources as well as label printers, and the EDI route exists because a retailer or a marketplace asked for it. Where the orders come from decides most of this. The channels behind the orders
We scope the handover, then connect it.
Our work sits on the Cin7 Core side of the line: what leaves, in what state, on what trigger, and what has to come back before an order is allowed to close.
Decide the fulfilment route first
Pick, pack and ship inside Cin7 Core, ship inside a dedicated shipping platform, or hand the whole thing to a warehouse. Running two of those at once is where conflicts come from, so the choice is made once, deliberately, before anything is connected.
Get the data a carrier needs
Addresses on every location, weights and dimensions on every product that has to be quoted, carriers mapped between the systems. Unglamorous, and the reason most rate estimates come back wrong or come back empty.
Connect it, then break it on purpose
Part shipments, an order changed after authorisation, a return, a consignment the carrier rejects. The ordinary path looks after itself. It is the rest that decides whether anybody trusts the numbers in three months.
What we are not.
We are not a carrier. We do not move parcels, we hold no account with anybody who does, and we have no view on whether one courier is better than another on your lanes. That is a conversation for the carriers and for whoever manages your transport.
We are not a 3PL either. We do not hold stock, pick, pack or ship on anybody’s behalf. Choosing a warehouse partner is your decision and a large one, and we would rather help you ask them the right integration questions than pretend to be a candidate.
And we do not negotiate freight rates. What a label costs, what a fuel surcharge should be, whether your volumes justify a better contract: none of that is ours, and anybody telling you it is has an interest in the answer. We can tell you what a shipping app and Cin7 Core do to each other. We cannot tell you what your shipping should cost.
What people ask before starting.
Our 3PL says they integrate with Cin7 Core. Do they?
Usually what they mean is that somebody has connected them to it before, over the API, with a middleware party in the middle. That is a real and workable answer, and it is not the same claim as a connector you switch on.
The questions worth asking them are which party did the work, what triggers an order leaving Cin7 Core, what comes back, and how part shipments were handled. If those answers are quick and specific, it is likely a shorter piece of work than you fear.
Which shipping app should we use?
Start from your carriers rather than from the apps. Your carriers follow from where your parcels go, and each app supports a different set of them, so in most cases the geography narrows it to one or two before anybody looks at a feature list.
If your parcels genuinely leave one country, that changes the answer, and it is worth saying so early rather than picking the app your neighbour uses.
Do we need a shipping app at all?
Often not. A straightforward pick, pack and ship inside Cin7 Core, with shipping rules for what you charge, is the most common setup among our clients and the simplest thing to run.
An app earns its place when you need rates at the quote stage, labels and manifests at volume, or a carrier mix that is painful to handle by hand. We would rather you added one when the pain is real than on the assumption that you should.
Can we run a 3PL and our own warehouse at the same time?
Yes, and plenty of businesses do, with different parts of the range in different places. It makes the rules more important rather than less: which location an order draws from, what the connected party is allowed to see, and what happens when the answer is both.
It is workable. It is not something we would set up in the same phase as a go-live.
How long does a 3PL connection take, and what does it cost?
It depends on the rules rather than the wiring, so the range is wide and we would rather set it wide than miss it. Enabling the API is short. Agreeing the filters, the part-shipment behaviour and the reconciliation process is the phase that takes the time, and there is a third party’s timeline in it as well as ours.
We quote in phases at £99 an hour, as estimates rather than a fixed scope, and we would give you a range at scoping rather than a number now.
Something is connected already and tracking numbers are not coming back. Can you look?
Yes, that is a normal piece of work for our support service, and a shipment that ships without closing the order is one of the more common symptoms we see.
If the list of symptoms is long, a system audit is usually the cheaper start, because it finds the decision underneath the symptoms instead of treating them one at a time.
What we have written about getting orders out of the door.
Tell us how a parcel leaves you.
Who picks it, who packs it, whose shelf it was on and who buys the label. Book a call and we will tell you which half of this page you are actually in, what the connection would involve, and whether it is worth doing now or in a later phase.
please check your timezone and am/pm when booking
What to expect
- ✓ A straight conversation, no scripted sales pitch
- ✓ An honest view on whether you need this yet
- ✓ Estimates by phase before you commit to anything
- ✓ A clear split of our work and your warehouse partner’s