Top Shipping Management Software

April 10, 2025

by Jaidyn Farar

Finding the right balance between cost and reliability is one of the most common challenges parcel shippers face. Both factors are important; low-cost shipping helps businesses maintain profitability, while reliable shipping keeps customers loyal.

Fortunately, it’s possible to balance these seemingly conflicting goals. The best way to get started? Invest in shipping management software.

What is shipping management software?

Shipping management software is a digital solution that helps businesses plan, execute, and optimize the movement of packages from fulfillment center to customer. It gives you a centralized place to compare carrier rates, print labels, track shipments, and manage returns.

Automating key processes with shipping management software is one of the best ways to speed up fulfillment and reduce shipping errors.

Automating decision-making with artificial intelligence (AI) takes things to the next level. With an AI-powered shipping management platform, businesses simply set their shipping preferences, and the system analyzes historical data to choose the best labels every time.

Benefits of shipping management software

Shipping management software comes with major benefits, including cost savings, greater efficiency, and improved visibility.

Cost savings

Shipping management software helps cut down shipping costs in several ways. For starters, many platforms give you access to pre-negotiated carrier discounts or let you plug in your own discounted rates.

With built-in rate shopping tools, you can easily compare prices across multiple carriers and service levels in real time, so you're not overpaying for speed you don’t need.

And if your software uses AI, like EasyPost Luma, it can go a step further—automatically picking the cheapest option that still meets your delivery goals. Optimizing your carrier mix and shipping methods this way can lead to serious savings.

Operational efficiency

Shipping management software helps your team get more done with less effort by automating the tasks that slow you down.

For example, instead of workers manually generating labels one by one, the system creates them automatically each time an order is placed. It also sends tracking updates to customers, so you’re not fielding “Where’s my order?” emails all day.

Another time-saving tool is address verification, which identifies incomplete or incorrect shipping addresses during checkout to prevents delays and lost shipments.

Improved visibility and better decision-making

From the moment a label is printed to when a package hits your customer’s doorstep, shipping management software gives you full visibility into your shipping operations.

As mentioned above, real-time tracking keeps customers in the loop, meaning fewer support tickets and a better overall experience. But the real value of shipping management systems comes from how your business uses the data.

When you can see how each carrier performs, how much you're spending per shipment, and how long deliveries actually take, you can start spotting patterns—and opportunities to improve.

For example, EasyPost Luma provides full visibility into your parcel shipping strategy, letting you track carrier performance, monitor delivery exceptions, and benchmark your shipping strategy against competitors. Then it applies those insights in real time, making adjustments that optimize for cost and reliability.

Scalability

As your business grows, so does the complexity of your shipping. The best shipping management software helps you scale without chaos by providing flexible tools that can handle volume spikes, new carriers, or expanded warehouse operations.

Better customer experience

Shipping isn’t just a back-end operation—it’s a big part of how your customers experience your brand. A solid shipping management system lets you offer the kind of shipping experience customers expect: one where products arrive on time and intact, and shipping doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Essential features to look for

On the hunt for a shipping management system? Keep an eye out for the following essential features.

Multi-carrier support

Your shipping software should connect with multiple carriers—like UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, and regional providers—so you’re not locked into using just one.

This makes it easier to compare rates, services, and delivery times across carriers and choose the one that best fits each order. It also gives you more flexibility and control, so you can quickly pivot when carriers face delays or service disruptions.

Rate shopping

Rate shopping is the process of comparing shipping rates across different carriers and service levels to find the best deal for each order. With software automatically pulling in real-time rates, it’s easy to choose the most cost-effective method based on your priorities.

Real-time package tracking

Real-time package tracking gives you and your customers live updates on where a shipment is at any given moment, including delivery status and estimated arrival times. Not only does this reduce customer anxiety about missing packages, but it also helps you monitor your shipments and identify issues early so you can address them before they become problems.

Performance analytics

Performance analytics gives you the insights you need to assess how well your shipping operations are performing. For example, you’ll be able to track key metrics like on-time delivery rates, carrier performance, shipping costs per package, and transit times.

With access to your shipping data, you can identify trends, spot inefficiencies, and learn how to reduce shipping costs without sacrificing speed.

Custom shipping rules

Custom shipping rules allow you to tailor your shipping strategy to meet the unique needs of your business. By setting preferences for delivery speed, carrier selection, cost thresholds, or even specific regions, you ensure that every shipment aligns with your goals.

With tools like EasyPost Luma, setting up and managing these rules is easy. Using your predefined rules, Luma’s AI-powered system automatically selects the best shipping option for every order, simplifying rate shopping and optimizing decision-making.

Top shipping management software: AI-powered shipping with Luma

Artificial intelligence is the future of logistics. Business who incorporate AI into their warehouses and shipping will make smarter, data-driven decisions—and soar past competitors who haven’t innovated as quickly.

Luma is an AI-powered shipping tool that works alongside EasyPost’s Shipping API to give businesses real-time insights, recommendations, and automation.

It’s broken down into three powerful components:

Luma Insights provides performance monitoring, peer-shipping benchmarking, and in-depth analysis of your shipping data.
Luma Advisor delivers AI-powered recommendations, cost-savings analysis, and simulations to help businesses make more informed decisions.
Luma Select automatically selects the best-value shipping option based on your custom business rules.

Why choose Luma? Here are just a few reasons:

Make smarter decisions with data-backed insights
Streamline shipping workflows with AI-powered automation
Select the most cost-effective shipping options
Gain deeper visibility into performance

Optimize your shipping strategy today

Shipping management software like EasyPost helps optimize shipping processes, reduce costs, and increase efficiency—and it’s especially powerful when paired with a shipping AI like Luma.