Shipping API Integration: Simplify Your Shipping Processes
by Jaidyn Farar
As carriers continue to raise rates and surcharges, and consumers clamor for faster, cheaper delivery, you might feel like shipping is a never-ending headache. Is a shipping API integration the solution? Read on to find out.
What is a shipping API integration?
A shipping API integration is technology that connects your ecommerce platform, order management system, or warehouse software with a shipping carrier (or several). It automates tasks like getting shipping rates, generating labels, tracking packages, and more.
By eliminating manual data entry, a single-carrier shipping API saves time and reduces errors. With a multi-carrier shipping API, you get access to even more benefits: lower rates, faster delivery times, and reduced risk. (We’ll talk more about the difference between the two types of APIs below).
Shipping APIs are ideal for ecommerce stores, third-party logistics (3PL) providers, and marketplaces looking to save money and automate the shipping process.
How shipping APIs work
A shipping API acts as a bridge between your technology and a shipping carrier’s system. When a customer places an order, the API pulls shipping rates from the carrier, generates a label, sends a tracking number, and updates the shipping status in real time.
The systems communicate through requests and responses—your system sends a request for a rate, label, or tracking update, and the API responds with the necessary data.
What shipping APIs do
APIs automate essential shipping functions such as the following:
- Rating. Multi-carrier APIs allow you to compare shipping rates from multiple carriers (like UPS, FedEx, or USPS) in real time, giving you the best pricing options for your packages.
- Labels. Shipping APIs can automatically generate shipping labels with the correct information (like recipient address, sender info, and shipping service).
- Tracking. With shipping APIs, you can easily provide tracking numbers to customers and automatically update the order status as the package travels.
- Address verification. Shipping APIs often include address verification to ensure that the shipping addresses entered are correct and complete.
- Insurance. Some shipping APIs give you the ability to automatically purchase insurance for packages, protecting both you and your customers in case of damage or loss.
- Pickups. With a shipping API, you can schedule pickups directly with carriers, streamlining the process for sending out orders.
- Custom forms. When shipping internationally or handling specialized items (like hazardous materials), shipping APIs can automatically generate the necessary customs documentation or safety labels.
Carrier API vs. multi-carrier API: which is better?
Many major shipping carriers, including USPS, UPS, and FedEx, have their own APIs. When you integrate with a single carrier through an API, you gain access to rates, labels, and tracking services.
But this integration method tends to be time-consuming and tedious, often taking months. And if you want to add a new carrier to your mix, you have to build a new API integration—meaning more work for your development team.
On the other hand, multi-carrier APIs automatically integrate with many carriers (EasyPost comes with over 100), allowing businesses to quickly compare services from various partners.
Many shippers prefer multi-carrier APIs for several reasons:
- They’re more flexible. You can easily compare rates and choose the best carrier for each shipment. It’s also easy to choose the right shipping method for every package, whether it’s expedited shipping for an urgent order or standard shipping for a non-urgent one.
- They save time. Adding a new carrier takes days instead of weeks. Plus, there’s no need to juggle multiple carrier integrations—everything is managed from one system.
- They save money. You can switch between carriers based on cost, delivery time, or service type to reduce shipping expenses. Multi-carrier APIs like EasyPost also offer discounted rates.
- They reduce risk. When you have multiple carriers to choose from, you can easily make a switch if your go-to partner faces slowdowns or other issues.
Benefits of shipping API integrations
Automating your shipping with an API integration leads to streamlined operations, lower costs, a better customer experience, and greater business scalability.
- Simpler shipping operations. By automating key aspects of shipping, you reduce the manual work involved in labeling, tracking, and rate shopping. This makes the entire shipping process smoother and more efficient.
- Lower costs. With better control over carrier choices and the ability to compare rates, your business can optimize shipping decisions to find the most cost-effective options. The result? Reduced shipping expenses and better profit margins.
- Better customer experience. Offering reliable, fast, and flexible shipping options increases customer satisfaction. Similarly, clear tracking, accurate delivery dates, and fewer shipping issues lead to higher levels of trust and loyalty.
- Flexibility and growth. As your business grows, you need a shipping solution that can scale with you. The flexibility offered by a multi-carrier shipping API allows you to quickly add more carriers or new delivery methods, making it easier to expand into new regions and adapt to customer needs.
How to implement shipping API integrations
After you’ve chosen a shipping API, your development team will need to read through its documentation and learn how to get set up. To make sure things go smoothly, it’s important to choose an API provider that offers clear, easy-to-understand documentation that walks you through things step by step.
Challenges you might encounter
Implementing a new API isn’t always smooth sailing. In this section, we’ll review a few challenges you might face, as well as how you can overcome them.
Selecting the right API
The challenge: Choosing the right shipping API can be difficult with so many options available. It takes in-depth research to discover which solution offers the features and integrations you need.
The solution: Before committing to an API, assess your business’s specific needs. Do you need multi-carrier support? International shipping? Comparing different APIs based on these needs and reading user reviews or case studies can help you find a solution that meets your requirements.
Technical integration
The challenge: Integrating a shipping API with your existing systems can pose technical challenges. The integration process might require custom development, adjustments to your software, or troubleshooting to ensure smooth communication between your platform and the API.
The solution: Look for a shipping API provider that offers detailed documentation, developer support, or pre-built plugins for popular ecommerce platforms.
Data security
The challenge: Handling sensitive customer data, such as addresses and payment information, comes with potential security risks.
The solution: Make sure your API provider follows industry-standard encryption protocols and complies with relevant data protection regulations. You can also add layers of security to your shipping process with regular audits, secure servers, and two-factor authentication.
The future of shipping APIs
Shipping APIs have been around for years, and they’ve only gotten better with time. But what does the future hold for this technology?
At EasyPost, we believe that the future of shipping APIs will be driven by AI-powered tools designed to optimize every aspect of the shipping process. These tools can dynamically adjust shipping strategies by learning from past orders, customer preferences, and carrier performance, allowing businesses to continuously improve their shipping operations and reduce costs.
Want to see how it works? Check out Luma, the AI shipping engine that works hand-in-hand with EasyPost’s APIs to identify time- and cost-saving opportunities.
Simplify your shipping with the EasyPost shipping API
If you’re looking for ways to simplify your shipping, start with EasyPost’s suite of shipping APIs. You’ll be able to …
- Access over 100 carriers, including USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL
- Save up to 83% on shipping rates
- Effortlessly generate shipping labels
- Verify addresses and monitor shipments in real time
- Protect packages from loss, theft, and damage
- Leverage AI-powered estimates for cost and time-in-transit optimization
Sign up for free or contact sales for more information.
How a shipping API integration benefitted Casper
Mattress and bedding company Casper started out building carrier integrations mostly through open-source software and resources. While this strategy worked for a while, its flaws quickly became apparent.
The problem: Lengthy, inflexible integrations
For the average brand, it takes three months to fully integrate with a new shipping carrier. That’s a long time, especially when you consider the cost of development resources.
In addition to the problems of time and money, Casper’s custom-built integrations lacked flexibility; for example, because they could only buy and print labels at the point of sale, new labels had to be printed if an order changed.
When Casper decided to expand their operations to Europe, they realized they needed a new solution.
How EasyPost helped
Casper decided to speed up their European expansion with EasyPost. With access to out-of-the-box integrations with over 100 carriers, the mattress brand was able to vet carriers more easily, using them on a trial basis until they found the perfect partner.
And with setup taking just a day rather than three months, Casper could devote development resources to more critical projects.
EasyPost also helped Casper increase efficiency. With the Tracking API, they eliminated the need to proactively call carriers for shipment updates. The Shipping API allowed them to print labels at the point of shipment, freeing them from the hassle of reprinting labels when orders were altered.