AfterShip Ultimate Guide: Solving Logistic Problems With Extended SaaS Tool Set

- E-Commerce

Many modern digital commerce enterprises are more functional when they use a range of third-party services or extensions. This promotes sales and fosters consumer loyalty while also increasing employee productivity and streamlining daily tasks. One of the solutions that many firms employ is SaaS systems. Software as a service is a way of providing applications as a service over the Internet. By using online software access instead of installing and operating it, you can avoid difficult software and device maintenance. The supplier is in charge of the application’s security, usability, and performance. This strategy is very beneficial and profitable for your business. There is additionally corporate flexibility. We’ll look at one of these services, AfterShip, today. Let’s examine the features, costs, alternatives, and other details of the solutions.

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AfterShip: What is it? 

Numerous e-commerce businesses throughout the world utilize Aftership, an order tracking and multicarrier integration program (also known as shipping software). It is renowned for offering an extremely efficient package monitoring system that enables businesses to maintain track of their goods while they travel great distances to clients. The automation of the shipment tracking process and the enhancement of the post-purchase customer experience through tracking are its most noteworthy aspects. 

It collaborates with more than 900 courier companies throughout the world, including UPS, USPS, DHL, FedEx, Blue Dart, TNT, China Post, and others. Additionally, it currently counts over 10,000 retailers among its clientele. You can fix delivery problems more quickly and alert clients to cargo delays thanks to the couriers’ real-time tracking updates.

Let’s explore the platform’s features in more detail.

AfterShip Summary

Aftership is an extremely popular shipping software and the above analysis of Aftership Reviews gives us some insight into why. Aftership provides fast integration with a huge range of carriers that is well-supported. Order managing, monitoring and tracking is definitely made easier through Aftership. That being said, both small and large companies have experienced a multitude of difficulties when it comes to using Aftership, making it ideal for medium-sized businesses. For larger companies, these difficulties include minimalistic automation in processes like NDR and Returns management, which again puts the burden of labor on you.

AfterShip Features: What options does the platform provide?

The primary objectives of AfterShip are to handle shipment inquiries and simplify your day-to-day delivery tasks. As a result, all of the primary duties are related to deliveries and everything that goes along with them. You obtain unique features such as:

  • Shipment Tracking
  • Tracking Page with Branding
  • Delivery Notifications
  • Advanced Analytics
  • Forecasts for the delivery date
  • Supports multiple languages
  • Unique AfterShip Tracking App

Let’s explore each element of the platform in more detail and depth.

AfterShip Shipment Visibility 

With this tool, you may gather valuable tracking information in one location to address delivery issues more quickly. You gain these fundamental advantages:

  • Unified tracking data format. You may analyze crucial tracking information, such as the anticipated delivery date, the signature, and the delivery time.
  • View order information. You can view order and tracking information simultaneously. You may also give support agents more authority to handle tickets more quickly.
  • Modify shipment status. This feature provides you with the ability to mark shipments individually or in bulk through CSV as delivered, lost, or returned to sender.
  • Search and shipping filtering. By delivery status, carrier, customer email, and other criteria, you may locate shipments quickly.
  • Bulk import and export shipments via CSV. Use a CSV file to load shipments more quickly. Also, you can import CSV files using FTP. Additionally, you have the option to obtain unprocessed cargo data in order to spot delivery problems early on.

With all of these features, you have the chance to raise customer happiness, make wise and informed decisions, and improve customer service.

AfterShip Shipment Notifications

With the help of this function, you may keep communicating with customers after they make a purchase. You receive these key benefits: 

  • Keep customers engaged. As soon as an order is shipped, provide interesting updates till it is delivered. Email, SMS, and Facebook all work for this.
  • Increasing consumer involvement. Utilize a very flexible drag-and-drop email editor to customize your email notifications. Such elements as color, text, font and CTAs are all editable.
  • Improve order delivery rates. If a delivery is unsuccessful, you could quickly notify your customers. Deal with problems sooner.
  • Drive returned customers. Clients are strongly engaged with delivery updates, and strong product suggestions are embedded to increase sales. You have access to suggestions powered by AI.
  • Maximize customer communications. Automated email delivery updates processes can automatically notify customers when an order’s status changes.

Gaining client trust, improving order fulfillment rates, and increasing website traffic are all benefits of this functionality.

AfterShip Analytics

The capacity to raise customer confidence, enhance order fulfillment rates, and boost website traffic are all advantages of this feature provided by analytics. You gain these significant advantages:

  • Improve shipping efficiency. You could get useful insights to optimize delivery rate, exception rate, and delivery time.
  • Tracking page analytics. With the use of this function, you may assess client satisfaction and CTR to improve a coordinated marketing effort.
  • Enterprise-grade dashboard. You may import raw data into your data warehouse for analytics or use a lovely dashboard. The platform also gives you access to scalable API, the possibility of reducing development costs, and simple carrier integration.
  • Shipping review analytics. With a thorough analysis of customer feedback data, you may optimize the shipping process and strengthen areas where you lack the necessary competence.

AfterShip Tracking Widget

With the help of a tracking page pop-up, this functionality gives customers a more streamlined order tracking experience. You gain such benefits as: 

  • Customers may easily track their orders on the native order page. 
  • Simple integration of the widget into your existing ecosystem 
  • Supports Estimated Delivery Date for AfterShip (AEDD) 
  • Supports viewing on both mobile and desktop

The platform has a lot of features, many of which serve their intended purposes and are highly beneficial to your store. After examining the key characteristics that set the platform apart from competitors, let’s now examine the pricing structure.

AfterShip Pricing & Plans

This platform’s price is heavily reliant on a single issue. What number of shipments do you have each year? 4 pricing tiers—4 paid—are available from Aftership. All options come with integrations for more than 30 popular e-commerce apps, all necessary certifications and compliances, and multiorganizational protocols. 

The $9/month Essentials Plan handles 1200 shipments annually; additional fees apply for shipments above this number. It includes all of the features of the free plan in addition to email and paid SMS notifications.

The most popular option, the Pro Plan, is $99/month and covers up to 24,000 shipments annually; any additional shipments will incur an additional fee. This subscription includes all the capabilities found in the core plan in addition to dynamic, multilingual tracking pages, cross-selling product recommendations, access to more sophisticated webhooks and integrations, and personalized email processes.

The Premium plan is $199/month and includes 24,000 shipments per year; additional shipments incur additional fees. Options include removing the AfterShip branding, using a custom domain for tracking pages, advanced email triggers, AI-predicted anticipated delivery dates, transit times report, and on-time shipments report.

Enterprise Plan: Available at custom costs, this plan is for enterprise-grade businesses that ship more than 300,000 items annually. This plan provides SLA monitoring, custom integration, API rate limitations, account evaluations every quarter, and an independent account manager for their system in addition to everything included in the Pro Plan.

AfterShip Trial 

The platform also offers a 7-day free trial. It enables you to use the platform’s fundamental features and assists you in evaluating and selecting a subscription. You will unquestionably need to select one of the subscriptions offered once the trial period has ended.

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AfterShip Customers 

With push alerts, journey visualization, a history of previous shipments, and other features, AfterShip can keep your customers informed about the progress of their shipments wherever they are. 

Pelagic Gear 

The first is called a Pelagic Gear. This is a leader in fishing attire and equipment worldwide. Still, they were stuck sifting through a sea of support tickets while using a returns solution and procedure that neither their customers nor staff found to be effective. They then went to the AfterShip Returns Center at that point. 

Pelagic Gear received a returns management system from Returns Center very quickly, which helped automate and streamline its operations, minimize customer contact, and even increase return orders.

Harry’s 

Harry’s takes pleasure in always keeping an eye out for and listening to what their consumers have to say. Harry’s was aiming to stand out in the most underappreciated phase of the buyer’s journey—the post-purchase experience—by doing what they are already doing for the consumers and making their lives comfortable. 

Harry’s was able to maintain control over every phase of the delivery lifecycle, from cart to door, by utilizing AfterShip to maximize its post-purchase experience. Harry’s team was able to gain better insight into the last-mile delivery customer experience from a single dashboard thanks to AfterShip’s automated shipment tracking, insightful analytics, and extensive courier support. This allowed Harry’s team to devote more resources to improving customer relationships.

Fruugo 

With the help of the international online market Fruugo, retailers may contact customers in more than 40 countries. 

With so many nations, couriers, and inadequate or nonexistent tracking information, it might be challenging to offer the greatest client experience. Fruugo has launched AfterShip to significantly enhance the post-purchase experience for many customers in order to solve this.

ManoMano 

With operations spanning more than six significant European nations and millions of shipments each month, ManoMano realized the importance of unified shipping tracking for an improved customer experience. ManoMano delegated management of their delivery experience to AfterShip in order to launch their post-purchase expertise. This assisted ManoMano in consolidating its tracking information from various carriers onto a single interactive dashboard, improving delivery timelines, carrier performance, prompt delivery communication, and customer service.

AfterShip Integrations 

Every modern eCommerce platform needs integration. With them, you can ease your life and provide yourself with a lot of additional features that this or that platform does not offer. We will now examine a number of AfterShip’s integrations with popular eCommerce websites and mobile applications.

Shopify Integration 

Merchants can track and trace their orders across 921 couriers globally with the Shopify connector and integration for AfterShip. Your AfterShip account will automatically match imported shipments with the appropriate couriers and provide free tracking for those shipments. You can send automated in-transit and information-received email notifications to your customers once your Shopify connector has been installed. Users of AfterShip must upgrade to a Paid Plan in order to enable notifications for all notification triggers.

Salesforce Integration 

In order to completely automate the operations of your online business, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is an order management solution that puts the needs of the customer first. You can expand your business using the platform on PC, mobile, and social media. Because of the seamless connectivity between Salesforce Commerce Cloud and AfterShip, your customers will have a wonderful experience both in-store and after making a purchase. Your order delivery targets and customers’ delivery expectations will be met as soon as your Salesforce store is linked to AfterShip. 

Magento 2 Integration 

Similar to how Shopify integration operates, so does this connection. Merchants can track and trace their orders across 921 carriers globally with the help of the AfterShip connector and integration for Magento 2. Your AfterShip account will automatically match imported shipments with the appropriate couriers and provide free tracking for those shipments. 

You can send automated in-transit and information-received email notifications to your customers once your Magento 2 connector has been integrated.

Klaviyo Integration 

With the help of the innovative email automation platform Klaviyo, users may send highly-targeted, tailored messages based on the customer journey. Merchants may track their shipments from 700+ carriers using AfterShip and Klaviyo, monitor their progress to customers, and automate delivery progress notifications. Klaviyo configures the delivery status and the tracking number to the customer profile every time the shipment status changes in AfterShip, making it simple to start drip marketing or follow-ups. 

AfterShip Competitors & Alternatives 

It is hard to discuss such a platform without mentioning the section on competitors and alternatives. Some people might not enjoy AfterShip, while others may simply be interested in learning about and using platforms of a similar nature. Here are a few choices with related capabilities.

Shippo 

Shippo offers shipping software solutions that integrate many carriers automatically to automate a number of tasks. It facilitates the integration of e-commerce companies, storefronts, and marketplaces with selling channels. It can aid businesses with logistics, packaging, and delivery. Additionally, it enables batch printing of shipping labels and uses branded tracking pages to enhance brand engagement. It is among the greatest options for replacing the AfterShip software. So, which one should you pick if the choice is between AfterShip and Shippo? While Shippo is renowned for overall shipping optimization, AfterShip is well known for its superior tracking tools.

ShipStation

Operating mostly in the US, ShipStation serves as a platform for multicarrier integration and efficient inventory management. It streamlines the delivery of goods to customers and aids companies in keeping track of their inventory and packages. Given the functional similarities between the two systems, it is challenging for us to choose only one.

ClickPost

One of the top providers of inventory management and delivery software to online retailers worldwide is ClickPost. It encourages full-service logistics solutions, enhances the post-purchase customer experience, and aids in boosting revenue through branding. It is crucial to note that ClickPost is best suited for large and medium-sized businesses with higher order quantities.

AfterShip FAQ 

What Is Aftership? 

Globally accessible package and shipment tracking software is called Aftership. It offers automated solutions for e-commerce companies to enhance delivery processes. These include, among others, tracking for failed deliveries, automated carrier selection, and order status updates.

What is the purpose of AfterShip? 

Over 600 shipping firms are supported by AfterShip’s automatic cargo tracking service, including UPS, FedEx, and DHL. Users may check the progress of shipments across numerous carriers using the dashboard provided by AfterShip, which also automatically sends emails and notifications at various points of the shipping process.

Is Aftership Cost-Free?

Small eCommerce companies with less than 50 monthly orders can use free versions of Aftership if they just need a few basic services. Prices for more efficient plans range from $9 up to $199, with custom pricing available for bigger businesses.

How safe is Aftership?

Many Aftership reviews assert that this software is secure and trustworthy for tracking orders. It is renowned for having an excellent order tracking system that, despite sporadic delays, effectively keeps clients informed. Nevertheless, individual circumstances might vary, and Aftership has had trouble creating shipping labels in the past.

AfterShip Pros & Cons 

Let’s briefly review the benefits and drawbacks.

Pros 

  • Automated notifications. Aftership makes sure that any undelivered purchases are promptly notified on your dashboard so you can address the problem and get feedback from customers.
  • Interface. Aftership offers a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require any technical expertise and is simple to use. It facilitates adding orders and keeping track of them.
  • Accuracy. The technology at Aftership calculates an incredibly precise promised delivery date using historical performance information from your shipping process and other key criteria.
  • Frequency of Updates. Even when the carrier is unable to update the delivery date, Aftership is renowned for offering an estimated or promised delivery date.
  • Integrated Tracking Dashboard. All order tracking statuses are updated together with the order tracking ID on Aftership’s dashboard.
  • Automation. Customers automatically receive tracking updates since Aftership automates the process of sending customer notifications.

Cons 

  • New Integrations. Even while Aftership has agreements with many carriers, it still finds it difficult to interface with new carriers and systems.
  • No Prior Delivery Date. In contrast to other shipping applications like Shippo, Aftership does not always give clients a delivery date before they place an order. Most of the time, it is simply offered for tracking purposes.
  • Real-Time Tracking. It happens frequently that updating the tracking status is delayed. Following the pickup of orders, tracking substantially slows down.

Conclusions 

A nice tracking and integration tool is Aftership. Almost everything you might possibly need for a better shipping process is provided by this platform. A good selection of features provides you with excellent answers for your most common delivery-related issues. The real-time analytics dashboard provides insightful data on your carrier performance, delivery rate, post-purchase interaction activities, and customer satisfaction. We implore you to utilize the free trial offered by this solution to test it out for yourself.

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