Every 3PL prices the same handful of things. Here is the full list, what moves each one up or down, and a calculator that turns your order profile into the numbers a quote is built from.
A costed fulfilment proposal within one working day
Send your order volumes, SKU count and channels before 15:00 on a working day and you will have a proposal priced against your actual profile — per order, per item, storage and carriage — by the end of the next one.
Providers price the same components. What differs is which ones they mention before you sign, and which ones appear on the first invoice.
You pay for the space your stock physically occupies, billed weekly rather than monthly, so a seasonal build-up costs more for the weeks it is there and less once it clears.
What moves it
The first item in an order carries the cost of walking the pick route and setting up the bench. Additional lines in the same order are cheaper because that setup is already paid for.
What moves it
Cartons, mailers, void fill, tape and inserts. Send in your own branded materials and you pay only for handling; use ours and you pay what we pay plus a handling margin.
What moves it
Costed across our carrier accounts at the point of dispatch, weighing service level against price. Where you have negotiated better rates, we ship on your accounts instead.
What moves it
Booking in, inspecting against your grading rules and recording the outcome. Returns that need repackaging or refurbishment are priced as per-unit work on top.
What moves it
Bundles, subscription boxes, multipacks, relabelling and barcode application. We time a sample build before quoting, because guessing at this is how per-unit work becomes unprofitable for one of us.
What moves it
FNSKU labelling, polybagging, bundling, suffocation warnings and carton compliance to the marketplace specification, plus the shipment plan and booking.
What moves it
Unloading, counting against the ASN, quality checking and putting away to a fixed location. Containers that arrive loose-loaded cost considerably more to handle than palletised freight.
What moves it
Enter your operation and the calculator works out the quantities a quote is priced against — picks, additional items, pallets of storage, parcels and returns. Nothing is stored, and you can send the result straight to us as an enquiry.
Rough figures are fine. The point is the shape of the operation, not the decimal place.
The single biggest lever on cost per order. Check it in your store reports rather than guessing — most brands estimate it high.
Sets the typical return rate applied.
Weights the carriage element.
The quantities a fulfilment quote is priced against.
2,000 orders
£3,700
1,600 items
£640
13 pallets
£205
2,000 parcels
£900
2,000 parcels
£6,500
500 returns
£750
Indicative monthly total
£12,695
Indicative only. Your quote is priced against your actual SKU profile, packaging specification and destination mix.
Nothing here is sent anywhere or stored on a server. Take the figures to every provider you are comparing — a quote is only comparable against the same profile.
Most fulfilment quotes look cheaper than they are because three or four line items are missing. Ours names them, which makes the headline number higher and the first invoice unsurprising.
Quoting, onboarding calls and integration setup are not billed as a project fee. If a bespoke integration needs real development time, we say so and price it before you commit.
Carrier peak surcharges, fuel, offshore and remote-area charges, oversize and hazardous handling — listed in the proposal rather than discovered on an invoice.
A notice period rather than a multi-year term. A long contract does not fix a service that is not working; it only makes leaving expensive.
What it costs to pick, palletise and release your stock is agreed at the start, not negotiated at the point you have already decided to leave.
Outsourcing is not automatically cheaper. It is cheaper at some volumes and more expensive at others, and the honest comparison includes the costs that never appear on an invoice when you do it yourself.
| Cost line | Run in-house | Outsourced |
|---|---|---|
| Space | A lease with a fixed term, taken at the size you will need at peak and paid for in every quiet month. | Charged by the space you occupy that week, so quiet months genuinely cost less. |
| Labour | Salaries, employer NI, pension, holiday and sickness cover — hired ahead of demand and carried through the trough. | Absorbed into per-order pricing. A launch does not require a recruitment round. |
| Equipment & racking | Racking, benches, scanners, printers and MHE, plus maintenance and eventual replacement. | Already installed and maintained. No capital outlay, no depreciation schedule. |
| Warehouse software | A WMS licence, integrations to build and maintain, and someone who has to own it. | Included. Integration maintenance is our problem when a platform changes its API. |
| Carrier rates | Priced on your own volume, which is the weakest negotiating position you will ever have. | Priced on aggregated volume across every client on the floor, then rate-shopped per parcel. |
| Packaging buying | Bought in your own quantities, stored in space you are already paying for. | Bought at consolidated volume, or you supply your own branded materials at handling cost. |
| Peak capacity | Temporary staff recruited, trained and supervised during the busiest weeks of your year. | Absorbed by a shared floor that is staffed for peak across all its clients. |
| Founder and team time | The cost nobody puts in the spreadsheet: hours spent packing rather than on product, marketing and buying. | Recovered. This is the line most brands say mattered most, twelve months later. |
Enter what running fulfilment yourself costs each month. The comparison shows your true in-house cost per order, which is the figure to weigh a fulfilment quote against — not the headline per-order rate.
Your in-house cost per order
£4.16
£8,317 a month across 2,000 orders — before carriage, which you pay either way.
The percentage above is the part that does not fall when a quiet month arrives. That is the real argument for outsourcing, and the real argument against it if your volume is steady and already efficient.
Everything stays in your browser. Nothing is submitted or stored.
We would rather say this on a public page than three months into a contract that is not working for you.
The rest, including operations and integrations, are on the FAQ page.
Per order picked, plus a lower per-item rate for additional lines in the same order, plus carriage and storage. Packaging materials are either supplied by you or charged at cost plus handling. Prep, kitting and assembly are priced separately by unit because the work varies so much.
Carriage, storage, packaging materials, and any per-unit work such as bagging, relabelling or bundling. Unusual handling — oversized items, hazardous goods, two-person deliveries — is quoted separately. We name these up front because discovering them on the first invoice is the fastest way to lose a client.
We work on a rolling agreement with a notice period rather than a multi-year lock-in. If the service is not right, a long contract does not fix that; it just makes leaving expensive.
By the space you actually occupy — per pallet, per bin or per square metre — billed weekly, so a seasonal build-up costs more for the weeks it is there and less afterwards.
Carrier peak surcharges are passed through at cost during the Q4 period, because the carriers apply them to us. We do not add a separate peak margin of our own, and we will tell you the expected surcharge windows in advance so they can go into your margin planning.
Volumes, SKUs, channels and destinations are enough for an accurate quote with every surcharge named — usually back within one working day.
