Switching fulfillment companies is the process of moving your inventory and order flow from your current 3PL to a new one. It takes coordination, usually a few weeks of overlap between old and new warehouses plus some double-handling costs, but for most brands it isn't the ordeal it sounds like. Move with a plan and you're usually looking at faster shipping and fewer errors within a month, not a quarter, and order fulfillment services costs that finally make sense.
"Switching fulfillment companies can be such a pain," says ShipBots Sales Executive Alex Carter. But, he adds, in many cases, "the juice is worth the squeeze."
If your ecommerce fulfillment is hurting rather than helping your business, that's a massive drain on your operations. We spoke with Carter and another ShipBots Sales Executive, Taylor Brooks, to get insight on how businesses can ease the pain of switching fulfillment companies and open the door to better order fulfillment.
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Switching fulfillment companies is an investment of time and money. You'll need to allocate staff time to searching for the most suitable fulfillment partner and providing your new 3PL with the information it needs to add you to its warehouse management system. It takes planning to redirect your supply chain to send stock to different warehouses and change your internal processes to sync with a new partner. In some cases, you might have the expense of shipping stock from your former 3PL to your new ecommerce warehouse.
But if you aren't getting the quality of fulfillment services your business needs, your current 3PL is probably costing you money. Inventory shrinkage adds to your cost of goods sold, and mis-picked or mis-packed orders lead to returns and unhappy customers.
That's not a niche problem anymore. The global 3PL market is on track to hit roughly $1.46 trillion in 2026, and the Warehousing Education and Research Council puts outsourced warehousing at over 85% of U.S. distribution centers. Most brands aren't debating whether to use a 3PL. They're stuck with the wrong one.
So if you're unhappy with your current 3PL, the question isn't whether to switch but when. And while it will take some effort, the process doesn't have to be painful. Here are some steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition, plus what a 3PL like ShipBots does to help new clients get off to a good start.
Once you're set up with your new fulfillment company and everything is working efficiently, you can step away and leave your logistics to the professionals. During the transition, you can help the process along by following these suggestions.
"The number one task for a company is to find out what's working, what isn't working, and really understand the true necessity that isn't being met right now," Brooks says. "That is going to be extremely valuable information when you come to a company like ShipBots."
Brooks notes that many companies mention price as a pain point, but cost is often a symptom rather than the real problem. Some of the common issues Brooks and Carter see include:
Clarity on what's gone wrong with your fulfillment is vital. "The more upfront you are with us about your needs, specific and in detail, the faster we can help," Carter says.
Take a subscription box brand shipping a few thousand orders a month. If its current 3PL doesn't run batch kitting, every box gets assembled one at a time instead of in a single production run, and the per-order pick fee climbs accordingly. Naming that exact gap, instead of just saying "fulfillment costs too much," is what gets a new 3PL to the right fix fast.
You can take it slow or make a switch in just a few weeks. "It really would just depend on how egregious the errors with your current 3PL are," Carter says. "If there are massive errors, that creates a bigger hole in your business, where it's worth the capital to make a bulk shipment out of that warehouse." When the problems are less dramatic, you can plan a more extended transition with some overlap between your old and new providers.
"Be respectful of your business, and be respectful of your product. This is a big step," Brooks says. "Don't move so quickly that you end up with a bigger problem than you already have."
It's essential to make a plan and understand the optimal time to execute all the actions needed to switch fulfillment companies. "We're going to work on your timeframe, but we're also going to check every single box before we handle your product," Brooks says. If you give yourself enough time to get fully set up before starting with the new warehouse, he adds, "By the time your product does arrive, you can unplug."
"We can work on just about any timeframe," Brooks says, as long as the client communicates clearly in advance.
Let your new fulfillment company know when to expect your stock so it can schedule dock time for you. If you have any time pressures, such as a big sales event or a TikTok Shop fulfillment launch coming up, inform your 3PL so you can create a plan together.
"You really need to verify that you're making a good move," Brooks says. So "ask more questions than you ever thought you needed to." He notes that you should also discuss with your 3PL where you expect your business to go in the future.
Keep a running list of questions as you evaluate new 3PL partners, and keep adding to it through onboarding too.
After you've chosen the right 3PL partner and a service agreement is in place, there are some less-thrilling tasks to accomplish, like loading all your SKUs and product details into a new warehouse management system. Those tasks are essential when you're switching fulfillment companies. Create an advance shipping notice before each truckload or container arrives, so "when we receive your product, we can start pulling it off the truck," Carter says. "From there, you're set up for success."
Carter notes that onboarding will be easier if you provide information about major operational exceptions, special needs, or custom integrations early in the process. It may take some time to set up a complex API integration; if you get started early, that won't hold up the rest of the process.
ShipBots understands that switching fulfillment companies is a big project, so we do everything we can to make the move easier.
ShipBots' sales team asks prospective clients a lot of questions. Carter calls that "upfront free customer service." He adds, "When clients reach out to us, a lot of them are very appreciative of the support we give them immediately."
ShipBots sees its relationships with clients as partnerships rather than vendor and customer. The team invests in your business beginning with the very first conversation. It's the same approach outlined on our why ShipBots page.
ShipBots has something most 3PLs don't: a dedicated onboarding team that does nothing but help new clients get set up for success.
"They are very proactive," Carter says of the onboarding team. "Having that dedicated specialist is that second layer on top of that solid foundation. It's a massive value for clients because they're not paying for onboarding man-hours when they come to ShipBots, whereas they might at another 3PL."
At large logistics operations, or at fulfillment companies that run through a network of subcontracted warehouses, communication during onboarding tends to get lost between departments. ShipBots keeps it to one team.
"The onboarding team will work with you for the first 90 days," Brooks says. "We're going to be very, very hands-on during those initial 90 days."
New clients continue with onboarding until their fulfillment is up and running smoothly. Then you transition to a long-term, dedicated account manager who sits inside our fulfillment center locations. That's who you'll call with any questions after onboarding.
New clients shouldn't have to take our word for how their inventory is handled. They can watch it happen. The real-time inventory portal syncs stock levels across every sales channel, and the Vision AI packing software records the actual pack process, so you can pull up the video on any order that looks off. Between that and the warehouse management software underneath it, most of the guesswork that makes switching 3PLs feel risky just goes away.
You don't have to leap into a new warehouse without trying it out first. "Send us one pallet. We'll test it," Brooks says.
While one pallet won't give you the full ShipBots experience, you'll get a taste of the kind of service you can expect when you switch. And you don't pay fulfillment fees during your free trial.
One of the things that makes switching fulfillment companies scary is getting locked in. No matter how thoroughly you research your new 3PL, you can't truly know how well you work together until you start working together.
At ShipBots, we try to make this as painless as possible. We don't charge any setup or startup fees, and we don't lock our clients into long-term contracts. We believe we should win your business every month through performance, not legal lock-ins. Our current fulfillment pricing has the exact rates.
You're risking less when you switch to ShipBots because of our accuracy guarantees and low error rate. Across our warehouse network, we maintain a 99.999% order accuracy rate, ship 99.9% of orders same-day, and guarantee 48-hour dock-to-stock on inbound receiving, backed by more than 3 million orders processed across our fulfillment centers in the last 12 months.
If we don't meet our service agreements, we pay you $50 for:
We also guarantee zero shrinkage: we pay the wholesale cost of any items lost or damaged in our warehouses. Whether you run a B2B and retail fulfillment operation or a subscription box program, those guarantees apply the same way.
If your fulfillment isn't helping your business, it's probably hurting it. When you switch fulfillment companies, "there's going to be a great payoff on the back end," Carter says. "ShipBots guides clients through an evolving ecommerce environment. Our team is so well-versed that it ends up yielding a better result."
Of course, ShipBots isn't the right fit for every ecommerce business. We work with companies of all types and products, and if you call us, you'll end the conversation with either a plan on how we can help or a referral to a 3PL better suited to your needs. Our goal is to help every company find its best 3PL partner.
"There is zero harm in calling ShipBots. We're not going to push you," Brooks says. "We turn away a lot of people because they're not the right fit, but you're going to leave that call with some really helpful information about what to do next." Some people call Brooks regularly for advice even though they're not ShipBots clients, and that's just fine with him.
Usually you already know. Shrinkage, mis-picks, a support team that takes days to respond, services you need but can't get (kitting is a common one): any of those is reason enough. Price complaints are the exception: they're almost always pointing at one of these underlying issues instead of being the actual problem.
Anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months, depending on how bad things are with your current provider. If the errors are piling up, brands tend to move fast and eat the cost of an early bulk shipment out of the old warehouse. If it's more of a slow decline, running an overlap period between old and new keeps nothing from falling through the cracks. Having a dedicated onboarding team on the receiving end speeds this up either way.
No. There's a Master Service Agreement that spells out service levels for both sides, but that's not the same as a lock-in: no setup fees, no startup fees, no multi-year term. ShipBots earns the account back every month on performance.
Your full SKU catalog, expected inbound shipment dates, any special handling requirements, and how your sales channels are set up to integrate. Get that information over early, especially anything unusual about your product, and the rest of onboarding moves a lot faster.
Yes. Send a single pallet and ShipBots will run it through the process with no fulfillment fees during the trial. One pallet won't tell you everything, but it's enough to see how responsive and accurate the team actually is before you commit real inventory.
It tends to work especially well for niche products. Kitting for subscription boxes, sizing and returns handling for apparel, marketplace prep for Amazon FBA: a generalist warehouse often can't do these well, so switching to a 3PL that specializes in the category is usually where the biggest gains show up.
At the end of the day, the switch itself is rarely the hard part. Picking the right partner is. If your current fulfillment is quietly costing you more than it's worth, it's worth getting an instant quote and finding out what a warehouse built for your product actually looks like.
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