We get orders in via email/phone outside of Shopify. We currently use Shipstation to manage all orders. Is there a way to integrate non-Shopify orders easily into shopify just for shipping so we could discontinue using Shipstation? These orders sometimes ship using the customer’s Fedex or UPS account numbers.
Topic summary
A merchant receives orders through email and phone outside their Shopify store and currently uses ShipStation for order management. They’re exploring whether they can consolidate shipping operations within Shopify to eliminate ShipStation.
Current Challenge:
- Some orders ship using customers’ own FedEx or UPS account numbers
- Need to integrate non-Shopify orders for shipping purposes
Suggested Solutions:
- Manually create draft orders in Shopify (Orders > Create order) for email/phone orders
- Consider Marketplace Connect app for automatically importing orders from multiple sales channels
- Purchase shipping labels directly through Shopify for standard orders
Key Limitation:
Shopify currently doesn’t support using customer-provided FedEx or UPS account numbers for shipping. For these cases, labels must be purchased through the carrier’s platform directly, then tracking information manually added back to the Shopify order.
The discussion remains open regarding whether this workflow would be efficient enough to replace ShipStation entirely.
This is a great question. Certainly the orders that you get by email or phone outside of Shopify you could manually create by creating a draft order within Shopify.
You can then mark it as paid or you can request that the customer pays and all of that is built into Shopify (Orders > Create order).
If you sell on multiple channels, another option worth checking out is Marketplace Connect, which can help bring orders in from various sales channels into Shopify automatically.
When it comes to the shipping you could certainly buy all of your labels within Shopify as long as the orders are there. The caveat is that there is no ability to use a customer’s FedEx or UPS account numbers at this time. What you would do in that particular case is you might have to buy it through the UPS or FedEx platform itself with the account number and then you would be able to upload the tracking data manually into Shopify by adding it to the order.