AfterShip vs inFlow Inventory

AfterShip is a post-purchase platform for ecommerce brands, started in Hong Kong around 2011 to 2012 by Teddy Chan, Andrew Chan and Dante Tsang after Teddy built a script to cut where-is-my-order emails in his own store. It raised a $66M Series B led by Tiger Global in 2021. Its core job is keeping shoppers informed after checkout and reducing support tickets about deliveries, returns and delays.

The suite is sold as separate products: Tracking (branded tracking pages, delivery notifications, estimated delivery dates and analytics across 1,300+ carriers), Returns (self-serve returns and exchanges), Shipping (label printing and rate comparison), Protection (shipping insurance), plus personalization and warranty tools. AI features and an MCP server give assistants read access to shipment and return data. Each product has its own tiers, and the Shopify App Store versions are priced differently from direct plans.

AfterShip fits Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce brands that ship thousands of orders a year and want to turn tracking emails and pages into a marketing channel. Brands mainly needing cheap labels should look at Shippo, Easyship or ShipStation, and EU merchants often pick Sendcloud.

Buying tip: in mid-2026 AfterShip cut its direct Tracking plans from four to three, renamed Pro to Premium at $59 a month billed yearly, and moved to annual shipment quotas (6,000 a year on both paid tiers). API and webhooks start on Premium. On Shopify, compare the app's own plans, which include a free tier for 50 shipments a month.

inFlow Inventory is inventory management software made by Archon Systems, a company based in Toronto, Canada. It started as Windows desktop software and is now a cloud product with web, Windows and mobile apps, aimed at small and mid-size wholesalers, distributors, retailers and light manufacturers that have outgrown spreadsheets.

Core features cover stock across multiple locations, purchase orders, sales orders and invoices, barcode generation and scanning with the mobile app, serial and lot tracking, bills of materials for assembling products, and a B2B Showroom portal where wholesale customers browse a catalog and place orders. Reports cover inventory value, sales and reorder points. It integrates with accounting and commerce tools such as QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, WooCommerce and Amazon. Plans are priced per month and differ mainly by included team members and locations, with unlimited orders and integrations on every plan; there is no free plan, but a free trial is available.

inFlow fits businesses that want straightforward inventory control with good barcoding and a simple wholesale ordering portal. It is less suited to complex manufacturing with routing and capacity planning, and costs rise with additional users. Cin7 and Zoho Inventory are common alternatives, Sortly is simpler for small stock and asset tracking, and Katana is stronger for manufacturers.