AfterShip vs ShipBob

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.

ShipBob is an ecommerce fulfillment company that stores a brand's inventory in its warehouses, picks, packs and ships orders, and gives merchants software to manage stock and orders across sales channels. It was founded in Chicago in 2014 by Dhruv Saxena and Divey Gulati and went through Y Combinator.

The network spans fulfillment centers in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia, so brands can split inventory to cut shipping zones and offer two-day delivery. The merchant dashboard handles inventory by location, order routing, lot and expiry tracking, kitting, B2B and wholesale orders, returns and analytics, and connects to Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, TikTok Shop and Walmart. Pricing is a custom quote covering implementation, receiving, storage, pick and pack and shipping; the software itself is free for fulfillment customers, and brands that run their own warehouses can license ShipBob's WMS separately.

ShipBob suits growing DTC brands shipping hundreds to thousands of orders a month that no longer want to pack in-house. Costs are opaque until you get a quote, very small shops may find it expensive, and support quality has drawn mixed reviews. ShipStation and Shippo suit brands that still ship themselves, and Cin7 is inventory software rather than a 3PL.

ShipBob says it has fulfilled over one billion units. In 2026 it announced new Foreign Trade Zone warehouses in the Northeast and Midwest, and in August 2026 an AI suite that includes a verified Claude connector. Quote with your real order profile.