Shipwire Announces Web Based Order Management ToolShipwire Announces Web Based Order Management Tool

Shipwire Anywhere Dashboard

E-commerce fulfillment provider Shipwire has announced its inventory management and routing software is now available as a free web-based service, Shipwire Anywhere.

Shipwire's original paid order fulfillment service provides on-demand outsourced shipping fulfillment. "It's basically 'warehouses on demand' -- outsourced warehousing and shipping for order fulfillment," said Nate Gilmore, vice president, marketing & business development, Shipwire. "We're taking the SaaS model to logistics, so companies don't need to rent and staff warehouses."

The Shipwire Anywhere service lets companies of any size use Shipwire's software with their own storage, labeling and shipping activities.

"We built order management and processing technology to let us scan orders, optimize for which carrier will be the least expensive, put products into the right box and get them to the right carrier," said Gilmore. "And we discovered there was a big market for the tools we use to manage our own warehouses. Shipwire anywhere lets a company use our tools like address correction and label printing so that any location, even a car trunk or a garage, can run like a Shipwire warehouse."

Features of Shipwire Anywhere include:

-- One dashboard for all order activity regardless of where goods ship from

-- For companies storing product at multiple locations, shipping rate optimization to provide the lowest delivery cost and optimal delivery time

-- Integrating with 50+ online shopping cart e-commerce sites and marketplaces, including Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Shopify, Drupal and Magento, for shipping rates and inventory levels

-- Efficient batch shipping label printing, and packing list generation for popular shipping carriers such as UPS, FedEx and USPS

Shipwire Anywhere is intended to displace an inventory database, label printing and order management middleware. According to Shipwire, "Until now, SMBs' only recourse was using an Excel spreadsheet, or spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month on expensive inventory management software."

"Shipwire is going after the small ecommerce sellers. This free service, which can be integrated with shopping carts, adds useful shipping capabilities," said Ina Steiner, editor, AuctionBytes.com, an independent trade publication for online merchants. "Knowing the optimized shipping method is valuable for online sellers, if you can reduce the shipping costs even by a few pennies can increase the 'conversion rate' -- how many shoppers who look at products, put them on their wish list or into their shopping cart turn into actual buyers. Anything that can do this is a big attraction for a seller."

Shipwire Anywhere is browser based, and works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. "We also test with Google Chrome, and it should work with mobile web browsers," said Gilmore "We don't currently have any mobile app versions. No client code is needed, except scripts to go with shopping carts."

Shipwire Anywhere is available now, free. "You only pay for the labels you print," said Gilmore.