With the news that Royal Mail are to shut down the ability for NetDespatch to print Royal Mail labels from the 31st of May 2019, many online retailers will be looking for Netdespatch alternatives. Royal Mail will try to push you towards one of their inhouse businesses or directly to Click & Drop or their API, but if you aren’t comfortable working with these solutions then there are other NetDespatch alternatives available.
We’re still trying to figure out why Royal Mail are dumping NetDespatch, a business that they loved so much that they acquired it just to virtually shut it down. If it’s because NetDespatch charge carriers a commission and provide the service for free to retailers, why not just stop paying them, allow NetDespatch to carry on printing labels and let NetDespatch decide whether to charge customers or not?
What we do know is that from the 31st of May, NetDespatch’s ability to print Royal Mail labels will cease and so you’ll need to choose from the Netdespatch alternatives available. Doing your own integration with Royal Mail might not be within your capabilities and it’s perfectly understandable that you won’t want to log into multiple solutions to print labels for all the carriers you use – That was the delight of NetDespatch that there was no integration as they did all the techy stuff for you.
Here is the list of approved third party partners who Royal Mail haven’t shut down (at least not yet!). The integration or set up work you’ll need to do varies between partners as some are full blown channel management solutions. Others are relatively simple and straightforward but without a doubt all the NetDespatch alternatives offered are easier to work with than trying to write your own Royal Mail API integration.
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| GFS (Global Freight Solutions) Linnworks Scurri ShipStation Veeqo Dataplug EasyPost |
Sorted Group (MyParcelDelivery) iForce (Route Genie) Madcapsule Zenstores SmartFreight Metapack Oddsphere |
5 Responses
I have been using zen stores for about 3 years with shopify, Ebay and Amazon. Thoroughly recommend. Easy to use, reliable and great support if ever needed.
Why not just go and look up a full list of authorised Royal Mail integration partners:
https://www.royalmail.com/business/services/shipping/third-party-partners
Our OrderFlow WMS is also an option, we support the InterSoft approach and are on the list of Royal Mail partners.
https://www.royalmail.com/business/services/shipping/third-party-partners
We’ve just completed the first migration from the NetDespatch interface to the InterSoft one and have three more in the pipeline, they should all be live by the end of this week.
Charlie Armor
MD, Realtime Despatch
https://realtimedespatch.co.uk
Selro also supports direct RM label printing via intersoft 🙂
We use despatch.cloud and have just switched off netdispatch and are using their integration, which I have to say is a big improvement as I can now cancel labels and print the Royal Mail manifest in a single system.
The other advantage is the stock synchronisation which is vital to our multichannel sales. Could not survive without it.
https://despatchcloud.com/