Amazon gives sellers four ways to get an order to a customer, and a fifth if you also sell somewhere else. Amazon can ship it (Fulfillment by Amazon), you can ship it (Fulfillment by Merchant), you can ship it with the Prime badge (Seller Fulfilled Prime), or a third-party warehouse can ship it for you under FBM or SFP. Multi-Channel Fulfillment runs the other direction: Amazon ships your website or Shopify orders from the stock you already hold in FBA. Plenty of sellers run two of these at once.
Which mix is right comes down to three questions: do your products need the Prime badge to sell, can you hit Amazon's seller-fulfilled metrics (yourself or through a partner), and do you also sell off Amazon? Below is each option, what changed in Amazon's rules this year, and how FBM sellers actually buy labels.
The five options at a glance
Option | Who ships | Prime badge | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) | Amazon, from its fulfillment centers | Yes | Amazon-first sellers with small, fast-moving products who want a hands-off operation |
Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) | You, from your own space | No | Oversized, slow-moving or made-to-order products, and sellers who already ship their own store orders |
Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) | You or a 3PL, to Amazon's Prime delivery standard | Yes | Sellers who want Prime without sending stock to Amazon and can meet weekly performance bars |
FBM or SFP through a 3PL | A third-party warehouse, under your seller account | FBM no, SFP yes | Sellers on several channels who want one inventory pool outside Amazon |
Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) | Amazon, from your FBA inventory, for non-Amazon orders | Not applicable | FBA sellers with a smaller website or marketplace channel |
Fulfillment by Amazon
You send inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers and Amazon picks, packs and ships each order, handles customer service and processes returns. Your listings get the Prime badge and free two-day delivery for Prime members, which is the conversion lever Amazon itself pitches FBA on.
What you give up is control and margin. FBA charges a per-unit fulfillment fee and monthly storage, and depending on how you send inventory in and how much you keep on hand, an inbound placement fee and a low-inventory-level fee can apply on top. The placement fee is waived when you let Amazon split a qualifying shipment across several inbound locations, and Amazon Warehousing and Distribution pricing already covers placement into FBA. The amounts move with Amazon's annual fee update; the current numbers are in our guide to Amazon FBA fees. Storage limits and aged-inventory surcharges push you toward smaller, more frequent shipments.
Two rule changes this year affect how stock gets into FBA:
- Amazon no longer offers prep or labeling services for US FBA shipments, as of January 1, 2026. Every unit has to arrive prepped, packaged and labeled to Amazon's requirements for that product, done by you, your supplier or a prep service.
- Commingling ended for inventory shipped on or after March 31, 2026. Brand owners with the Brand Representative role in Brand Registry can keep using manufacturer barcodes. Resellers now have to apply Amazon barcode labels even when the product already carries a UPC.
If you outgrow FBA storage limits, Amazon Warehousing and Distribution is Amazon's bulk-storage layer. It auto-replenishes FBA and can feed other channels from the same pool.
Fulfillment by Merchant
FBM means you list on Amazon and ship from your own garage, office or warehouse. You set your own shipping rates, handling time, transit times and capacity limits in Seller Central, or let Shipping Settings Automation calculate delivery dates for you. There are no FBA fees, no storage limits and no inbound shipments, and your inventory stays in one place for every channel you sell on.
The catch is that Amazon holds you to account-health metrics on every seller-fulfilled order. The bars Amazon uses to prequalify sellers for the Prime trial are the ones to run your operation against: late shipment rate under 4%, cancellation rate under 2.5% and valid tracking rate above 95%. Amazon also now checks that your stated handling time matches what you actually do; our FBM handling time guide covers the June 2026 rule and what gets flagged.
FBM suits products FBA handles badly: oversized or heavy items, slow movers that would rack up storage fees, made-to-order or personalized goods, and anything you already ship for your own store. It does not, on its own, get you the Prime badge. For that you need the next option.
Seller Fulfilled Prime
SFP is FBM with the Prime badge, earned by hitting Amazon's delivery standard from your own warehouse or a partner's. Enrollment is open. To start the trial you need a Professional account, a US default shipping address and, over the past 90 days, at least 100 seller-fulfilled packages with cancellations under 2.5%, valid tracking above 95% and late shipments under 4%. The trial runs four weeks, needs at least 100 Prime packages, and you get three attempts per calendar year. You can now enroll one size tier at a time, and Amazon pauses trial graduations ahead of its big sales events, so a seller who passes in late October gets the badge after the holidays. In 2026 the restricted window runs October 18 to December 31.
Once enrolled, Amazon reviews your performance weekly: on-time delivery of at least 93.5%, valid tracking of at least 99%, cancellations at or below 0.5%, and a delivery-speed test. That test measures the share of Prime shoppers who saw a one-, two- or five-day promise on your offer, not the share of packages that arrived fast, so it depends on where your warehouse sits relative to your customers and on shipping weekends, which Amazon expects SFP sellers to do.
Our Seller Fulfilled Prime guide walks through the speed targets by size tier and the trial week by week.
FBM or SFP through a 3PL
A third-party logistics company can run your seller-fulfilled orders under your account. It holds your inventory, pulls orders from Seller Central through an integration, ships them with tracking Amazon recognizes, and you keep the listing, the pricing and the customer relationship. For sellers on several channels that is the main draw: one pool of stock serves Amazon, Shopify, Walmart and wholesale without pre-allocating units to FBA.
Two caveats. First, Amazon judges your account, not the warehouse's. Your late-shipment, tracking and cancellation rates move with the 3PL's performance, so ask about cutoff times, weekend shipping and how tracking gets posted before you move stock. Second, for SFP specifically, Amazon says it "is not responsible for commitments a third-party logistics provider or other partner makes to its clients regarding SFP qualification, timeline, or performance outcomes." A 3PL can support SFP. It cannot promise you the badge.
Simpl runs Amazon FBM fulfillment and FBA prep from one warehouse in Austin, Texas, shipping via UPS, USPS and FedEx with a 12pm CT same-day cutoff, and supports Seller Fulfilled Prime for accounts that qualify. The Amazon fulfillment services page has the full scope.
Multi-Channel Fulfillment
MCF is the mirror image of the 3PL option: your FBA inventory ships orders that came from your own website or another channel, with prebuilt connections for Shopify and WooCommerce. It is the quickest way for an FBA-first seller to add a small website channel without a second warehouse. The tradeoffs are a separate MCF fee schedule on top of FBA storage, and the same inventory limits and aged-stock pressure as FBA. Our Amazon MCF guide covers the fees, the Shopify connection and what your customer receives.
How FBM and SFP sellers buy shipping labels
Once the fulfillment model is settled, the day-to-day question is how a label gets on the box. There are three routes, plus the settings that sit underneath all of them.
Amazon Buy Shipping. From Manage Orders in Seller Central you can buy labels from Amazon Shipping, UPS, USPS, FedEx, OnTrac and DHL Express for international, one at a time or up to 100 at once, with USPS at Commercial Plus pricing and the option to link your own carrier accounts. Tracking uploads automatically. The reason to use it even when your own rates are similar is the two protections, and both come with conditions. Claims Protection applies only to shipping services Amazon badges "Claims Protected", not ones flagged "Late Delivery Risk". If that package gets its first carrier scan on time, Amazon reimburses the buyer on a "package didn't arrive" claim and the claim does not count against your order defect rate. Refund the buyer yourself and Amazon will not pay you back, and Amazon expects you to answer the buyer's delivery questions within 48 hours. OTDR Protection applies to "OTDR Protected" services when Automated Handling Time and Shipping Settings Automation are both turned on; then a late delivery does not hurt your on-time delivery rate.
Veeqo. Amazon's own free shipping software offers pre-negotiated UPS, FedEx, USPS and DHL rates, lets you connect your own carrier accounts, and shows the same protection badges. It pulls orders from Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Etsy and Walmart into one queue, which makes it the natural pick for a seller shipping several channels from one room.
Your own carrier account or shipping software. A negotiated UPS or FedEx account, or a third-party shipping app, works too. Amazon lets Veeqo, its Shipping API and other multichannel integrators act as a channel for Buy Shipping, so a label bought that way keeps the protections if the service is badged. A label bought straight from a carrier, or through software that is not a Buy Shipping channel, carries no Claims or OTDR protection, and you confirm shipment and post tracking yourself.
Shipping templates and handling time. Whatever buys the label, Amazon's delivery promise to the customer comes from your shipping templates (rates, regions, transit times) and your handling time. Set them to what you actually do: an optimistic promise you miss is a late delivery. Shipping Settings Automation and Automated Handling Time set both for you from your shipping history, and having both on is also a condition of OTDR Protection.
Which option fits you
- Amazon is your only or main channel and your products are small and fast-moving. FBA, with a prep plan in place now that Amazon will not prep for you.
- You sell on Amazon and your own store at similar volume. FBM or SFP from one warehouse, yours or a 3PL's, so one inventory pool serves both. Add FBA for the handful of ASINs where the badge clearly moves sales.
- Your products are oversized, slow-moving or personalized. FBM. The FBA fee and storage math rarely works for them.
- You need Prime but do not want stock inside Amazon. SFP, if you or a partner can hold the weekly bars, and start the trial well before peak.
- FBA-first with a small website. MCF, until the website channel is big enough to justify its own fulfillment.
If you are shipping a few dozen orders a month from home, FBM from your own space is usually the right call for now. A 3PL becomes worth pricing when packing orders takes more of your week than it should, or when you need SFP-grade delivery from a location you do not have.
Sources
- Amazon: Fulfillment by Amazon overview
- Amazon Seller Central: FBA prep service note
- Amazon Seller Forums: commingling practices will end effective March 31, 2026
- Amazon: Fulfilled by Merchant overview
- Amazon Seller Central: Seller Fulfilled Prime trial and program enrollment
- Amazon Seller Central: Seller Fulfilled Prime performance requirements
- Amazon Seller Central: Use Buy Shipping services
- Amazon Seller Central: Amazon Buy Shipping protections
- Amazon: Veeqo
- Amazon: Multi-Channel Fulfillment
- Amazon: Amazon Warehousing and Distribution