A 3PL minimum is the least a fulfillment company will bill you in a month, or the least volume it will take you on with. Most billed minimums work as a top-up: if your charges for the month come in under the floor, you're invoiced the difference, not the full minimum on top of your charges. In a slow month you pay whichever is higher, your actual bill or the minimum.
The headline number tells you little on its own. A $750 minimum that counts postage and a $250 minimum that counts only pick-and-pack fees can kick in at almost the same order volume. Before you compare two minimums, find out what counts toward each one.
Three things people call a minimum
When a sales rep, a pricing page or a "best 3PLs" list mentions a minimum, it usually means one of these:
- A billed floor. A dollar amount (sometimes an order count) you're invoiced up to each month if your real charges fall short.
- An eligibility bar. The volume a 3PL wants before it will sign you. Nothing is billed, but below it you don't get in, or you get in on worse terms.
- The costs that stay when the minimum goes away. A "no minimum" offer still bills storage and carrier postage, and sometimes setup, integration or account fees. Those set your real floor.
How billed minimums are set
A spend floor you top up
This is the most common structure. You agree to a monthly figure, and the 3PL invoices any shortfall. Racklify's logistics encyclopedia walks through a typical example: a contract with a $3,000 monthly spend minimum, a slow month with $1,800 in actual fees, and a $1,200 shortfall invoice to cover the gap.
Two contract details change what that costs you. The first is the period: most minimums are monthly, but some are quarterly or annual, which lets a strong month carry a weak one. The second is credits. In Racklify's example, peak-month spend counts against future minimums "only if that term is included in the contract."
A minimum worked out from your forecast
Some 3PLs set the minimum from the volume you say you'll ship. ShipMonk's pricing page describes its minimum as a fee "determined in conjunction with your pick fees and projected order volume": your monthly order volume multiplied by your first-item pick fee, less 20%.
That makes the forecast you give on the sales call part of the price. ShipMonk's published terms of service let it revise pricing after the first 90 days "to a rate equal to actual volume" if you ship less than the estimate you gave at signing. An optimistic forecast can win you lower rates now and higher ones three months in. Our ShipMonk pricing breakdown covers the rest of its fee structure.
An order-count or spend bar to get in
Larger 3PLs often set an entry level. ShipBob's affordable fulfillment page says "there is a minimum monthly spending requirement for fulfillment and minimum order volume requirements," and that "you can start with even just a thousand orders monthly." It doesn't publish the dollar figure there, so ask for it in writing.
Storage or the minimum, whichever is higher
Some contracts compare your storage bill with the set minimum and charge the larger of the two. If you hold a lot of slow-moving stock, storage alone can clear the floor, so a low minimum doesn't guarantee a low bill. Ask whether storage counts toward the minimum, and if it doesn't, how the two are billed together.
What counts toward the minimum
This is the question most comparisons skip. Some 3PLs apply their minimum to everything they bill per order, postage included. Others apply it to fulfillment fees only (picking, packing, sometimes packaging) and bill postage separately at carrier rates. A floor that includes postage fills up much faster per order, so its headline number is higher even when the order volume needed to clear it is about the same.
Here's the math with two made-up quotes for a brand shipping light packages. Storage is left out of both to keep it simple.
- Quote A: a $750 monthly minimum that counts an all-in charge of $9.00 per order, postage included.
- Quote B: a $250 monthly minimum that counts only pick-and-pack fees of $3.50 per order. Postage, averaging $6.00 an order, is billed on top.
Quote A: $750 floor, postage counts | Quote B: $250 floor, fulfillment fees only | |
|---|---|---|
Orders needed to clear the floor | 84 | 72 |
Slow month, 50 orders | $750 ($450 in charges plus a $300 top-up) | $550 ($175 in fees plus a $75 top-up, then $300 postage) |
Normal month, 120 orders | $1,080 | $1,140 ($420 in fees plus $720 postage) |
A minimum three times the size is cleared only a dozen orders later. Quote A costs more in the slow month and Quote B costs more in the normal one. Real quotes will have different rates, but the method holds: price both at your own volume in a slow month and a normal month, with postage and storage included, and compare totals rather than floors.
What "no minimum" usually means
"No minimum" is a real offer, and for some brands a good one. It usually means there's no billed floor, not that there's no fixed cost. eFulfillment Service, which advertises no order minimums, setup fees or integration fees, describes its pricing as "three parts: monthly storage, per-order pick-and-pack fees, and shipping at carrier rates." Storage is billed whether or not you ship, so in practice it acts as the floor.
Other providers drop the billed minimum but keep an eligibility bar. Red Stag Fulfillment says it doesn't "have set order minimums" or "charge a monthly fee," and in the same paragraph that it "generally work[s] with companies shipping hundreds to thousands of orders per month."
When you see "no minimum", price what's left. ShipBob's own guide makes a fair checklist: it names account setup fees, software or integration fees, receiving charges, long-term storage penalties and packaging markups among the hidden charges to watch for. Our 3PL pricing guide explains those fee types, and the 3PL cost guide shows how they add up.
If you ship a few dozen orders a month, top-ups can cost more than a 3PL saves you in packing time. Keeping fulfillment in-house until volume steadies is a reasonable call, and so is a provider without a billed floor, as long as you've priced its storage and postage.
Term, exit notice and setup fees
A minimum is only as flexible as the contract around it. A short term with reasonable exit notice lets you leave if the floor stops making sense; a one-year term that renews automatically doesn't. Read the termination clauses closely. ShipMonk's published terms set a one-year term that renews each year (section 2.1), while section 6.11 lets the merchant close the account on 30 days' written notice. When two clauses point different ways, ask which one applies to you and get the answer in writing. The same terms add a 5% increase to the pick fee on each contract anniversary.
Some 3PLs also charge a one-time setup or onboarding fee before your first order ships. It doesn't count toward the minimum, but it belongs in your first-year total. Our onboarding timeline guide covers what happens in those first weeks.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Is the minimum a billed floor, an eligibility requirement, or both?
- What counts toward it: postage, packaging, storage, receiving, returns?
- Is it measured monthly, quarterly or yearly, and do busy months offset slow ones?
- Can my rates change if I ship less than the forecast I give you, and after how long?
- Does the minimum apply from the first month?
- How long is the contract, does it renew automatically, and how much notice do I give to leave?
- Are there setup, onboarding, integration or account fees?
- What would my total bill have been last month, at my real order count, with everything included?
How Simpl's minimum works
Simpl's minimum is $750 a month, billed pay-the-difference: if a month's order billing comes in under $750, you're charged only the gap. It's a floor, not a monthly fee on top.
It reads higher than many quoted minimums because of what counts toward it. We bill a flat per-order rate, starting at $7/order, that includes postage, packaging, up to three picks and packing; carrier surcharges, when they apply, are billed per our terms. Many 3PLs apply their minimum to fulfillment fees only, with postage excluded, so their stated minimums look lower. For light packages on standard shipping, $750 works out to roughly 90–100 orders a month; heavier, larger or faster shipments reach it with fewer orders.
If you're shipping well under that, we'd suggest keeping fulfillment in-house for now. If you do sign and have a slow month, the cost is only the gap. Our contracts run three months and renew automatically for further three-month terms, with 60 days' written notice to end them, and there's no onboarding fee. The details are on our pricing page.