Most "best 3PL" lists are written for brands shipping tens of thousands of orders a month. If you're doing 50 to 500, that advice doesn't fit. The minimums are too high, the pricing is built for volume you don't have yet, and the onboarding assumes a team you haven't hired.
A 3PL that works for a small business has to clear a different bar:
Here's what to check before you sign, and how Simpl Fulfillment stacks up against each one.
This is the first thing that knocks small brands out. Plenty of large 3PLs set monthly minimums or volume floors built for established brands, which means you pay for shipments you're not making yet.
Simpl's account minimum is $750/month, billed pay-the-difference — you're charged only the gap if a month's order billing comes in under $750. If your orders cover it, you never see the minimum at all. Pair that with pricing that starts at $7/order, and a brand doing a few hundred orders a month can run on Simpl without overpaying for headroom it doesn't need.
We ship for brands doing 50 orders a month and brands doing 5,000. Same per-order rate either way.
Small teams don't have someone whose job is decoding a 3PL invoice. The pricing has to be legible.
Simpl is flat-rate, with no hidden fees. The starting $7/order already covers the pick, the postage, and the packaging. Storage is billed by the space you use, by small bin, large bin, shelf, or pallet, not by a formula you have to reverse-engineer at month end.
You won't find a separate charge for carrier selection either. The carrier cost is included in the per-order rate.
Every week you're not shipping is a week of orders sitting in your apartment or garage. Onboarding speed matters more for a small brand than almost anyone.
Simpl onboards in 5 to 7 days, and receiving turnaround once your inventory arrives is 1 to 3 days. There's no onboarding fee — you're not paying a setup charge to get started. (Some 3PLs do charge a one-time onboarding fee; it's worth asking any provider you're comparing.)
When you're small, one stuck order is a real problem, and "open a ticket" is not an answer. You need someone who knows your account.
Every Simpl client gets a dedicated account manager: a real person reachable by email, with same-day responses (often faster) during business hours. Not a queue. Not a bot. Someone who knows your account by name.
Most small D2C brands run on Shopify, so your 3PL needs to connect without a custom build.
Simpl connects natively to Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Squarespace, plus the marketplaces — Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, and TikTok Shop. Inventory syncs in real time, and there's an open API if you've got something custom. Order routing and shipping-method selection can run on automation rules so you're not touching every order by hand.
Simpl is a D2C 3PL built for growing brands, not just enterprise volume. The full service list:
Orders received before 12pm CT ship the same day. Order accuracy runs at 99.99%, and when we do get one wrong, we cover the fix — return shipping and re-fulfillment, at our cost. Returns run through a branded portal included for every client.
If you're a small brand, weight the list toward the things that bite early: a minimum you can actually clear, pricing you can read, fast onboarding, and a person to call. A 3PL built for 50,000-order brands will technically take your account — you'll just be paying for a setup you've outgrown before you grow into it.
Simpl is built the other way around. Start at a few hundred orders, scale to thousands, same per-order rate the whole way up.
A $750/month account minimum, billed pay-the-difference. You're only charged the gap if your order billing comes in under $750 in a given month. Per-order pricing starts at $7.
No. There's no onboarding fee to get started. Onboarding takes 5 to 7 days.
The pick, the postage, and the packaging. Storage is billed separately by the space you use.
Yes, natively, along with Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Squarespace, and the major marketplaces. Inventory syncs in real time.
Same day for orders received before 12pm CT.
Yes — Simpl uses a service agreement to start the relationship. This is standard for any serious 3PL: getting your inventory, systems, and workflows properly set up takes real effort from both sides. If you ever need to move on, you can do so with notice.
Ready to get a quote? See how Simpl Fulfillment fits your operation at simplfulfillment.com.
