Flexport runs the fulfillment network that used to be Deliverr, and the number that matters most about it now is $5,000. Since January 1, 2026 every Flexport fulfillment account has carried a $5,000 monthly minimum spend, charged as the difference whenever your month comes in under it. Flexport's own estimate is that the fee mainly reaches merchants shipping fewer than roughly 500 orders a month. Per-order fulfillment rates sit on a rate card you download after signing up, but Flexport does publish how those fees are built, its storage rates and its peak surcharges, so you can understand how the bill is put together before you talk to sales, even if you cannot total it until you see a rate card. If you are weighing Flexport against ShipBob specifically, the ShipBob vs Flexport comparison covers that head to head; this page is about Flexport on its own.
What happened to Deliverr
Deliverr was a fulfillment company built around fast-delivery badges for marketplace and Shopify sellers. Shopify completed its purchase of Deliverr in July 2022 in a deal valued at about $2.1 billion and folded it into the Shopify Fulfillment Network. Less than a year later Flexport, the freight forwarder and customs broker, acquired Shopify Logistics, including Deliverr, and took over the warehouses, the software and the merchants. Today deliverr.com lands on flexport.com, the merchant login is Flexport's Seller Portal, and the Shopify Fulfillment Network app is the connector that links a Shopify store to Flexport's warehouses.
The Shopify Fulfillment Network itself still exists in name, but as a partner directory on Shopify's site rather than a Shopify-run warehouse operation. Flexport is listed there as the "Preferred partner". So a merchant who signed up with Deliverr, was moved under the Shopify Fulfillment Network and now gets invoices from Flexport has been with the same operation the whole time; what changed is the owner, and this year, the minimum.
How the $5,000 monthly minimum works
Flexport's Monthly Minimum Fee page sets out the mechanics, and the details decide whether the fee touches you:
- It is a floor, not a flat fee. At the end of each month Flexport adds up your eligible spend; if it is under $5,000, the gap is charged on the first invoice of the next month. Spend $3,000 and you are billed another $2,000. Spend $5,000 or more and nothing extra appears.
- Eligible spend is what Flexport calls "non-D2C storage spend": fulfillment fees, reserve storage, parcel, full and less-than-truckload freight booked through the Seller Portal, pallet and case handling, label services, prep and credit card processing.
- Your direct-to-consumer storage bill does not count. In Flexport's own worked example, a merchant with $3,000 in fulfillment spend and $5,000 in D2C storage spend still pays the $2,000 shortfall. For a small brand with a lot of stock in the fulfillment network, that is the sting: that storage is billed on top of the minimum, not against it. Only reserve storage, the B2B storage line Flexport bills separately, counts.
- Flexport says it expects the fee to mainly affect merchants fulfilling under roughly 500 orders a month, about 16 a day, and suggests avoiding it by routing more of your freight, prep or reserve storage through Flexport.
The minimum was not always this high. Flexport's 2026 pricing FAQ says the requirement rose from $500 to $5,000 in January 2026, a change first communicated to merchants in August 2025. A Shopify Community thread from that announcement describes the move as a tenfold increase about six months after the $500 minimum arrived and calls it a "bait and switch". That is one merchant's reaction, not a survey; the tenfold figure itself matches Flexport's own FAQ.
What the minimum does to a small brand's cost per order
Flexport does not publish a per-order price, so the arithmetic below uses an assumed rate to show the shape of the problem, not a Flexport figure. Suppose your fulfillment, parcel and prep spend comes to $2,400 in a month, about $12 an order across 200 orders. Flexport bills the $2,600 shortfall on your next invoice, so the month costs $5,000 before storage, or $25 an order. At 300 orders the same rate gives $3,600 in spend, a $1,400 top-up and about $16.70 an order. At $12 an order you need around 417 orders a month to clear the minimum on fulfillment spend alone, which is in the same range as Flexport's own "roughly 500 orders" estimate. The crossover moves with your rates and with what else you buy from Flexport: at $20 of eligible spend an order, 250 orders clear it; at $8, you need 625; and prep, reserve storage or freight booked through the Seller Portal count toward the same $5,000, so an importer can clear it on far fewer orders than a brand that only ships parcels.
Orders in the month | Eligible spend at an assumed $12 an order | Shortfall charged | Effective cost per order |
|---|---|---|---|
100 | $1,200 | $3,800 | $50.00 |
200 | $2,400 | $2,600 | $25.00 |
300 | $3,600 | $1,400 | $16.67 |
417 | $5,004 | $0 | $12.00 |
600 | $7,200 | $0 | $12.00 |
The table ignores D2C storage, which is billed separately and never offsets the minimum, and it assumes every order costs the same, which yours will not. Use your own average from a Flexport rate card or your last three invoices and the shape holds.
How Flexport's fulfillment fees are built
Flexport's pricing overview describes the structure without the numbers. The base domestic fulfillment fee bundles standard inbound receiving, pick and pack, packaging material and the shipping itself, so there is no separate receiving line on a compliant inbound. Two pricing models exist. Unit-based pricing charges per unit fulfilled, by item size and how many units are in the order, and its base fee also covers inventory placement across the network. Zone-based pricing charges per package, by package size and how far it travels, and does not include placement. Which one you are on shapes everything else on the invoice: several extras are charged per order or per unit on unit-based pricing and per package on zone-based pricing, and the peak surcharges below follow the same split.
Fees vary by service level. The service level overview lists Standard at three to seven days, Flexpedited at two to three days (the level that powers Shopify, Walmart and eBay fast-shipping badges, where you pay the faster rate only on orders that qualify for the faster promise), and Expedited one-, two- and three-day. Orders that reach processing status before 11 a.m. Pacific typically ship the same day, within the forecast and onboarding limits in Flexport's service level agreement, covered below.
Extras to expect on top of the base fee, all from the same overview:
- Oversize surcharges by SKU, and a separate charge for unloading floor-loaded containers.
- Peak surcharges, covered below.
- Box protection on SKUs you designate for an outer box, charged per order on unit-based pricing and per package on zone-based pricing, and a discount the other way on single-unit orders of items marked ready to ship. Anything over 20 lb or too big for an 18x14x8 inch box must arrive ready to ship; on unit-based pricing, oversized items that do not comply draw a $6 per unit non-compliance surcharge at outbound.
- Hazmat per-unit fees for lithium-battery products, plus box protection on those orders.
- Marketplace rate cards. Orders from Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Target and other marketplaces with carrier restrictions bill on their own rate cards, which replace the old 5% marketplace surcharge for merchants without a custom rate card.
- International: delivered-duty-unpaid rates by destination country, and delivered-duty-paid through partners, mainly Passport, with duties and taxes passed through.
- Returns, inventory removals and disposals, prep, branded packaging, signature-required delivery and reserve (B2B) storage each have their own line.
Two 2026 changes from the pricing FAQ are easy to miss. Base direct-to-consumer rates were updated on February 5, 2026 for every service level. Flexport calls it a rate increase, but it was not a flat one: the change varies by item weight and units per order, and Flexport says some combinations came out slightly cheaper, so the only way to know your number is to run your own mix against the new card. And item dimensions are now rounded to the nearest inch when billable weight is calculated, which matches what carriers do; a dimension can round down as well as up, so check what the rounding does to the billable weight of your best-selling SKUs.
The actual rate card lives in the billing tab of the Seller Portal once you have an account, and Flexport warns that the downloadable version can be wrong for merchants on discounted pricing. If you are evaluating from outside, ask sales for the list rate card and your assumed units per order before you sign anything.
What storage costs
Unlike the base fulfillment rate, storage is published in full, on Flexport's storage fee page and again in the pricing overview. It is billed per SKU, per day, on cubic feet, and it changes with the calendar.
Period | Rate per cubic foot | About per cubic foot over 30 days | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
January to September | $0.027 a day | $0.81 | $0.10 per SKU a day |
October to December | $0.080 a day | $2.40 | $0.10 per SKU a day |
Units in stock over 365 days, any month | $0.230 a day | $6.90 | $0.005 per unit a day, and the $0.10 per SKU a day floor still applies |
The per-SKU daily minimum is the line that catches small catalogs. It rose from $0.01 to $0.10 in 2026, and it means every SKU with any units on the shelf costs at least about $3 a month however little space it takes. Flexport's own example makes the point: ten units of a 0.1-cubic-foot item compute to three cents a day at the standard rate, so the SKU is billed the ten-cent floor instead. A brand with 150 slow SKUs pays roughly $450 a month in storage floors before any fast-moving stock is counted. Long-term storage kicks in on units that have sat for more than a year, at almost nine times the standard rate; the pricing overview confirms the $0.10 per SKU floor applies there too, so a handful of aged units never bills below it. Flexport counts out on a first-in, first-out basis so your oldest units leave the tier first.
Remember that none of this fulfillment-network storage spend counts toward the $5,000 minimum; only reserve storage does.
Peak surcharges this season
Flexport's peak season surcharge page applies the following from October 25, 2026 through January 16, 2027, on billable weight. On unit-based pricing the weight-band surcharge is charged once per order however many units it holds, but the oversize surcharges are charged per oversized unit. On zone-based pricing every line, oversize included, is charged once per shipment.
Service level | Billable weight | Surcharge |
|---|---|---|
Non-expedited | 3 lb or less | $0.49 |
Non-expedited | 3.01 to 20 lb | $0.84 |
Non-expedited | Over 20 lb | $3.29 |
Expedited 1-, 2- or 3-day | Any | $5.24 |
Oversize (length 48 to 96 in, width over 30 in, length plus girth 105 to 130 in, or over 50 lb) | Per unit (unit-based) or per shipment (zone-based) | $10.00 |
Oversize (length over 96 in or length plus girth over 130 in) | Per unit (unit-based) or per shipment (zone-based) | $100.00 |
For a sub-3 lb order the peak line is $0.49. The seasonal storage rate is a separate cost on a different calendar: it runs October through December, while the surcharges run from late October into mid-January. Which one costs you more depends on your mix. As an illustration, 300 light orders in a month draw about $147 in surcharges, while 100 cubic feet of stock costs about $159 more that month at $2.40 per cubic foot instead of $0.81. A brand that ships a lot and stocks little will feel the surcharges; one that stocks deep for the holidays will feel the storage rate.
What you get for the money
Flexport's fulfillment page describes a network of five US hubs near Newark, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, with inventory placed across them by Flexport's software, and seven warehouses in total across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Flexport's claim is that 87% of US consumers live within two days of one of its fulfillment centers and that it integrates with more than 50 selling platforms, Shopify, Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, TikTok Shop and SHEIN among them. Those are Flexport's own figures rather than independently measured ones, but the multi-hub design is the main thing a single-warehouse 3PL cannot match.
The operational commitments are published too, in Flexport's service level agreements: a 98% target for same-day shipment of orders received by 2 p.m. Eastern, a 99% order accuracy target, a 95% on-time delivery target against the promised window (ground within seven business days, expedited within one, two or three), and 99% of compliant returns processed within five business days. Read the conditions with the numbers. Outbound targets do not apply during your first 90 days or to orders that need corrective action, same-day shipment assumes volume within 10% of your forecast (10 to 15% over moves to 24 business hours, and more than that is negotiated), and peak periods run on separately agreed processing hours. Inbound receiving on a direct-to-warehouse plan is estimated at one to three calendar days for a compliant shipment; shipments routed through Flexport's crossdock take longer, with the bulk of the inventory received in four to eleven days.
Then there is the part that comes from Flexport's other business: it is first a freight forwarder and customs broker. If you import containers, you can book the ocean freight, clear customs, move stock into reserve storage and have it forwarded to the fulfillment network with one vendor and one login. Reserve storage and B2B order handling for wholesale and retail replenishment sit under the same account.
Who Flexport suits
Flexport is a good fit for brands whose monthly spend with it clears the $5,000 minimum comfortably, especially those selling across several marketplaces that want fast-shipping badges on Walmart, eBay and Shopify, and for importers who want freight, customs and fulfillment under one roof. Brands with wholesale or retail replenishment alongside direct-to-consumer orders get B2B handling without a second provider. If your customers are spread coast to coast and two-day delivery drives your conversion rate, a five-hub network earns its complexity.
Whether it fits a smaller brand is a spend question, not an order-count question. Add up what Flexport would bill you in a typical month across everything it counts, fulfillment, parcel, prep, reserve storage and any freight you book through the Seller Portal, using your own rate card or a quote from sales. If that total clears $5,000, the minimum never touches you, whatever your order count. If it falls short, the gap is a fixed monthly charge, your real cost per order climbs as volume drops, and fulfillment-network storage is billed on top. Flexport's roughly 500-orders estimate is a first screen, not a cutoff: a brand shipping heavy or multi-unit orders, or importing containers through Flexport, can clear the minimum on far fewer orders, while a brand shipping light, inexpensive parcels may need more. Brands with large, slow catalogs feel the per-SKU storage floor either way. Keep in mind which numbers you can check on your own: the fee structure, storage rates, peak surcharges and ancillary fees such as removals and prep are public, but the base per-order rate is not, so that figure comes from sales or from the rate card in your account.
If the minimum does not fit
You have four honest options, and the right one depends on your volume.
- Grow into it, or move more spend across. Flexport's own suggestion is to book freight, prep or reserve storage through the Seller Portal so that spend counts toward the $5,000. That works if you were already paying someone else for those services.
- Move to a 3PL with a lower minimum. The comparison of 3PL minimums lays out who publishes a figure, what counts toward it and how many orders it takes to clear, since a lower number that excludes postage is not always cheaper than a higher one that includes it.
- Keep packing orders yourself for now. If you ship a few dozen orders a month, no 3PL minimum fits comfortably, and self-fulfillment is often the better answer until volume grows.
- Get your inventory out cleanly, and confirm the timing. Flexport's pricing pages say removal and disposal orders are typically filled within 10 to 14 calendar days, longer in the holiday season and peak removal months, but its service level agreement counts in business days instead and allows up to 30 business days for a large removal of five or more SKUs or 5,000 or more units, which is what a full exit usually is. Ask Flexport for the estimate on your specific removal before you set a cutover date with the next provider. The minimum fee page adds that merchants removing their entire inventory can ask support for reduced removal or disposal fees.
Simpl Fulfillment, which publishes this page, is a 3PL in Austin, Texas, and sits on the other side of this choice. Fulfillment starts at $7 an order, priced by weight, and that rate covers up to three picks, packing, packaging and postage by UPS, USPS or FedEx; receiving is free and storage is billed by the space you use, a small bin, large bin, shelf or pallet. Standard ecommerce fulfillment accounts have a $750 monthly minimum, billed pay-the-difference: if a month's orders bill under $750, you pay only the gap. That works out to roughly 90 to 100 orders a month for light packages on standard shipping; heavier, larger or faster shipments reach it with fewer orders. Merch-drop fulfillment has no monthly minimum, and an account that only uses Amazon FBA prep has a 1,000-unit monthly minimum instead. It is one warehouse, not a network, so if two-day delivery to every coast from multiple hubs is what you are buying, Flexport is the better fit; if a predictable per-order rate and a minimum that a 100-order month can clear matter more, our pricing page has the details.
Sources
- Flexport: Monthly Minimum Fee, 2026 Flexport Fulfillment Pricing FAQs, Omni-Channel Fulfillment Pricing Overview, How are Storage Fees computed, Peak Season 2026 Pricing Surcharges, U.S. Domestic Fulfillment Service Level Overview, Service Level Agreements, ecommerce fulfillment page and Flexport acquires Shopify Logistics and Deliverr
- Shopify: completion of the Deliverr acquisition and Shopify Fulfillment Network partners
- Shopify Community: Flexport (SFN) to charge $5,000 monthly as of 2026
Updated October 2026.
FAQs
Does storage spend count toward Flexport's $5,000 monthly minimum?
Reserve storage does; the storage you pay for inventory in the fulfillment network does not. Flexport's minimum fee page assesses the fee on what it calls "non-D2C storage spend": fulfillment, reserve storage, parcel, freight booked through the Seller Portal, pallet and case handling, label services, prep and credit card processing. Your direct-to-consumer storage bill is charged separately and does not reduce the shortfall, so a month at the minimum costs $5,000 plus that storage.
What was Flexport's minimum before 2026?
Flexport's 2026 pricing FAQ says the monthly minimum fulfillment spend rose from $500 to $5,000 in January 2026, and that the increase was communicated to merchants in August 2025. The same FAQ lists the other changes that landed with it: updated base direct-to-consumer rates from February 5, 2026, which Flexport describes as an increase that varies by item weight and units per order rather than a flat rise, a per-SKU daily storage minimum raised from $0.01 to $0.10, marketplace-specific rate cards and dimension rounding to the nearest inch.
Does Flexport publish its per-order fulfillment rates?
Not publicly. Flexport's pricing overview explains the structure, with a base fee that bundles receiving, pick and pack, packaging and shipping, priced either per unit (where inventory placement is included too) or per package by zone, but the actual figures sit on a rate card you download from the billing tab of the Seller Portal after you have an account. Flexport also warns that the downloadable card can be wrong for merchants on discounted pricing, so ask your account team for a written copy.
How do I get my inventory out of Flexport?
You create removal or disposal orders in the Seller Portal. Flexport's pricing pages say those orders are typically filled within 10 to 14 calendar days and can take 30 days or more during the holiday season and the peak removal months of February, March, August and September, while its service level agreement quotes 10 to 14 business days for a standard removal and up to 30 business days for a large one of five or more SKUs or 5,000 or more units. The two first-party estimates do not match, so confirm the timing for your own removal with Flexport before you commit to a move date. Its minimum fee page adds that merchants removing their entire inventory can contact support for reduced removal or disposal fees, so ask before you submit a full-catalog removal at list price.
Is the Shopify Fulfillment Network the same thing as Flexport?
Not quite. Shopify's fulfillment page now presents the Shopify Fulfillment Network as a group of partner logistics companies, with Flexport labeled the preferred partner, and the Shopify Fulfillment Network app is the connector that links a Shopify store to Flexport's warehouses. Flexport owns and runs the warehouses that were Deliverr's; Shopify no longer operates fulfillment itself.
What if my monthly spend with Flexport will not reach $5,000?
Check the total first, not the order count. Flexport counts fulfillment, parcel, prep, reserve storage and freight booked through the Seller Portal toward the minimum, so a brand shipping heavy orders or importing through Flexport can clear $5,000 on far fewer than the roughly 500 orders Flexport cites, while light, inexpensive parcels may need more. If your eligible spend still falls short, the gap is billed every month and a 3PL with a lower minimum usually costs less; Simpl Fulfillment's standard ecommerce accounts, for example, carry a $750 monthly minimum billed pay-the-difference, which light packages on standard shipping reach at roughly 90 to 100 orders a month. Below that, packing orders yourself for a while longer is often the more honest answer than paying any 3PL's shortfall.
