Seven order management tools, one honest question: what do you actually get for the money?
A storefront takes the order. What happens next - picking, packing, labels, tracking, returns - is a different product category, and small businesses usually discover it late, right after someone has been hired whose full-time job is retyping addresses.
This is a rewrite of the comparison I keep on tanit365.com, with prices read from the vendors' own pricing pages in September 2026. Prices change; check before you sign.
The seven tools, priced as published
| Tool | Entry price | Scales by | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shippo | Free (30 shipments/mo) | Shipments | Low-volume shipping that needs to become professional |
| Veeqo | Shipping free | Order volume | Multichannel and marketplace sellers |
| Zoho Inventory | $29/mo Standard | Orders and locations | Orders and stock in one subscription |
| ShipStation | From $14.99/mo | Shipments and users | Growing ecommerce operations that need automation |
| Ordoro | Shipping free | App and volume | Dropshipping-heavy catalogues |
| Cin7 | $349/mo Standard | Annual order cap | Wholesale plus D2C with a B2B portal |
| Sellercloud | From $1,349/mo | Order volume and add-ons | High-volume, multi-warehouse operations |
That spread - $0 to $1,349 a month - is not a quality gap. It is a scope gap. At the bottom you are buying labels, rate shopping and tracking. Mid-range pricing buys stock synchronisation across channels plus a proper returns workflow. At the top you are buying multi-warehouse operations, ERP-grade accounting integration and B2B wholesale.
Shippo and Veeqo: the free tier is real, the ceiling is the story
Shippo's Starter plan is genuinely free and covers up to 30 shipments a month. Pro starts at $17 per month and lifts the ceiling to 10,000 shipments a month; past that, overage runs at $0.08 per label. The detail that catches people out: on Starter, labels bought through your own carrier account carry a $0.05 per label fee, waived on the paid tiers. At 2,000 labels a month that fee alone is $100.
Veeqo's shipping plan is free and the company earns a small commission on labels bought through it, which makes it the cheapest credible option for a marketplace-heavy seller. The Inventory plan starts at $19 per month; the top ERP plan starts at $350 per month.
Zoho Inventory and ShipStation: where most small operations land
Zoho Inventory, billed annually per organisation: Standard at $29 per month for 500 orders a month, 2 users and 2 locations; Professional at $79 for 3,000 orders a month and 4 locations; Premium at $129 for 7,500 orders a month, 6 locations and 2,000 bins per location; Enterprise at $249 for 15,000 orders a month, 7 users and 10 locations. Advanced warehousing is an add-on at $124.17 per organisation per month billed annually.
ShipStation: Starter from $14.99 per month for 50 shipments a month and 3 users; Standard from $29.99 per month for 10 users with unlimited automations, order combining and auto-split, returns and exchanges, basic warehouse management and phone support; Premium from $349.99 per month for 15 users with advanced inventory and warehouse management, custom analytics and auto-routing. There is a 30-day free trial with no credit card and annual billing saves 20%.
The honest warning on ShipStation: the Standard-to-Premium jump is large. Pay for it when you need scan-to-receive, forecasting or pick-to-tote - not before.
Ordoro, Cin7 and Sellercloud: when the catalogue dictates the price
Ordoro sells three apps separately, which is useful because you buy only what you need. Shipping can be started free, Dropshipping starts at $299 per month and Inventory starts at $349 per month, with a 15-day free trial.
Cin7 is for businesses selling direct and wholesale at once: Standard at $349 per month for 5 users, 2 integrations and 6,000 sale orders a year; Pro at $599 per month for 10 users, 4 integrations and 24,000 orders a year; Advanced at $1,199 per month for 15 users, 6 integrations and 120,000 orders a year. Extra integrations are add-ons, and exceeding the annual order cap triggers an upgrade conversation rather than an overage fee.
Sellercloud starts from $1,349 per month, priced on order volume and add-ons, with no revenue share and no per-sale commission - a structure that appeals to high-volume sellers who dislike percentage-based take rates.
The costs that never appear on the pricing page
- Per-label fees on free plans, as with Shippo's $0.05 on Starter.
- Overage rates, or a forced upgrade, once you pass your tier.
- Extra users. Per-seat add-ons quietly turn a $29 plan into a $90 plan once three people need logins.
- Extra channel integrations, sold per tier.
- Onboarding and implementation, which enterprise tiers expect as a paid project.
- Postage itself. No subscription here includes label cost, and rate shopping usually saves more than the software fee.
Pick by order volume
- Under 200 orders a month: Shippo's free plan or Veeqo's free shipping plan. You need labels, rate shopping and tracking, not a platform.
- 200-2,000 orders a month, mostly one channel: Zoho Inventory Professional at $79 if inventory matters, ShipStation Standard at $29.99 if shipping automation matters more.
- 2,000-10,000 shipments a month across channels: ShipStation Standard or Premium, or Veeqo's Inventory and ERP tiers.
- Dropshipping at the core: Ordoro's Dropshipping app at $299 a month.
- Wholesale as well as direct: Cin7 Standard at $349.
- Tens of thousands of orders and multiple warehouses: Sellercloud from $1,349, or Cin7 Advanced at $1,199 if 120,000 orders a year fits.
Pick by what breaks first
Fashion and apparel breaks on exchanges and returns - ShipStation Standard at $29.99 includes them from that tier. Grocery, FMCG, bundles and kits break on stock drifting between channels - Zoho Inventory Professional at $79 covers 3,000 orders a month across 4 locations. Furniture and bulky goods break on freight quotes handled by phone - ShipStation Starter at $14.99 already includes LTL rate comparison. Wholesale plus direct-to-consumer breaks because sales orders and the B2B portal live outside the order system - Cin7 Standard at $349 puts both in the product.
Team size is the second half of the budget, because seats - not orders - are what entry tiers restrict: ShipStation includes 3 users on Starter, 10 on Standard and 15 on Premium.
The full version, with the industry-by-industry table and the seven pre-purchase checks, is on the original post.
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