Every 3PL will send you a rate card. The rate card is the least useful document in the evaluation, because the costs that hurt are not on it and the failures that hurt are not priced at all.
When to move
Not at a volume. At a constraint: you are spending more time packing than selling, you cannot hit next-day, you need a second country, or the storage is costing you premises you would not otherwise rent.
Below roughly 500 orders a month, self-fulfilment is usually cheaper and always more controllable. It is also how you learn what to ask a 3PL.
The questions that actually decide it
How does the Shopify integration work? Native app, middleware, or a file drop. A file-based integration in 2026 means stock accuracy measured in hours and a reconciliation job somebody has to own.
What is the real-time inventory sync interval? "Real time" sometimes means fifteen minutes and sometimes means overnight. Overnight means overselling.
What is the cutoff for same-day dispatch, and what is the actual hit rate against it? Ask for the number, not the policy.
What happens when something goes wrong? Named contact or a ticket queue. Ask how a mis-pick gets resolved and who pays.
How do returns work? Received, inspected, restocked, and over what timescale. Many 3PLs treat returns as an afterthought and it shows.
Can they handle your specifics? Batch and expiry for supplements. Fragile for glass. Temperature for food. Gift wrapping, inserts, personalised packaging — each of these is either standard or a surcharge or a no.
Ask for two references from brands your size in your category, and call them. This is the single most informative thing in the whole process and most brands skip it out of politeness.
The costs that are not on the rate card
| Cost | Why it surprises people |
|---|---|
| Receiving | Charged per pallet or per unit on inbound |
| Storage | Per bin or per pallet, monthly, scales with slow-moving stock |
| Long-term storage surcharge | Punishes dead stock you were already not selling |
| Account management | Sometimes a monthly minimum |
| Special packaging | Per-order surcharge on anything non-standard |
| Returns processing | Per return, sometimes more than the pick |
| Peak surcharge | November and December, and it is substantial |
Model your actual order profile against the full cost list, not the pick rate. A cheap pick with expensive storage loses to the opposite if you carry depth.
The transition
Overlap the old and new for a few weeks. Do not move everything at once, do not move in November, and keep enough stock in the old location to trade if the new one stumbles.
Test with real orders, including a return, before you switch the bulk of volume.
Talk it through
Changing or adding a 3PL?
The integration is the part that breaks. We have built and fixed enough of them to tell you which questions to put in writing.
Ask usA real read within one business day — not a sales call.
About the author
Manpreet Singh
Founder of Proscube. Leads the studio's Shopify, headless and CRO engineering, and works directly with founders rather than through account managers.
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