3PL Fulfillment Pricing
From growing ecommerce businesses to established brands, IDCEA provides flexible warehousing, pick and pack, and shipping solutions tailored to your operation.
Simple, Flexible Fulfillment Pricing
Transparent starting rates with customized solutions for your business.
Pick & Pack
Additional Items
Warehousing & Storage
Shipping Solutions
Starting rates apply to eligible standard orders. Final pricing depends on order volume, product size, weight, storage, packaging, and handling requirements. Shipping charges are quoted separately.
Fulfillment fees are not shipping costs. The rates above cover warehouse work. Carrier postage is quoted separately and billed at the applicable carrier rate — for most domestic parcels it is larger than the fulfillment fee itself.
How IDCEA Fulfillment Pricing Works
Fulfillment pricing follows the physical path of your inventory: getting goods in, keeping them, getting them out — plus returns and any extra handling. Each stage is priced on something different, which is why two brands shipping identical order counts can end up with very different invoices.
Receiving & Inventory Check-In
Charged when stock arrives: unloading, counting, checking against your packing list and putting away. Priced on how goods arrive — floor-loaded container, palletized freight or courier cartons — and on how many SKUs are in the shipment, because each one has to be identified and binned separately.
Warehousing & Storage
Charged on the space your inventory occupies and how long it occupies it. Priced on volume, how the stock is stored, and inventory age — slow-moving stock costs more per unit shipped than inventory that turns quickly, which is why storage is quoted against your own inventory profile.
Pick & Pack Fulfillment
Charged per order: a first-item fee plus an additional-item fee for every further unit in the same order. Pick and pack pricing is banded by unit weight, so the two things that move it most are average unit weight and units per order. Packaging materials are billed on the materials actually used.
Discounted Shipping Solutions
Carrier postage is quoted separately and billed at the applicable rate — it is never folded into the fulfillment fee. What you pay depends on carrier, service level, parcel dimensions and destination zone, so it cannot be published as one rate for everyone.
Returns Management
A return is a second receiving event: checking the package in, then a per-unit decision to restock, quarantine or dispose, with condition photos on request. Priced on return volume and how much inspection each unit needs.
Value-Added Services
Work that is not part of normal receiving or picking: labeling and barcoding, sorting mixed-SKU cartons, cycle counts, palletizing outbound freight, kitting bundles ahead of demand and project labour for rework. Quoted before the work starts, never applied as a surprise line.
What Affects Your 3PL Cost Per Order?
Two brands can start from the same rates and land on very different numbers. These are the variables that move it, roughly in order of impact:
How to Reduce Your Fulfillment Costs
Get under a weight band
Lighter mailers, thinner void fill and trimmed inserts can move a whole product line into a cheaper band. This is the highest-leverage change available, because it applies to every unit in every order.
Keep inventory young
Storage is free for the first 7 days and steps up with age. Ordering smaller quantities more often costs a little more in receiving and saves considerably more in storage — as long as you do not stock out.
Consolidate inbound
Receiving is charged per shipment. Two half-containers cost more to receive than one full one carrying the same goods.
Prune the long tail
SKUs that sell a few units a year still occupy space and push shipments over the 10-SKU threshold. Discontinuing them lowers cost per order on everything else.
Right-size the packaging
Packaging is billed on the material used, and dimensional weight means an oversized box is charged as though it were heavy. Matching the mailer to the product saves on both lines.
Kit ahead of demand
Bundles assembled during quiet periods are picked as one unit at peak, rather than as three additional-item lines on every order.
3PL Pricing for Small Businesses
Small brands are often quoted as though they were large ones, then told the rate improves “at volume”. We would rather quote you on your actual profile now, and say plainly which lines move as you grow.
The honest comparison for a small business is not fulfillment fees against zero, it is fulfillment fees against what you currently spend without counting it: rent or garage space, shelving, packing materials bought at retail, carrier rates at published prices, and your own hours. Below a few orders a day, self-fulfilling usually still wins on cash. Past that, the crossover comes quickly — and it comes sooner if your volume is seasonal, because you stop paying for space in the months you are not using it.
Fulfillment Built Around Your Business
Get a Fulfillment Quote
Tell us about your business and we'll help build a fulfillment solution that fits.
What to include
The more of this you can give us, the closer the first quote lands. Nothing here is mandatory — order volume alone is enough to start.
Start a quote
Pick the range you are shipping today — the quote form opens with it filled in.
Picking a range just pre-fills the form — you can change it there, and the published rates are the same whichever range you fall in.
Frequently Asked Questions About 3PL Pricing
The questions we are asked most often before a first quote.
There is no single number, because a 3PL bills several separate activities rather than one flat fee. At IDCEA, pick and pack starts at $1.50 for the first unit in an eligible standard order, with additional units in the same order from $0.40. Warehousing, storage and shipping are quoted against your own profile — inventory volume, SKU count, unit weights and destinations. The quickest way to get a real number is to send us that profile and ask for a custom quote.
Two things move pick and pack pricing more than anything else: the weight of each unit, because rates are banded by weight and a unit just over a boundary falls into the next band, and the number of units per order, because every unit after the first adds an additional-item fee. Packaging materials are billed on what the order actually needs, and special packing requirements are quoted separately.
Storage is charged on the space your inventory occupies and how long it stays. The drivers are volume, how the stock is stored and inventory age, so a fast-turning catalogue and a slow-moving one pay very different amounts for the same number of units. Standard fulfillment inventory is not charged for its first 7 days. Your storage rate is confirmed in your quote once we know your inventory profile.
No. Carrier postage is quoted and billed separately at the applicable carrier rate, and for most domestic parcels it is larger than the fulfillment fee itself. Any 3PL quoting you a single “all-in” per-order number is either estimating your postage or hiding it. Duties, taxes and non-standard accessorial services are also billed separately unless specifically stated.
Yes. Small brands are often quoted as though they were large ones and then told the rate improves at volume. The honest comparison for a small business is fulfillment fees against what you currently spend without counting it — rent or garage space, shelving, retail-price packing materials, published carrier rates and your own hours. Below a few orders a day, self-fulfilling usually still wins on cash; past that the crossover comes quickly, and sooner if your volume is seasonal.
Yes, and for warehousing, storage and shipping it is the only way to get a firm number. Send us your monthly order volume, SKU count, product category, average package weight, storage requirements and shipping destinations. We run those numbers through our own pick and pack pricing calculator and send the itemised breakdown back with your quote, so you can see which line drives your cost per order. Confirmed pricing is stated in your IDCEA service quote or agreement.