3PL Pricing: How Much Does Fulfillment Cost?
Fulfillment pricing looks opaque because it is never one number. This page breaks a 3PL invoice into the lines it is actually made of — receiving, storage, pick and pack, packaging, shipping and returns — using IDCEA’s own published rates, so you can see what drives your cost per order before you talk to anyone.
How Much Does a 3PL Cost?
The only honest answer starts with a range, because the same 3PL charges a 300g accessory and a 15kg chair very differently. At IDCEA the pick-and-pack fee — the line you pay on every single order — is banded by weight:
On top of that sits storage at $1.00 per cubic metre per day, free for the first 30 days, and a one-off receiving charge each time stock arrives. Those two are shared across every order in the month, so your 3PL cost per order falls as volume rises — the receiving fee on a container is the same whether you ship 500 orders out of it or 5,000.
Fulfillment fees are not shipping costs. Every figure on this page covers warehouse work — receiving, storing, picking, packing. Carrier postage is billed separately at our negotiated rates and, for most domestic parcels, is larger than the fulfillment fee itself. Any 3PL quoting you “$X per order, all in” is either estimating your postage or hiding it.
How 3PL Pricing Works
Fulfillment pricing follows the physical path of your inventory. Every 3PL invoice, ours included, is assembled from three stages — and each stage is driven by something different, which is why two brands shipping identical order counts can get very different bills.
Goods in
Charged once per shipment, by how it arrives — container, pallet or loose case — plus a per-SKU charge when a shipment carries many different products. Driven by how often you replenish, not by how much you sell.
Goods at rest
Charged per day on the space you actually occupy, by cubic metre or by pallet. Driven by days on hand. Inventory that sits still is the line that quietly grows.
Goods out
Charged per order, banded by weight, plus any labeling or special handling. Driven by order volume and parcel weight — the only line that scales one-for-one with sales.
3PL Pricing Breakdown
Below is every line that can appear on an IDCEA fulfillment invoice, at our published rates. These are the same figures the cost calculator uses and the same ones on the quote we send you — there is no second price list.
Receiving Fees
Charged when stock arrives: unloading, counting, checking against your packing list and putting away. The unit depends on how goods turn up — a floor-loaded container takes far more labour than a palletised delivery, which is why the two are priced differently. Shipments carrying many different products add a per-SKU charge, because each SKU has to be identified and binned separately.
Receiving is a one-off charge per inbound shipment. Consolidating deliveries spreads it across more units.
Storage Fees
Charged daily on the space your inventory occupies — by cubic metre for shelved or binned goods, by pallet position for palletised stock. The first 30 days are free, so fast-moving inventory often incurs no storage charge at all; slow movers are where warehouse storage fees accumulate.
Storage is billed on days on hand, so it is the line most directly under your control.
Pick and Pack Fees
The per-order fee: retrieving the item, packing it, and preparing it for the carrier. Banded by parcel weight, because weight is what actually drives handling effort and packaging. Orders over the top band are charged the top rate plus an increment for each additional 10kg.
Bands are inclusive of the upper bound. An order 1g over a band boundary falls into the next band — worth checking if your average sits close to a cut-off.
B2B and wholesale orders ship by the carton or pallet rather than the parcel, and are priced accordingly:
Packaging Costs
Standard cartons, void fill and tape are included in the pick and pack fee. What is charged separately are consumables tied to a specific job — pallets and wrap for outbound freight, and labels when items need to be marked, relabelled or barcoded before they ship.
Branded boxes, custom inserts and printed collateral are billed at cost — send us your spec and we will quote it with the rest.
Shipping Costs
Carrier postage is not part of our fulfillment rates. We buy labels on our negotiated accounts and pass the cost through at what we pay — there is no markup and no per-label surcharge. What you pay depends on the carrier, service level, parcel dimensions and destination zone, so it cannot be published as a flat rate for everyone.
Two things matter more than the rate card here. First, dimensional weight: a light but bulky parcel is billed on its size, not its scale weight. Second, zone — shipping from Southern California puts most of the West Coast within one or two zones, which is usually a bigger saving than any negotiated discount.
Returns and Special Handling Fees
Returns are charged per unit received, covering inspection and the decision to restock, quarantine or dispose. Sorting covers work that is not part of normal receiving — grading mixed goods, splitting bulk packs, kitting, or preparing units to a marketplace’s spec.
Anything unusual — hazmat, oversize, serial-number capture, FBA prep to a specific standard — is quoted before the work starts, never applied as a surprise line.
What Affects Your 3PL Cost Per Order?
Two brands can pay the same published rates and land on very different numbers. These are the variables that move it, roughly in order of impact:
3PL Pricing for Small Businesses
Small brands are often quoted as though they were large ones, then told the rate improves “at volume”. Our rate card is the same list whatever your size — the numbers on this page are what a first-month customer pays. There is no setup fee, no monthly minimum and no contract term.
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.
Operating from the Los Angeles / Ontario / Riverside corridor also matters more for small shippers than for large ones: with no volume-based carrier discount of your own, zone reduction is the cheapest saving available to you.
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 order.
Cut days on hand
Storage is billed daily. 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, bin locations and receiving time. Discontinuing them lowers cost per order on everything else.
Right-size the carton
Dimensional weight means an oversized box is charged as though it were heavy. Matching carton to product often saves more postage than any negotiated rate.
Kit ahead of demand
Bundles assembled during quiet periods are picked as one unit at peak, rather than as three separate lines on every order.
Calculate Your Actual Fulfillment Costs
Reading a rate card only gets you so far. Put your own order volume, average weight, storage profile and inbound method into the calculator and it applies every rate on this page to produce your monthly total and your cost per order, itemised line by line so you can check the arithmetic.
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. For a typical small parcel under 3kg, expect the pick-and-pack fee to be the largest recurring line, with storage charged per cubic metre or per pallet per day and receiving charged once per shipment. Carrier postage is billed on top of all of it. The realistic way to answer the question for your own business is to run your volume, weight and storage profile through a calculator — ours is on the 3PL cost calculator page.
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