5 Popular Shipping APIs for Your Business

January 5, 2023

Are you looking for the most popular shipping APIs for your business? The shipping industry has grown in leaps and bounds over the last decade. Even ten years ago, the process of online shopping looked a lot different. The customer would place their order and forget about it for a week at least, if not more. The post-sale user experience was not up to the mark. There was no set timeframe for the delivery of the order, and it often came without any prior notification.

Currently, most good eCommerce websites have a curated post-sale experience where the customer can visually track the progress of their order from when the store is packing the order through the order being picked up by the shipping carrier, the order is shipped, live delivery tracking on Google Maps, to the order being delivered to the customer.

Integrations with application programming interfaces (APIs) allow for constant communication between various steps in the shipping process, such as storage facilities, carrier pickups, real-time shipment tracking, customer management, customer support, etc.

If you’re working in the eCommerce industry, you’ve probably been hearing a lot lately about API integrations and how they’re becoming increasingly crucial to the work that you perform. This is probably because of the amount of attention that’s been paid to the topic in recent years.

Table of Contents

But what exactly does API integration mean?

E-commerce operations include several moving parts, including accounting for taxes, logistics, and stock management. By isolating these networks, you may prevent them from interacting with one another. An application programming interface (API) automates this process, resulting in a more streamlined and productive eCommerce platform.

Integrating APIs is the process of linking two or more systems so that they can share data with one another. Many successful companies rely on API interfaces to run their operations, which helps to keep information in sync, boost productivity, and increase income.

An API framework provides a standard variety of guidelines, tools, and subroutines to share information among multiple software. As a whole, it can be defined as a collection of well-defined ports through which different parts of a program can exchange information with one another.

What are the inner workings of shipping APIs?

The shipping APIs you choose are like electronic messengers, relaying information between the many components of your online store. The issue is that these different components don’t use the same language. APIs translate data from one system into data that can be understood by another system within your business.

This allows your site to seamlessly integrate with other systems in a way that is completely invisible to the end user. Customers simply need to deal with one interface, regardless of how many platforms your eCommerce business is linked to. In the case of an eCommerce site, the API can process both the requests and the responses in a single, streamlined process.

5 Popular Shipping APIs for Your Business

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular shipping APIs for your eCommerce business.

ReachShip Multi-Carrier Shipping API

ReachShip is one of the best shipping APIs that will help streamline your shipping process. Through the ReachShip Multi-Carrier Shipping API, you can check and compare shipping costs from a wide range of industry-leading carriers, including FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, and Australia Post MyPost Business, among others. There will likely be an increase in the number of available shipping carrier options in the near future.

Your shipping process will be significantly streamlined as a result of the use of a number of features offered by ReachShip. It tracks and takes care of the entire process of shipping, from the validity of provided addresses to shipment delivery. As far as shipping API integrations go, this one is the simplest and most efficient in terms of both creating and managing shipments.

Plus, it costs nothing to print shipping labels or get shipping estimates. This is one of the most useful tools for optimizing your shipping procedure, as the only charges that apply are ones that are specific to the shipping carriers. By integrating this API, you can provide an industry-leading shipping option with zero maintenance.

Shippo API

Shippo is another powerful shipping API that you can integrate into your business. Your eCommerce store’s shipping processes can be automated and personalized with the help of the Shippo API.

It works in the background of your e-commerce site’s checkout procedure, letting customers get shipping quotes, generate labels, and more without ever leaving your website. Customers can compare shipping costs across several carriers in real time and select the service that best meets their needs.

You and your customers have the option of receiving real-time tracking updates after the shipment has been shipped and delivered when you integrate the API. You no longer have to accommodate the needs of each shipping carrier individually or deal with shipment complications, as the API will manage everything for you.

EasyPost API

EasyPost is an easy-to-use shipping service that provides a set of shipping APIs that facilitate quick, dynamic, and highly reliable shipping for its customers. Because the Shipping API from EasyPost is compatible with more than 100 carriers across the world, you can rest assured that you’ll have access to competitive pricing at all times; furthermore, their platform guarantees industry-leading 99.99% uptime, so you never have to stress about it being down.

The key features offered by EasyPost APIs include multi-carrier cost comparison and shipping, shipping label generation, shipment tracking, address verification, and adding shipping insurance.

ShipStation

ShipStation is yet another efficient API solution that can be integrated into your business. The ShipStation API is an excellent tool for transferring information back and forth from ShipStation. Using this API, it is possible to perform tasks such as creating orders, editing products, accessing orders, shipping, and handling customer data.

Through the API, programmers can develop applications that can communicate with the ShipStation system. The API can be used to automate a wide variety of processes, such as handling orders and shipments, printing labels, obtaining shipping rates, and more.

ShipEngine

ShipEngine allows you to develop dependable shipping solutions and has an uptime of over 99.9%. The ShipEngine API is a reliable partner for eCommerce sites because of its dedication to helping developers create shipping features without sacrificing speed or simplicity. Synchronizing your integrations is all that is required of you; the rest of the work will be handled by ShipEngine.

After integrating this API, you will have instant access to shipping APIs that enable you to compare prices, verify addresses, generate labels, track deliveries, and more.

This shipping application programming interface (API) can be of assistance to you throughout the entirety of the order completion and shipping management process. This includes everything from comparing rates offered by more than 30 different carriers to verifying addresses located all over the world, generating shipping labels in real time, and tracking your deliveries until they reach the customer.

Wrapping Up

That brings us to the end of the list of the most popular shipping APIs for your business. API integrations link the many components of your eCommerce business and stack them together, enabling them to communicate with one another and share data in a smooth manner.

Creating automated processes for API-integrated applications can eliminate time-consuming manual work, smoothly transmit information that would normally involve manual intervention, and allow you to conduct more business faster and more efficiently.

We hope this information will help you select the best Shipping APIs for your business. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding shipping APIs in the comments section below.

Miron Golani

All Author Posts

5 Popular Shipping APIs for Your Business

But what exactly does API integration mean?

What are the inner workings of shipping APIs?