STAMPS, USPS, UPS, Fedex, CanadaPost, Purolator

Partners Add-ons & Themes
1

Greetings,



Some of you may be following my posts in other threads.



We are currently working towards providing a full online suite of shipping tools for CS-Cart in North America. As CS-Cart users, we're proud to contribute and be a part of the community. As such, we are inviting beta testers to join this new initiative.



Our roadmap includes integrations with the following carriers:


  • Fedex (USA, Canada)
  • UPS (USA, Canada)
  • USPS
  • Canada Post
  • Purolator





    Preview screenshots below:





2

Quite interesting. Will check it out.



Suggestions:

  1. Put a place that shows “actual date shipped”. CS somewhat lacks on this side. This makes it easier to research or if the customer wants to know an actual date the order shipped.


  2. Put a place to post the “actual weight”. I'm not so sure others would use it but we use it to check up on our shipping department to help verify if items are actually missed on orders.



    Questions:
  3. When shipping USPS does it require a third party system like Stamps.com or Endicia? It looks like it says “stamps” in one of your samples, but I wasn't for sure if you meant Stamps.com.


  4. After beta testing, what is the pricing model going to be and how much?
3

[quote name='clips' timestamp='1340375408' post='139238']

Quite interesting. Will check it out.



Suggestions:

  1. Put a place that shows “actual date shipped”. CS somewhat lacks on this side. This makes it easier to research or if the customer wants to know an actual date the order shipped.


  2. Put a place to post the “actual weight”. I'm not so sure others would use it but we use it to check up on our shipping department to help verify if items are actually missed on orders.



    Questions:
  3. When shipping USPS does it require a third party system like Stamps.com or Endicia? It looks like it says “stamps” in one of your samples, but I wasn't for sure if you meant Stamps.com.


  4. After beta testing, what is the pricing model going to be and how much?

    [/quote]



    Hello,


  1. The USPS integration is via Stamps. I'm not sure of your exact question? It does require a subscription to stamps but there's no third-party/windows based software required.


  2. The introductory pricing model for CS-Cart is as follows:


  • Base module: $99.00
  • Free setup and installation for early adopters
  • Free trial for 3 months to weed out bugs and gather feedback
  • 1 Carrier: $14.95/month
  • 2 Carriers:$24.95/month
  • 3 Carriers:$29.95/month



    After beta, the freebies will be gone. No free installation or 3 month trial. We will probably offer a 30 day trial, similar to most SaaS operators.



    Any questions, feel free to e-mail me at jjtrottier@jtec.ca or pm me here in the forums.
4

[quote name='jjtrottier' timestamp='1340485736' post='139311']

Hello,


  1. The USPS integration is via Stamps. I'm not sure of your exact question? It does require a subscription to stamps but there's no third-party/windows based software required.


  2. The introductory pricing model for CS-Cart is as follows:


  • Base module: $99.00
  • Free setup and installation for early adopters
  • Free trial for 3 months to weed out bugs and gather feedback
  • 1 Carrier: $14.95/month
  • 2 Carriers:$24.95/month
  • 3 Carriers:$29.95/month



    After beta, the freebies will be gone. No free installation or 3 month trial. We will probably offer a 30 day trial, similar to most SaaS operators.



    Any questions, feel free to e-mail me at jjtrottier@jtec.ca or pm me here in the forums.

    [/quote]



    TOO expensive maybe $99 for the addon but why a monthly fee? money grab?

    If I had to do an addon I would charge $49. which i just might do…
5

[quote name='chrisbti' timestamp='1340498797' post='139315']

TOO expensive maybe $99 for the addon but why a monthly fee? money grab?

If I had to do an addon I would charge $49. which i just might do…

[/quote]





My friend, I encourage you to build and sell a multi-carrier shipping module for $49 one-time. You surely have not crunched your numbers if you think you can make that endeavour successful, let alone profitable. ShippingKit failed to accomplish this with higher numbers, so unless you plan on eating rice every meal for the rest of your life, you might want to crunch your numbers again.



Money grab? I am asking for a measly $15 dollars a month. Ask yourself this: how much time and money does shipping automation save compared to manual processing? It doesn't take very many orders to justify this $15 dollars.



Take a look at shipworks or eCC ship pricing and get back to me once you see the merit in our pricing structure. The advantages to our solution are numerous:

  • We integrate natively in your shopping cart vs. adding another software to the puzzle.
  • We don't charge per transaction. eCC Ship and Shipworks easily cost more once you're over the 100 transaction barrier.
  • We don't charge any extra monthly fees for additional stores.
  • We are truly multi-carrier. If you negotiate better rates with another carrier, you can switch carriers easily without buying and setting up another module.



    The monthly fee covers several things (which can easily eat up all our profits):
  • Updates to the CS-Cart module as new editions of CS-Cart are released
  • Updates to the Shipping Carriers APIs as new changes are introduced
  • Support for your setup and any troubleshooting necessary.



    We handle all the change management introduced by CS-Cart and shipping carriers as they change and mature. Thus, I don't think what I'm asking for is unreasonable. For me to make a healthy living out of this endeavour, I need 200+ customers which is no easy milestone. I am just trying to earn an honest living while offering a stable shipping solution that is consistent and reliable.



    That is my value proposition. Take it or leave it.
6

[quote name=‘jjtrottier’ timestamp=‘1340502829’ post=‘139316’]

My friend, I encourage you to build and sell a multi-carrier shipping module for $49 one-time. You surely have not crunched your numbers if you think you can make that endeavour successful, let alone profitable. ShippingKit failed to accomplish this with higher numbers, so unless you plan on eating rice every meal for the rest of your life, you might want to crunch your numbers again.



Money grab? I am asking for a measly $15 dollars a month. Ask yourself this: how much time and money does shipping automation save compared to manual processing? It doesn’t take very many orders to justify this $15 dollars.



Take a look at shipworks or eCC ship pricing and get back to me once you see the merit in our pricing structure. The advantages to our solution are numerous:

  • We integrate natively in your shopping cart vs. adding another software to the puzzle.
  • We don’t charge per transaction. eCC Ship and Shipworks easily cost more once you’re over the 100 transaction barrier.
  • We don’t charge any extra monthly fees for additional stores.
  • We are truly multi-carrier. If you negotiate better rates with another carrier, you can switch carriers easily without buying and setting up another module.



    The monthly fee covers several things (which can easily eat up all our profits):
  • Updates to the CS-Cart module as new editions of CS-Cart are released
  • Updates to the Shipping Carriers APIs as new changes are introduced
  • Support for your setup and any troubleshooting necessary.



    We handle all the change management introduced by CS-Cart and shipping carriers as they change and mature. Thus, I don’t think what I’m asking for is unreasonable. For me to make a healthy living out of this endeavour, I need 200+ customers which is no easy milestone. I am just trying to earn an honest living while offering a stable shipping solution that is consistent and reliable.



    That is my value proposition. Take it or leave it.

    [/quote]



    ok… thanks for the explanation…now we have more info to make a qualified discision when the addon is ready, and of course there will be more details later on the complete system, which we hope will be a success!..thanks for all the hard work… :-)
7

Sometimes I wish I was in the US… I think the pricing is very fair and would signup immediately.

8

[quote name='jjtrottier' timestamp='1340485736' post='139311']

  1. The USPS integration is via Stamps. I'm not sure of your exact question? It does require a subscription to stamps but there's no third-party/windows based software required.

    [/quote]



    When you just said “stamps” it was too generic. Normally when people mean the software they say “stamps.com”, so I was unsure what you meant and was trying to make sure.


[quote name='jjtrottier' timestamp='1340485736' post='139311']

2. The introductory pricing model for CS-Cart is as follows:


  • Base module: $99.00
  • Free setup and installation for early adopters
  • Free trial for 3 months to weed out bugs and gather feedback
  • 1 Carrier: $14.95/month
  • 2 Carriers:$24.95/month
  • 3 Carriers:$29.95/month

    [/quote]



    This is one add-on that I believe DOES justify a monthly fee. I wouldn't say you do or don't have the best price range, but you are probably not too far off base. Compared to others who have similar functions, you are competitive. The biggest difference would be some of the places who offer free integration and no monthly fees because ebay, Fedex or a third party is paying fees to get the business.



    We don't currently use Stamps.com, but we do pay a month fee for Endicia. So it would be no big deal to be with one or the other. Both are basically the same to us.



    I do feel that the set up fee or “base module” is uncalled for as clearly you should include this with your monthly fee. Again, I can see the need for a monthly fee on this one, but I do NOT see milking any other fees. Sometimes SaaS vendors need to decide if they are going to sell software up front or if they are going to take a monthly fee. I'm sorry to say that doing both is totally crazy! If your service is truly great or needed you will make plenty in your residual fees. I guess you could say like Stamps.com or Endicia, they both have a base software, but they don't charge for that because they want MORE people using it. Instead they both make plenty of money of their monthly fees and insurance.



    For you, if we go through you to sign up for Stamps.com again then you would make a kick back (or affiliate fee) off them along with your normal monthly fees.


[quote name='jjtrottier' timestamp='1340485736' post='139311']

After beta, the freebies will be gone. No free installation or 3 month trial. We will probably offer a 30 day trial, similar to most SaaS operators.

[/quote]



The 30 day trial is a good idea for newcomers to try it out. Again, even better would be to then only charge your monthly fee and you will not scare away some of your potential users but you would get the monthly payments.

9

[quote name='clips' timestamp='1340547714' post='139333']

When you just said “stamps” it was too generic. Normally when people mean the software they say “stamps.com”, so I was unsure what you meant and was trying to make sure.







This is one add-on that I believe DOES justify a monthly fee. I wouldn't say you do or don't have the best price range, but you are probably not too far off base. Compared to others who have similar functions, you are competitive. The biggest difference would be some of the places who offer free integration and no monthly fees because ebay, Fedex or a third party is paying fees to get the business.



We don't currently use Stamps.com, but we do pay a month fee for Endicia. So it would be no big deal to be with one or the other. Both are basically the same to us.



I do feel that the set up fee or “base module” is uncalled for as clearly you should include this with your monthly fee. Again, I can see the need for a monthly fee on this one, but I do NOT see milking any other fees. Sometimes SaaS vendors need to decide if they are going to sell software up front or if they are going to take a monthly fee. I'm sorry to say that doing both is totally crazy! If your service is truly great or needed you will make plenty in your residual fees. I guess you could say like Stamps.com or Endicia, they both have a base software, but they don't charge for that because they want MORE people using it. Instead they both make plenty of money of their monthly fees and insurance.



For you, if we go through you to sign up for Stamps.com again then you would make a kick back (or affiliate fee) off them along with your normal monthly fees.







The 30 day trial is a good idea for newcomers to try it out. Again, even better would be to then only charge your monthly fee and you will not scare away some of your potential users but you would get the monthly payments.

[/quote]





I don't disagree with your opinion on eliminating upfront costs. You're right that the whole purpose of SaaS is to make software easily accessible by making it an operating expenditure rather than an upfront capital expenditure. This strategy reduces the expensive barriers to entry for smaller guys who can't afford a full-blown software package in one large transaction.



My only hesitation about offering a free module is about covering the costs to get new clients setup. Some of you on this forum would be able to setup this module effortlessly, while many others will need hand holding. For the time being, the pricing will remain as-is, but I do acknowledge your feedback and it has got me thinking. Again your thinking of no upfront costs is something I've been considering but I don't think I'm ready to do it quite yet. We're a startup right now and I've got quite a bit of personal money invested in this. When we are more evolved and the debt-load is lower, I promise we will revise this strategy.




[quote name='Flow' timestamp='1340532988' post='139324']

Sometimes I wish I was in the US… I think the pricing is very fair and would signup immediately.

[/quote]



Lucky for you I have had a few more requests about european integrations - many PostNL. I'm going to see what we can do to try and accelerate this in our roadmap. I'm very interested in receiving those API details/specs from your developer at this point!

10

[quote name='jjtrottier' timestamp='1340555674' post='139340']

My only hesitation about offering a free module is about covering the costs to get new clients setup. Some of you on this forum would be able to setup this module effortlessly, while many others will need hand holding. … We're a startup right now and I've got quite a bit of personal money invested in this. When we are more evolved and the debt-load is lower, I promise we will revise this strategy.

[/quote]



All the more reason why you should want to get more people hooked up faster and on to making monthly payments to you. More signed on, more monthly payments to you, more money in the bank to pay on your investment.



Hopefully you would be able to steal customers away from other “shipping software” companies who either do not do what you do or are maybe more expensive. Not to mention, if there is no upfront expense for your service, your service is good and your software does what it says then you will retain more customers. As you already know, there will always be some who will move or change.

11

Hi,

I might have missed in the thread but does the monthly fee include the STAMPS.COM monthly fee also or is that a separate cost (and if separate what is the monthly additional Stamps.com cost to use with this addon)?

12

Is this still being worked on?

13

[font=“comic sans ms, cursive”]How about one flat rate price option for 3 carriers , no monthly price.[/font]

14

[quote name='chrisbti' timestamp='1351700550' post='148082']

[font=comic sans ms, cursive]How about one flat rate price option for 3 carriers , no monthly price.[/font]

[/quote]



No dice. I'm plenty busy with customers who are willing to pay the monthly fee. I will not give away the carrier code for a flat rate. There's way too much work involved to just give it away.

15

No problem i'm sure we all understand that…Keep up the good work…

16

Hi

any news or estimated date of launch?



thanks

17

We are bringing another programmer onboard that has experience with the USPS api, so he should be able to tackle both that and CanadaPost.

18

I am interested in learning more about this. I went to your website and sent you an email.