We are (more than) excited to announce the release of ShipperHQ for Magento 2.
Included in this extension is the MatrixRates capability, maintaining our commitment to the open source community by releasing for free the most popular shipping extension on Magento Connect today.
What is ShipperHQ?
ShipperHQ is a highly flexible carrier agnostic rating focused solution for eCommerce.
Or put otherwise watch this video.
ShipperHQ takes over shipping rating in your checkout. With our capabilities you get the most advanced rating engine in the world today. I’ve not seen anything like it, we feel its unique in its proposition, and when teamed with Magento you have an extremely powerful capability. We are delivering beyond enterprise level functionality to the mainstream.
Key Features
There are many capabilities in ShipperHQ, I’ll list the main ones:
- Live Rating via Small Package with new carriers being added weekly
- LTL Rating with carriers such as Echo, Estes, YRC, TForce Freight, Inc., FedEx Freight, ABF, Con-way, Old Dominion pre-integrated, support for accessorials, freight classes and more
- Support for International Shipping via Pitney Bowes
- Multi-origin capabilities to allow for accurate rating in a Dropship environment
- Time in Transit – so delivery dates, calenders, estimates on # days to arrive – a truly enterprise level solution, not just a date picker
- The most intelligent Shipping Rule Engine in the world – need to stop free shipping to AK, HI, or add a handling fee on oversize items, or add a packing weight to the calculation – all covered
- Dimensional Shipping – A unique solution thats propriatary to us, we have customers who were losing over 50K per year now making a profit on shipping with this 1 capability
- Address Validation/Residential Selector
- Backup Carriers – What happens when FedEx goes down? We solve this issue
- Support for advanced Custom Rates. Forget ProductMatrix, we take it to a whole new level
- Shipping Analytics
- Store Pickup/Collect from Store
- Local Delivery within radius
- Same-Day Delivery
- And much more
What we have seen over the last couple of years is consumers want to know more, they want their goods sooner, and they love a promotion. ShipperHQ delivers on all. With us taking on Amazon is a reality.
In phase 1 of the Magento 2 release we deliver the base capabilities that do not affect the checkout user interface. We will be adding all the UI features such as calendar, split checkout, address validation in later releases, with the final component set to drop on April 1st 2016. On Magento 1.x all these capabilities are already available.
Why ShipperHQ?
Back in 2010 we were getting a lot of requests from people for shipping functionality. We often couldn’t meet their needs, even with the many shipping extensions we had. So we built out, we built more extensions, and we tried to bolt more on. Even back then I was very aware that this was not a cohesive solution because shipping is big, its moving fast as an industry and its complex. We ended up with 100 git hub repos, 60+ demo stores and customers in over 80 countries.
At some point you have to change as a company. I knew Magento 2 was coming, I also had demand from other platforms for our services. SAAS was the way forwards.
Some people look at an extension and think its a small body of work. Well in ShipperHQ we have over 100K lines of code just on the rating api side. Let me assure you that what we do is not just a carrier, or an api hook, there are complex mathematical algorithms around logic such as Carrier Rules, Dimensional Packing, Time in Transit, Origin selection, etc etc. To sit all that code inside PHP on a platform that moves and shifts, is different from site to site, well its just not possible, its not the way you progress as a company or a technology solution.
By building out ShipperHQ we have managed to do a number of things:
- Progress the technology and shipping features whilst waiting for Magento 2
- Reduce the time to market of a complex product set
- Bring you a single cohesive merchant friendly solution that allows you to move platforms, versions, etc and keep your configuration isolated from that
- Use Enterprise grade solutions – We use Java for our server API which gives us many advantages over a PHP based application. I used Java when writing Foreign Exchange trading systems 10 years ago, it’s mature and it works
Who is ShipperHQ For?
With over 70K people using WebShopApps shipping codebase and over 16K paying customers we have worked with many organisations over the years. Currently on ShipperHQ we serve from the smallest Mom/Pop store right upto sites such in the Alexa top 10K. As an indication one of our clients alone had over a million rate requests to ShipperHQ in December. We regularly work with Enterprise merchants, ShipperHQ has been live now since 2014 and the majority of our initial customers were at the Enterprise level – they helped architect this system!
I firmly believe in localised staff that speak your language. We have staff in the UK/US and Australia that do exactly that. We are available on the phone, via email and via chat. Shipping is not always easy, buying software is often more about the company than the code. The savings you make from shipping are very clear, our product pays for itself in minutes for many sites. 93% of customers on a site consider shipping as part of their purchase, thats how important shipping is. So don’t neglect it.
Agencies/Developers
As part of the release of ShipperHQ we are also announcing the formal release of the ShipperHQ API, together with a test bed for agencies/developers. If you want to use ShipperHQ but would rather write your own Magento 2 integration or if you want to use ShipperHQ on another platform entirely then our REST API allows you to do this.
Next week we will be providing access to ShipperHQ via github. In this way you will be able to obtain the very latest code when you need it.
We are improving our consultancy services, plus also offering training for agencies in ShipperHQ. You then have the choice for your merchants, if you want us to do end-2-end configuration we can, if you want to provide we can support you. We will have further details on this shortly.
Our committment to open source and Magento means over the coming months expect many free extensions from the ShipperHQ team. We will be providing free shipping capabilities across the board and hopefully continue to contribute to this great and wonderful community.
Who is the team behind ShipperHQ?
I think its important people understand who we are and why we care. ShipperHQ is a bootstrapped company, I started it back in 2008 almost by accident, my husband was a small merchant and I built his first website on Magento 1.0 when it came out. The shipping didn’t work so I fixed it. Luckily I have an extensive background in software development so Magento wasn’t a major struggle. This company was born from that experience. We aren’t some faceless VC-backed company, this is a company of blood, sweat and tears. I have a fantastic team around me, a team made up of unique individuals who each bring something great to the table. Its a privilege to work with them.
My goal for WebShopApps back in 2010/2011 was to be the largest shipping extension provider on Magento. My goal now as a company is to revolutionize shipping in eCommerce. I believe it can be less complex, should be simpler, and will be easier to manage, thats my goal. We still want to tackle many key areas, but with our partnerships with heavyweights such as UPS® and Pitney Bowes, together with our deep relationship with Magento I believe we will do this. Are you ready to join us?
How do I get it?
You can download direct from our site. We will be listing on the new Magento Marketplace as soon as it becomes available.
And lastly
I’ll leave you with this. We are the only rating solution on Magento that is a UPS Ready® provider. We work with UPS® on a daily basis to make merchants lives easier. Its a fact our rating is more accurate than Magento’s. And we have the support contracts with UPS® to back it up. This is ShipperHQ by WebShopApps. Come talk to us.
