Published: 27 July 2026
Most ecommerce businesses don't plan to outsource fulfilment — they grow into needing it. What starts as a manageable few orders a day can soon turn into late nights, packing errors, and a storage problem you can't ignore.
For many growing businesses, third-party logistics (3PL) becomes the next step. Whether that's ecommerce fulfilment, pallet storage, or outsourced warehousing and distribution, this guide explains what 3PL means in practice, how it works in the UK, what it costs, and how to know if now's the right time to make the switch.
3PL stands for third-party logistics. It describes a company that handles some or all of another business's logistics operations — typically warehousing, inventory management, order fulfilment, and shipping — under a commercial contract.
The name comes from the structure of the relationship: there's you (the business selling the product), your customer (who receives it), and the 3PL sitting between the two, physically moving goods from one to the other.
The term itself dates back to transportation contracts in the 1970s, when it described an intermediary added to what had previously been a two-party shipper-carrier relationship. It later picked up a formal legal definition in the US in 2008, but in everyday use today it's broadened to cover almost any outsourced logistics activity — from a single pallet-storage contract through to a fully managed, multi-country fulfilment operation.
In plain terms: if another company is storing your stock and getting your orders to your customers instead of you doing it yourself, you're using a 3PL.
Coverage varies a lot between providers, so it's worth checking what's actually included rather than assuming. Commonly offered services include:
3PL providers tend to specialise around one of three core competencies:
Most ecommerce sellers researching 3PL options are really looking for a warehouse-based provider with strong fulfilment software, since that combination covers day-to-day order fulfilment end to end.
These terms get used loosely and interchangeably, which is where most of the confusion in this space comes from. The below comparison table and explanatory text
| Fulfilment | 3PL | 4PL | Freight forwarder | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Storing, picking, packing, and shipping individual customer orders | Warehousing, fulfilment, and/or transport — runs operations directly | Manages and optimises the entire supply chain on a client's behalf | Books transport, plans routes, handles customs documentation |
| Physically handles goods? | Yes | Yes | Not directly — coordinates others who do | No — acts as intermediary only |
| Scope | Narrowest — order-level only | Broader — can include storage, freight, distribution | Broadest — oversees multiple 3PLs/carriers | Narrow — transport and documentation only |
| Best suited to | Any business needing order despatch | Most growing ecommerce businesses | Larger, multi-region operations with complex supply chains | Businesses needing international shipping/customs expertise |
Fulfilment is a subset of what a 3PL does: specifically, storing, picking, packing, and shipping individual customer orders. A 3PL can offer fulfilment, but the term itself is broader and can also cover bulk pallet storage, freight, and distribution that has nothing to do with individual ecommerce orders.
A 3PL executes specific logistics operations directly, such as running the warehouse, doing the picking and packing, and managing the WMS.
A 4PL (fourth-party logistics provider) operates a level above. Rather than running operations themselves, they act as a single point of contact who selects, manages, and optimises the entire supply chain, often coordinating multiple 3PLs and carriers on a client's behalf. If a 3PL starts subcontracting parts of its own service to other providers, it's effectively behaving as a 4PL for that function.
Most growing ecommerce businesses need a 3PL, not a 4PL. 4PL arrangements tend to suit larger, multi-region operations with genuinely complex, multi-vendor supply chains.
A freight forwarder doesn't typically store or pick-and-pack goods: they act as an intermediary, booking transportation, planning routes, and handling customs documentation between a business and the carriers who do the actual moving.
A 3PL, by contrast, generally takes physical responsibility for the goods themselves, whether that's holding them in a warehouse or handling them through the full pick-and-pack process.
A useful shorthand: a freight forwarder gets your belongings from A to B; a 3PL is closer to a full house-moving service, handling storage and unpacking too.
| Running it yourself | Using Storeship | |
|---|---|---|
| Warehouse/premises | Lease a premises, often on a minimum 5-year commitment | None required |
| Racking & storage fit-out | Buy and install shelving, racking, goods-in areas | Included |
| Materials handling | Forklifts, pallet trucks, sack trucks, trolleys | Included |
| Staff | Hire, train, and manage warehouse staff | Included |
| Hardware | Industrial scanners, label printers, computers | Included |
| Software | License and set up stock management software | Free, included as standard |
| Utilities | Electricity, phone, internet for the warehouse | Included |
| Pricing model | Fixed overheads regardless of order volume | Pay-as-you-go — pick & pack from £0.50/order, shipping from 75p |
| Minimum commitment | Often a multi-year lease | No minimum order or stock requirements |
Most of these trade-offs come down to one thing: choosing a provider with genuinely good software and communication minimises nearly every risk on this list.
Should you outsource? Answer these 5 questions
If you answered yes to two or more, it's worth comparing what your current setup is actually costing you in time, errors, and missed growth against what outsourcing would cost. Get a free, no-obligation quote to see the real numbers for your business.
There's no single industry figure here — pricing depends on storage volume, order frequency, item size, and which services you actually use. Price can comprise:
Pricing is also influenced by factors outside the rate card itself: warehouse location (regions with higher land and labour costs typically charge more), order volume and consistency (steadier volumes reduce per-unit costs), and SKU complexity or seasonal peaks (which add handling and labour overhead).
Some providers charge ongoing account or platform fees on top of usage costs; others run a pure pay-as-you-go model with no minimum order or stock commitments, which tends to suit smaller or seasonal sellers better than fixed monthly contracts. You can see exactly how this breaks down on our fulfilment pricing page, or request a free quote tailored to your order volume.
Rather than just comparing price lists, it helps to think about a provider across a few key points:
EU customs changes from July 2026: what UK sellers need to know
From 1 July 2026, the EU removed its long-standing duty-free exemption for parcels valued under €150. In its place, a temporary flat customs duty of €3 applies to each item in a parcel, based on its tariff classification rather than the parcel as a whole — so a shipment containing three different product types would incur three separate €3 charges. The rule applies to goods entering the EU from outside the bloc, including from the UK, and runs until 2028 while the EU builds a permanent replacement system. It sits alongside import VAT, which already applied to all EU imports regardless of value, so it's an additional cost rather than a substitute.
For UK sellers shipping direct to EU customers, this makes every order more expensive to land. Sellers who fulfil from an EU-based warehouse avoid it altogether for their EU orders, since stock is imported into the EU once in bulk rather than parcel by parcel — the duty applies to goods crossing into the EU, not to orders moving within it.
On top of that framework, a few practical UK-specific checks:
3PL, at its core, means handing the physical side of running an online store — storage, picking, packing, shipping, and often returns — to a specialist, so you can spend your time on sourcing, marketing, and growing the business instead of running a stockroom. Whether it's worth it for you comes down to order volume, margins, and how much of your week is currently disappearing into packing tape.
If you're weighing up outsourced fulfilment for your own store, Storeship has been running UK and Spain fulfilment since 2009, currently processing stock for hundreds of ecommerce sellers. Find out more about Storeship, or get a free, no-obligation quote. Pay-as-you-go, with no minimum order or stock requirements, free cloud-based fulfilment software, and a dedicated account manager as standard.
Storeship works for businesses of almost any size, from sellers just starting out to established brands shipping thousands of orders a month. We run on a pay-as-you-go model with no minimum order or stock requirements and no account or service charges, so you're never forced to commit to volumes you can't yet guarantee.
No — you hand over the physical handling, not your visibility. Storeship's free cloud-based software gives you 24/7 real-time access to inventory, order status, accounting, and reporting, so you always know exactly what's happening to your stock. You also get a dedicated account manager rather than a generic support queue.
Every order Storeship dispatches goes through a 3-stage check: scanning at pick, scanning at pack, and a check weigh, plus photographic evidence of the final packed parcel. This reduces postal claims by as much as 80% and gives you a clear paper trail if a customer disputes what they received.
Once you've received your bespoke quote, signing up takes around two minutes — you set your username and password and you're in. From there, you ship your stock to us by courier, container, or direct from your manufacturer, we check it in, and it's ready to despatch as soon as orders start coming through your connected sales channels.
No. Storeship operates purely pay-as-you-go — zero account fees, zero management fees, zero software fees, and no minimum order or stock commitments. You only pay for the storage and orders you actually use.
Running fulfilment in-house means leasing a warehouse, fitting it out with racking, buying handling equipment, hiring and training staff, and licensing your own software — all before you've shipped a single order. Storeship removes that upfront outlay entirely: pick and pack starts from £0.50 per order, shipping from 75p, and the fulfilment software is free.
No — Storeship operates from our own warehouses in both Nottingham, UK and Alicante, Spain, so European orders can ship locally from Spain rather than from the UK, helping you avoid additional import VAT and customs delays for EU customers post-Brexit. This is even more relevant from 1 July 2026, when the EU introduced a new customs duty on parcels shipped directly from outside the EU — by fulfilling from our Spain warehouse, your EU orders move as domestic shipments and avoid this charge entirely.
Yes. Our software integrates with Amazon, eBay, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Etsy, TikTok Shop, OnBuy, ShipStation, SquareSpace, and well over a hundred more, fulfilling from one shared stock pool. We also offer a dedicated Amazon FBA prep service, including barcoding, relabelling, and repacking, to keep your products flowing into Amazon's own fulfilment centres.
That's exactly the kind of business our pay-as-you-go model is built for. You're not paying for warehouse space or staff you only need for six weeks a year — 98% of orders received by 3pm are still picked, packed, and shipped the same day, peak season included.
Storeship has been independently owned and operated since March 2009, and is registered under HMRC's Fulfilment House Due Diligence Scheme (FHDDS: XZFH00000100040). We currently process stock for over 700 UK and international ecommerce sellers, having handled more than 944,000 orders across 248 countries served. Full company details, including VAT and EORI registration, are on our About Storeship page, or get in touch directly with any questions before you commit.
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