3PL pricing is built from five core fees — receiving, storage, pick and pack, packaging materials and postage — plus add-ons like kitting, returns and Amazon prep. Because every provider combines them differently, the only reliable comparison is to price one real month of your own order profile against each quote, line by line.
The five core fees
Receiving (inbound)
The cost to unload, count, inspect and log your inventory when it arrives. It may be billed per hour, per pallet, per carton or per unit — ask which, because the same shipment can price very differently under each. A container of small units billed per unit is a large number.
Worth knowing: not everyone charges for it. We do not bill receiving at all.
Storage
What you pay to keep inventory in the warehouse, usually per pallet, shelf or bin, per month. If your product is seasonal or slow-moving, storage quietly becomes one of your largest line items. Watch for minimums, for how partial pallets are counted, and for whether rates step up during Q4 when warehouse space is tight.
Pick and pack
The labor to retrieve items and pack each order. This is usually the headline fulfillment fee, and it is the one quotes compete on. Pay attention to how additional items in an order are charged: a low first-pick fee with a high per-additional-item fee can cost more than the reverse if your average order has three items in it.
Packaging materials
Boxes, mailers, tape, void fill, branded inserts. Some 3PLs include standard packaging in the pick-and-pack fee; others bill it separately at a markup. Ask explicitly. If you want custom packaging, ask who designs and sources it — we do custom shipper and retail boxes, displays and inserts in house.
Shipping (postage and freight)
Usually the largest cost of all, and the one where a high-volume 3PL earns its keep. We hold a large national FedEx account, plus USPS, LTL freight and an international consolidator, at rates a small brand cannot get alone.
The question to ask is simple and revealing: am I billed the discounted rate, or a marked-up rate? Some providers treat postage markup as a profit center, which means the per-pick fee you negotiated hard is not where the money is going.
The fees that are not on the front page
- Kitting and assembly — subscription boxes, bundles, retail displays, special projects. Usually per unit or by the hour.
- Returns processing — receiving, inspecting, restocking or disposing.
- Account or software minimums — a monthly floor whether you ship or not.
- Amazon FBA prep — labeling, polybagging, case configuration, appointment scheduling.
- Retail compliance work — routing guides, EDI, labeling, pallet configuration. Getting this wrong costs chargebacks, which is a fee you pay to the retailer, not the 3PL.
- Special projects and rush — overnight turnarounds, relabeling runs, recalls.
- Inventory insurance — ask what is covered and to what limit. Ours is $2,500 per pallet as standard, with higher limits available for an additional fee.
How to compare two quotes honestly
Take a typical month and write it down before you talk to anyone:
- How many units you receive, and in what form (pallets, cartons, container)
- How many pallets or bins you hold on average
- How many orders ship, and the average number of items per order
- Where they go, by region — this drives postage more than anything else
- Package weight and dimensions for your top few SKUs
- Anything unusual: kits, subscriptions, wholesale cases, hazmat, temperature
Then ask each provider to price that. A single blended per-order number is easy to compare and easy to game. A full itemized estimate against your real profile tells the truth. If a provider will not produce one, you have learned something.
What "cheap" actually costs
The lowest quote is not the lowest cost if it arrives with errors, slow shipping or no support. A 1% error rate against a 4% one, on 10,000 orders a month, is 300 fewer wrecked customer experiences — each of which costs you a replacement, return postage, a support ticket and, often, the customer. That gap dwarfs a few cents on a pick fee.
The same is true of speed. A 9:00am Pacific same-day cutoff and a next-day cutoff are different products. So is a partner who actively looks for savings in your packaging and your zone mix versus one who bills what you ask for and nothing else.
Our own approach is on the pricing page: free receiving, postage passed through at our account rates, a discounted 3-day processing program for brands that do not need same-day, no long-term contract and no hard minimums. We do not publish a rate card, because the honest number depends on your profile — but we will give you an itemized one.
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