Easy Ship or Self Ship – Which One is Best for Your Amazon business?

Amazon provides the bestselling platform for its sellers. Currently, there are more than 2.5 million active sellers in the marketplace. To sell your products on amazon you didn’t need to spend much on marketing and acquiring new customers. 

Amazon offers two types of selling services, one is Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), where you send your inventory to Amazon’s fulfilment centres and amazon performs the shipping when the products get sold. Another selling service is called Fulfilment by Merchant (FBM). In this service, sellers are responsible to handle the inventory on their own and will ship the products to the buyers when the products get sold.

FBM is further categorized into two parts; that is Easy ship and Self-ship. In Easy ship, amazon will assist you in shipping your products, while using Self ship you will need to ship your products to the buyer by own or using a courier service. 

For an independent seller, this is the point of confusion to choose between Easy ship and Self ship. Therefore, we discuss here which one is best for your Amazon business. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Ease of Business

With amazon Easy ship, you don’t need to go anywhere to ship your products. Just set the date and time for item pickup and amazon employee will pick the product from your warehouse and rest is the job of the amazon employee. 

If you are using Self ship then you will perform tasks like procuring orders, packing, labelling and in the end shipping the sold products to your buyer. So, you need to put in a little more effort. 

Control over Business

It’s obvious that you have more control over your business while making use of Self ship. This time you are in charge of your shipping, more independent and you don’t rely much on someone’s approval. You can also experiment with cheaper rates and uncomplicated methods.

Furthermore, you can expand your business to other marketplaces as you have more control over inventory.

Charges

With Self ship, you can choose to work with a lower-cost logistics company and save on costs, while Amazon Easy Ship charges you more than Self ship. But customer gets the confidence of Fulfilment by Amazon when you use Easyship.

Time Constraint

On-time delivery of a product is crucial in online selling. It may take time to ship the product to the customer. Sometimes the courier didn’t deliver the product on time, and other times the circumstances may impact the shipping process. Your ranking can be affected if you don’t follow time protocols. You may face this problem on the Self ship.

On the other hand, with Easy ship, it’s the job of the Amazon authorized person to deliver the product on time. Your ranking will not be affected in case of late delivery. For tracking orders, the sellers can know the exact location of their sold product.

Cash on Delivery (COD) Service

You can provide COD service to your customer if you are on Amazon Easy ship. In today’s digital world most of the customers still prefer COD in India. One problem is in the case of unserious buyers, they make an order for buying a product. When the product reaches them or on the way, they refuse to buy it. So, there is a risk of loss.

You will not face this problem with Self ship as this service doesn’t offer COD. If you want to receive prepaid payment only, then Self ship is the best option for you. However, Easy ship allows you to target a huge chunk of buyers who love to pay using COD service, especially in India. 

Return Request

While utilizing Easy ship, Amazon has to play the role of shipping your products. In this case, if the buyer requests for order refusal, his/her request will always be accepted. The unsold product will be returned and you will be charged its one side shipping cost.  

The Self ship gives you control of authorizing and accepting each request. If required you can contact the customer and resolve issue outside of the Amazon system.

Conclusion:

We hope this comparison will help you in making a decision that will favour your business and your requirements. Make a choice that best supports your business and offer top-notch services to your customers. 

If you are new to Amazon, check out our article on how to get first sale.