Shippo

Shippo provides a multi-carrier shipping platform designed to streamline logistics for businesses. Its core product offers an integrated solution for generating shipping labels, tracking packages, and comparing rates across various carriers through both an API and a user-friendly web application. This comprehensive approach simplifies complex shipping operations, allowing businesses to efficiently manage their fulfillment processes and optimize delivery.

The company was co-founded in 2013 by Laura Behrens Wu and Simon Kreuz. Their foundational insight stemmed from their personal experience building an online store, where they encountered significant inefficiencies and complexities in managing shipping. This firsthand challenge led them to create a solution that would abstract away the difficulties of e-commerce shipping, making it accessible and manageable for businesses of all sizes.

Shippo serves a diverse customer base, including small and mid-sized e-commerce merchants, high-volume brands, marketplaces, and third-party logistics providers. Its long-term vision centers on empowering these businesses by simplifying the entire shipping ecosystem. By continuously enhancing its platform, Shippo aims to enable a delightful shipping experience for customers and foster growth for its merchant partners in the evolving landscape of online retail.

High-Level Overview

Shippo is a leading multi-carrier shipping platform for modern e-commerce, founded in 2013 to simplify shipping for businesses of all sizes by providing access to 40+ global carriers, real-time rates, label printing, international paperwork automation, tracking, and returns.[2][3][8] It serves over 300,000 businesses including e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Wix, marketplaces, warehouses, and brands, solving the complexities of shipping—such as carrier management, compliance, and optimization—to enable cheaper, faster, and more reliable delivery options internationally.[1][2][4] With a developer-friendly API and seamless web interface, Shippo powers hundreds of millions of shipments annually, valued at over $1 billion, and demonstrates strong growth through innovations like AI-driven tools and platform integrations.[2][3][6]

Origin Story

Shippo was founded in fall 2013 by two German business school dropouts, Laura Behrens Wu (current CEO) and Simon Kreuz, who initially launched an online handbag store but pivoted after struggling with shipping complexities.[3] Convinced they could build a better solution, they created Shippo as a software platform to make shipping intuitive and accessible, starting with a focus on e-commerce merchants.[2][3] Early traction came from addressing pain points like carrier negotiations; they raised a $7 million Series A in 2016 to scale, eventually partnering with major carriers like USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, and achieving product-market fit multiple times by expanding from SMBs to enterprise platforms.[3][5]

Core Differentiators

• Multi-Carrier Expertise and Integrations: Supports 40+ carriers with discounted rates, compliance management, and innovations like the first FedEx platform account for SMBs, plus pre-built integrations with Shopify, Amazon, Magento, and others.[2][3][4][5]
• Developer-Friendly API and Web App: Offers a robust API for custom solutions, alongside an intuitive web interface for SMBs to handle rates, labels, automations, insurance, and tracking without technical hassle.[1][5][7]
• AI-Powered Automation (Shippo MCP): Launched as the first agentic shipping platform, it uses natural language prompts and a decade of data to automate workflows, surface trends, and simplify decisions, built on deep logistics infrastructure.[2]
• Shipping Elements for Platforms: Provides embeddable components for e-commerce platforms like Wix to natively integrate shipping, reducing development time while leveraging Shippo's scale for route optimization and global compliance.[3][4]
• Ease and Affordability: Focuses on speed (bulk labels, automations), international ease, and cost savings, leveling the playing field for merchants without in-house logistics teams.[1][5][7]

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Shippo rides the explosive growth of e-commerce, projected to surpass $6 trillion in sales by 2023, where shipping has become a mission-critical service alongside payments and marketing.[4] Its timing aligns with rising merchant demands for seamless post-purchase experiences amid supply chain disruptions and global expansion, enabling platforms and 3PLs to offload complex carrier relationships and compliance.[2][3][4] By influencing ecosystem partners like Wix and Shopify through APIs and Shipping Elements, Shippo standardizes shipping intelligence, accelerates platform innovation, and democratizes access to enterprise-grade logistics for SMBs.[2][3][4]

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Shippo is poised to deepen its AI layer with Shippo MCP, expanding agentic automation across logistics to handle even more complex workflows and predictive optimizations.[2] Trends like AI-driven commerce, rising international trade, and platform-native services will propel its upmarket shift, potentially powering shipping for millions more merchants via ecosystem integrations.[2][3][4] As e-commerce evolves, Shippo's influence could grow into the foundational "shipping OS" for global retail, sustaining its mission to make delivery the cheapest, fastest, and most reliable for every customer.[1][2]