Shopify, UPS cut deal to lower rates for online retailers

Christmas is coming early for smaller retailers looking to boost online sales. A UPS-Shopify rate deal puts smaller retailers one step closer to competing with Amazon.com’s extensive logistics advantage, by offering lower rates usually reserved for larger customers.

Shopify now features a UPS-hosted dashboard on its platform. Henceforth, the hundreds of thousands of small U.S.-based businesses that use Shopify will receive competitive, pre-negotiated domestic and international rates that save on list prices, along with streamlined shipping and fulfillment services.

“By embedding UPS natively into Shopify’s platform, merchants will get the breadth and reliability of UPS’ services to more than 220 countries and territories, while easily managing all aspects of shipping and fulfillment in one place,” said Jerome Roberts, UPS’s vice president of global product innovation at UPS. Shopify merchants, he added, now have access to UPS’ itools and can provide services that are similar to larger e-commerce companies.

Shopify already offers special negotiated rates with DHL Express, and says that adding UPS will result in future savings on pickups, as well as direct shipping to UPS Access Point locations and integration of UPS My Choice services.