TL;DR
One of the top questions I hear from brand owners is, how much does fulfillment cost?
Most 3PLs make pricing way more convoluted than it needs to be. In this breakdown, I'll explain 3PL pricing—postage, pick & pack, storage, and more—for typical US domestic orders. This includes all fixed and variable costs to round-trip your stuff through a 3PL to your consumer's doorstep: pick & pack, postage, shipping supplies, storage, inbound, account management, and returns. This excludes manufacturing costs, air/sea freight from your manufacturer to your 3PL's dock, or customer-acquisition costs. This post breaks down real-world 3PL pricing and shows how to reduce costs without sacrificing service.
By Nish George · CEO, Fetch Fulfillment · Published July 2025
Notice that postage is the #1 logistics cost for every DTC brand, followed by pick & pack. When shopping across 3PLs, you'll be best served by focusing on those 2 categories above all else.
Postage and pick & pack are where the real money goes. Focus on these when comparing 3PLs.
Now for the secret sauce: how do you lower these costs?
Throughout my journey of saving Amazon $250MM per year in fulfillment costs, and now as I run a DTC 3PL serving several dozen brands, I've discovered 3 main levers to lower fulfillment costs that every DTC brand needs to know and discuss with their 3PL:
Encourage multi-item purchases with free shipping thresholds. The more items per order, the lower your per-unit fulfillment cost.
Pre-box your products. This reduces labor, cuts down on packaging materials, and helps avoid DIM-weight surcharges.
Higher volumes unlock:
If your products are heavy or your customers are spread coast to coast, multi-warehouse fulfillment (e.g., East + West Coast) can dramatically reduce postage costs.
Do these numbers still feel too expensive for your brand? Are you only making $0.50-3.00 per unit sold after production and customer-acquisition costs? That usually means direct-to-consumer is not the best sales channel for your product, at least based on today’s US logistics landscape (which will change … I'm happy to discuss what's coming in our industry privately). In that case, your best sales channels might be traditional retail or wholesale.
Reminder: Retailers often expect 50% margins, but fulfillment costs shift to them.
At Fetch Fulfillment, we provide transparent pricing, real-time invoicing, and clear cost-per-order analytics so you can protect your margin.
Let’s break down your costs together. Book a call today.
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Fetch Fulfillment is a New Jersey-based 3PL for brand owners who want direct-to-consumer fulfillment to be the least stressful part of their business. Most 3PLs are good at one thing, like shipping on-time, or having modern tech, or picking up the phone. What makes Fetch unique is that it's stellar at all 3: it provides high-end boutique-grade customer service -- as seen in its glowing reviews and +92 net promoter score -- combined with its real-time cutting-edge tech and well-managed operation, with 99.2% same-day shipping and 99.95% order fill-rate. The Fetch team lives by its motto: they are Your Brand's Best Friend.
