How to Choose a 3PL: A 7-Point Checklist
Per-order price is the least useful number on a 3PL rate card. Here is what to look at instead.
Most brands pick a 3PL on price per order, sign, and discover three months later that the cheap per-order rate was never the number that mattered. Receiving fees, storage minimums, and a bad shipping zone quietly cost far more than the ten cents you saved on pick-and-pack.
Here is the checklist we would use if we were shopping for a fulfillment partner — including the questions that make a bad fit reveal itself early.
1. Start with the shipping zone, not the price list
Your per-order fee is a small, predictable cost. Your shipping spend is a large, variable one — and it is decided almost entirely by how far your parcels travel. A warehouse one zone closer to your customers can cut more from your monthly bill than any pick-and-pack discount.
Ask any prospective 3PL: what percentage of my orders would land in zones 1–4 from your facility? A partner who can answer that with your own order data is doing the analysis that matters. Shipping from Houston reaches roughly 60% of the US population in two days by ground, which is why the zone math tends to favour Texas for national brands.
2. Get the full fee schedule in writing — all of it
The per-order fee is the headline. These are the line items that actually move the total:
- Receiving — per pallet, per carton, or per hour? Per-hour receiving is where surprise invoices come from.
- Storage — per pallet, per bin, per cubic foot, and whether there is a minimum.
- Additional items — the cost of the second and third unit in an order, which is most of your volume if you sell multi-item carts.
- Account or platform fees — monthly minimums, "technology" surcharges, integration setup.
- Special projects — relabeling, rework, returns handling, anything outside the standard flow.
Take your last full month of orders and ask each candidate to price that exact month. You will get comparable numbers instead of comparable rate cards. Our own breakdown of Houston 3PL costs walks through what each of these should reasonably run.
3. Check the integration actually does what you need
"We integrate with Shopify" can mean a real-time two-way sync or a nightly CSV. Ask specifically: how quickly do orders arrive, how quickly does tracking flow back, how is inventory reconciled, and what happens when a SKU goes out of stock in one channel but not another. If you sell on Amazon, ask how they protect your metrics on Seller-Fulfilled Prime.
4. Ask about receiving speed, not just shipping speed
Everyone quotes a dispatch cut-off. Fewer will commit to how long inventory sits on the dock before it is sellable. A container that takes eight days to check in is eight days of stockouts and paid storage you cannot sell from. If you import, ask whether they can dray and devan the container themselves — every handoff between port, trucker and warehouse is a place for days to disappear.
5. Understand what happens when something goes wrong
Mis-picks, damaged inbound freight, a carrier losing a parcel — these are not hypotheticals, they are Tuesday. Ask what the accuracy guarantee is, who pays to reship a mis-picked order, and how a claim actually gets filed. Ask for the name of the person who answers when you email, and how fast. A 3PL with 99.8% pick accuracy still gets two orders in a thousand wrong, so the recovery process is the real product.
6. Match the volume band honestly
A 3PL built for 50,000 orders a month will not give a 400-order brand attention, and one built for 400 will buckle at 50,000. Ask where you would sit in their client base. Being someone's smallest account is usually worse than being someone's largest.
7. Read the exit clause before you read the pricing
The single most useful thing in a 3PL contract is how you leave it. Look for the notice period, per-unit removal fees, and who pays to transfer inventory. If leaving is expensive, every future negotiation happens with you on the back foot. No long-term lock-in is worth more than a small discount.
A shortlist worth running
Send every candidate the same three things: one month of real order data, your top 20 SKUs with dimensions and weights, and your inbound schedule for the next quarter. Ask each to return a priced month and a receiving timeline. The ones who take it seriously will tell you a lot about how they will handle your account.
If you want that exercise run on your numbers, send us the same data — we will send back a costed month and an honest answer on whether we are the right fit.
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