Flexport's monthly minimum fulfillment spend rises to $5,000 on January 1, 2026, up from roughly $500 in the second half of 2025, and it is charged as a shortfall across eight billable categories that run from fulfillment and storage to parcel and freight. For the brands Flexport's eCommerce Fulfillment product was originally built to serve, the sub-1,000-orders-per-month Shopify and Walmart sellers who came over from Deliverr, that floor is the signal to look elsewhere.
Switch-intent alternatives for 3PL providers
Start with the provider you may be moving away from, then shortlist stronger fits based on the real operational reason for the switch.

ShipMonk earned its reputation for a reason: a proprietary OMS/WMS, 12 owned fulfillment centers across the US, Canada, the UK, and the Czech Republic, and genuine depth in subscription-box, crowdfunding, and kitting workflows. The reasons brands leave are just as specific. Merchant reviews on Trustpilot and Capterra surface a recurring pattern of billing complexity — hidden line items, billing errors, and charges that push the real cost above the quote. Offboarding draws the loudest complaints: a six-plus-month exit during which storage and monthly minimums keep accruing. Support quality varies by account size, with smaller accounts and peak-season tickets reporting more friction. And the pick-and-pack minimums make the economics inefficient below a few hundred orders a month.

On January 1, 2026, Amazon discontinued FBA prep and labeling services in the US. In May 2025, the platform cut capacity calculations from six months to five months of projected sales. The IPI threshold to avoid storage limits rose from 500 to 550. Aged-inventory fees on 12-to-15-month-old units doubled to $0.30 per unit per month. Low-inventory-level fees now require 35 days of stock to dodge a per-unit penalty, up from 28 days a year ago. None of these are line items a seller can model away — they are structural shifts in what FBA costs and how it constrains an inventory plan.
ShipBob is a default shortlist pick for growth-stage DTC brands, and for good reason. The software is polished, the network spans roughly sixty nodes, and the Shopify integration is among the cleanest in the category. But default is not the same as right. Most merchants looking for an alternative are not unhappy with ShipBob as a company. They have usually outgrown it in one direction or run into its limits in another.
