laurabw

Yes, we do!

Valid question. General answer is that we and other companies in this space are fairly young companies and most of us haven't been able to tackle that problem yet. We are all working our way upstream.

We have multi package shipments in beta. Here's the gist: https://gist.github.com/sbeidas/0c3e1364abc077543996f97f9aa7... It's live and in prod but beta. Let me know if there's feedback

FedEx is not really focused on same day/same hour intra city delivery. Most of the shipping providers have an infrastructure around warehouses set in place. This means that the shipping providers picks up all packages and then brings them to a warehouse where they are sorted and then shipped out again. UberRush comes to the pick-up location and directly brings it to the recipient.

We integrated the UberRush API as part of our multi-carrier shipping API https://goshippo.com/shipping-blog/introducing-uberrush-ship... It's interesting to see Uber entering the space of same day delivery. Happy to chat about the integration experience if anyone is interested!

Do you guys have funding? If so, you will have to be respectful of the trust that your investors placed into you three as people. It's your duty to your investors do what's best for business.

Totally understand that passion is hard to control. In this case, especially if outside capital is involved, I'd say "mind over body."

If there is no outside capital involved you'd have to consider the trade-off startup vs. love. That's your private decision and don't let anybody judge you no matter what you end up deciding. Make sure that you have a convo with her before you make a decision. You wouldn't want an expectation mismatch after you have given up your startup for her. If you decide for the startup and against her you should also have a serious convo about not having hard feelings when working together in the future. Good luck!

We just published an API update that allows multi-account endpoints for each shipping provider. I'll be here if you have any feedback!

Hi Jack5500, check out www.goshippo.com. API access is free, large European countries are already supported.

Hi Berkes, let's talk about this via email. I'm laura(at)goshippo.com. We'd love to prioritise countries for the HN community and would like to learn more about your shipping needs & preferences!

Hey jsilence, thanks for the great attitude. Which country are you based in? Is it already in our database? Let me know when you use it and I'll get you a test account :)

Hi solscreen, not exactly. ShipHawk is offering the most convenient service to their US customers. Focus is on convenience (they're doing an amazing job at picking up stuff and packing for you), not price sensitivity, transparency or variety. They help you with packaging especially with items that are very difficult to pack (furniture etc). We're a big database for all local and international delivery services (not only the 4 big ones FedEx, UPS, TNT, DHL). We compare and we allow you to buy the shipping labels.

Thanks a lot for letting us know! :)

You're right. It's still a MVP with. Sorry about that!

Hi ChrisNorstrom, I appreciate your concern and thanks for the feedback. We've integrated the official APIs of FedEx, UPS and USPS and are optimising the results every day. I will look into the points you mentioned and check if they are not reflected by the APIs already. We are aware of the residential vs commercial address difference and as of tomorrow we'll have the differentiation live.

Hi realcul, we're hosting on AWS with elastic load balancing.

I don't know a service that offers multiple courier services and allows multiple accounts... If you want you can integrate the API of one courier service, such as UPS, and offer access with multiple accounts. Or you can use Easypost and have access to multiple courier services with one single account. I'm sorry that I couldn't be more helpful. Good luck!

Hi dsugarman, in the long term we want to be able to connect the local courier service seamlessly the way you described it. This would offer really competitive prices but as you mentioned it is a quite difficult task. That's why we've been focussing on local courier services first that deliver cross border. I'm talking about services such as DPD or GLS in Europe.

Hi volandovenge, I just love getting positive feedback! What country are you sending from? If it's not in our database let me know and I'll prioritise it for you. Btw. we're offering test accounts to the HN community as a thank you for the time you took to give me feedback. Test accounts won't take commission for a while. Let me know if you need one. I'm laura(at)goshippo.com

Thanks for understanding :) I'm offering the HN community the service without commission as a thank you for their feedback. Let me know when you want to use it and I'll give you a test account. I'm laura(at)goshippo.com

Hi hoopism, thanks for letting me know. We are also able to show domestic shipments (the rates are not the best). The problem is because our server can't handle the massive traffic from HN. I apologise for the inconvenience, I'm really sorry about the server issues!!

I'm sincerely sorry about the server problems. We received an overwhelming response from the HN community today (thanks!) and the server became quite slow because of that. We didn't expect that and were unprepared with our MVP. Yes, depending on the courier service we're sometimes able to pass on our discounts.

Hi frankdenbow, it's great to hear from you. My favourite point of differentiation between us and all existing shipping startups is that we're building a database that aims at integrating all existing courier service not only the 4 big ones (FedEx, UPS, TNT, DHL). The main thought behind our concept is that the small local courier services mostly offer much more competitive prices than the big 4 ones. However, they are difficult to find and compare and most people don't bother searching. At the same time we're negotiating with our courier services to get discounts because of economics of scale. Right now, our discounts are not very high yet. But as traffic increases we'll be able to go back to the courier services and negotiate better rates. That's the goal!

Hi mc32, thanks for your positive response. I'm glad you like it. Yes, we have a lot of expansion plans. But step after step ;) We're going into new countries first and working with beta customers to improve our existing product.

Ok, this is really good to know... Thanks.

Hi smailex, sure! We're building a database that will eventually include all international courier services not only the 4 big ones (FedEx, UPS, TNT, DHL). I understand that smailex only integrates FedEx and UPS, right?

Never thought about it like that... We needed a name for the domain and chose this one because I thought we could have a Hippo (the animal) in our logo. I really like how mailchimp uses their logo to make their service a bit cooler. Thanks for mentioning.

I agree with your point and we never had the intention to mislead our customers. I'm sorry if it appeared as if we were trying to mislead them! We just launched and there was no bad intention behind putting the logos up there. I guess we were just a little too rash with that decision. We're currently in talks with both TNT and DHL and will have them in the database within the next two weeks. I'd just like to assure you again that there was no bad intention at all!

Hi tbran, thanks for leaving a comment. Here's my take on your concerns: Easypost is a really great service. They were in YC and I think they are a great choice for the flow you mentioned. We're quite different from them (while we're still addressing the same problem).

The address_line 1 is not necessary to get an accurate quote. However, it is necessary to generate a label that you'll need for sending the package. You'll have to be careful to enter the correct address. FedEx charges extra afterwards for address corrections. Our goal was to build an API that allows you to get accurate quotes without having to enter a lot of data. However for the final label purchase the exact address will be necessary.

UPS/FedEx etc. don't allow you to pass on your account to people that are not directly connected with your business. I assume that is what you meant by "messy." If you still want to do that stripe connect is certainly a good choice. This is exactly what we're working on - to get contracts with courier services to eliminate this problem.

About the flow that we had envisioned for our service: customers choose the product they want to buy -> tell us in which country they live -> we show them all available courier services -> they chose the servicelevel that suits their needs best (fastest, cheapest, whatever) -> check out -> the label is directly sent to the vendor -> vendor sticks it on the package -> brings it to the post office/gets pickup (vendor can specify if only pickups are allowed & which day is best for pick up) -> done (all through API)

Just email me at laura(at)goshippo.com if you have any more questions. Happy to help out.

Hi mansigandhi, good luck with your launch next week :)

Hi jamese, the API will be ready next week! Purolator and Canada Post it is. Can I get back in touch with you when we have them integrated? Also, if you can spare some time I'd really like to learn more about what kind of pain you were experiencing with the courier services so we know what not to do!! My email is laura(at)goshippo.com

Hey tengkahwee, thanks for your feedback. We're moving to Asia next. Just promised another commentator to do India first but after that I'll get Singapore into the database. Can I get back to you when we're ready? Would you like to beta test?