Choosing the right e-commerce logistics solution
As an e-commerce retailer, your business’s success largely depends on the delivery company and shipping options you offer your customers. Choosing the right e-commerce logistics solution is a very important decision. The good news is: you have lots of options out there to choose from, including MyDPD. Yet, with all the different options, it can sometimes be difficult to tell which solution actually offers the services and features you need most.
To help you in your journey towards the optimal e-commerce shipping solution, this article looks at the MyDPD digital shipping platform from DPD. We’ll examine the platform’s main benefits to give you an idea of what this online shipping tool can do for you. At the same time, we’ll look at how it stacks up against the features Sendcloud offers you. This will help you make an informed choice about which solution offers the set of features and functionalities that works best for you and your customers.
What is MyDPD?
DPD itself was founded in Germany in 1977 and has grown to become one of Europe’s leading B2B and B2C couriers. Since 2001, it has been a subsidiary of the French conglomerate Geopost/La Poste. DPD also runs various subsidiary companies of its own and maintains a large network of local international logistics partners, including national postal services. Each year, it delivers over 3 million packages from its network of over 500 depots, operating in 230 countries.
Getting started with MyDPD
To use MyDPD as a business customer, you can request an individualised price quote from DPD based on your business’s shipping needs. If you choose to sign a contract with DPD, you have access to the MyDPD platform, where you can manage your shipping orders. The platform also offers integrations (plugins) for many different e-commerce platforms. This enables you to integrate MyDPD and its various features right into your online shop and back office infrastructure.
Using the online MyDPD platform, business customers can manage their e-commerce shipping. This means performing routine, repetitive tasks, like…
- creating shipping labels
- generating customs documentation
- tracking shipments
- handling returns
- applying shipping insurance
… and more.
We’ll discuss all these features in greater detail below.
DPD shipping options in MyDPD
Shipments handled through MyDPD are subject to DPD shipping rules. You can use DPD Classic and DPD Express services to send parcels of up to 31.5 kg. DPD also offers special transport services for products like food and wine.
In terms of delivery options, DPD offers home delivery, delivery at the customer’s place of work and delivery for collection at one of its approximately 5,000 parcel shops around the world. For home delivery, DPD offers up to three delivery attempts before delivering to a parcel shop or returning the package to the sender.
How does MyDPD work?
How does MyDPD work?You can use MyDPD either through an online login or as an integration into your own customer relations management (CRM) system or other back office software. In any case, MyDPD offers a transparent, user-friendly and interactive interface with many of the main features you may be looking for in your logistics solution.
Within the MyDPD environment, you can check shipping orders to make sure information is correct and shipments are on track. You can also place shipping orders for orders coming from your shop software or merchandise management system (MMS). The shipment ID numbers for these orders can then be exported back to your shop or MMS, along with shipping and returns labels for each shipping order. MyDPD lets you automatically print shipping and return labels too, either individually or in batches.
These are all useful features for any e-commerce business. At the same time, virtually every online shipping platform offers features like these. That means you might need to consider other factors, like cost and user-friendliness when comparing MyDPD to other single-provider platforms. Still, MyDPD emphasizes a few specific advantages that make it more attractive than some of its competitors. We’ll take a look at these below.
What are the advantages of MyDPD?
MyDPD wants to stand out from other online platforms with a few of its specific features. Here’s a quick overview of the main advantages that MyDPD offers e-commerce retailers:
- Shipping management: You can log in and make changes to a shipment (such as correcting or updating recipient address info) at any time during the shipping process.
- Tracking: Access to the DPD Predict tracking system, which includes live tracking options for customers, as well as flexible and adjustable delivery options.
- Tariff calculation: An interactive calculating tool to calculate tariff rates on international shipments.
- Airway bills: Ready-to-use printable airway bills.
- Address book: The option to create a personal database within MyDPD where you can store and manage customer/recipient address information.
- Easy invoice management: Online paperless invoicing.
- Reporting: Detailed reporting options, giving you analytics and insights into your business’s shipping trends.
- Automated customs documents: Calculating customs duties and charges in advance, as well as paperless customs processing (customs documentation is submitted directly to the recipient country electronically).
- Fast shipment: Air freight shipping to more than 30 countries, with delivery times between 3 and 8 days.
- Vast network: Worldwide partnerships with local carriers to carry out door-to-door delivery.
- Transparent pricing: Prices are based on 0.5 kg parcel prices and charged at increments of 0.5 kg. DPD does not use dimensional/volumetric weight pricing.
- Compatibility: You can import shipping orders from your own shop software, from eBay or in the form of a CSV file.
- Integrations: MyDPD and its interface can be integrated into many different CRMs and shop management systems using plugins and custom-built solutions.
Comparing MyDPD with Sendcloud
With all its benefits, MyDPD offers a solid set of functionalities that are useful for most e-commerce retailers. But how does it compare with Sendcloud? Are there any benefits included with MyDPD that Sendcloud can’t offer? Let’s see how these two popular e-commerce shipping solutions rank when we compare them side by side.
Shipping
MyDPD offers you access to the DPD shipping network, which gives you a choice of standard and express shipping options, including air freight shipping to some destination countries. Generating your shipping labels, airway bills and other shipping documents is relatively easy. You can input address information manually (though this would be very time-consuming), or import shipping orders from eBay or using a CSV file. Automatic shipping order generation is also possible, but requires a custom integration into your existing web shop software or CRM. That means automatically generating shipping labels on an order-by-order basis may be more costly and time intensive to get started. The alternative of repeatedly importing CSV files is not always a very efficient solution either.
Sendcloud offers some advantages when generating shipping orders. When you use Sendcloud on your online shop, all you need to do is integrate your DPD business contract into it, and then all your incoming orders will be automatically captured by our shipping tool. You’ll never have to manually enter a customer address or spend time importing CSV files. With just one click, you’re ready to print a complete DPD label for your orders.
Returns
Since the returns process is such a critical customer service task for e-commerce retailers, it’s important for you to make it as user-friendly as possible. Ideally, you should offer a one-stop solution for customers who want to return merchandise. That means enabling them to handle returns directly on your site. This is much more intuitive and customer friendly than simply referring your customers to a third-party logistics partner and asking them to sort out the return shipping themselves.
MyDPD offers various options for handling return shipments: you can enclose a return shipping label with your packages, send return labels by email or let customers generate labels using a special DPD app. You can monitor your returns via the MyDPD interface. For example, you can check to see when a return package has been collected or handed over at a DPD parcel station. It is also possible to custom-integrate the MyDPD returns interface into your merchandise management system, so you can monitor your inventory more effectively. However, customers will still wind up dealing with DPD online directly when organising a return. This may not be the most customer-friendly approach.
Sendcloud enables your company to offer a personalised return shipping platform from your own online shop. That means your return process reflects your own brand and serves as an additional customer-friendly touchpoint with your shoppers. If a customer wants to return merchandise, they can simply go straight to your site (not to DPD or another third-party site), log in to their account and generate a printable return label. You also get a complete overview of your returns, including up-to-date status reports directly in the Sendcloud platform.
Tracking
MyDPD offers detailed tracking thanks to the built-in DPD Predict technology. This is a customer-friendly tracking service that lets your customers monitor and control their shipping status. Meanwhile, you maintain a full overview of where your packages are, so you can easily respond to any shipment-related queries if customers contact you directly. The drawback from a customer-experience perspective is that customers will receive notifications from DPD, not you, and their tracking experience will take place outside of your online shop. That means you miss out on a great opportunity to welcome existing customers back to your shop when they want to track the status of a shipment.
Sendcloud offers a personalised tracking experience for your customers. Forget about generic dispatch and tracking notifications and offer your customers branded, personalised messaging instead. Customers love to be able to track their order shipping status, so they will almost certainly open these notifications in their inbox. That makes your personalised shipping messages a useful touchpoint. Now, you can use them to advertise additional products and services, promote your social media channels or simply enhance the customer experience through personalised, friendly messaging.
Insurance
If you use MyDPD to generate your shipping orders, your parcel or express shipment is automatically insured at no additional cost for up to €520 (£460) in value. This is slightly more generous than some other carriers, like DHL Business, for example, which insures for €500 (£440).
Of course, if you are using DPD via Sendcloud, you also enjoy the exact same free insurance. On top of that, you have the flexibility to apply cost-effective extra insurance, whenever you want, on shipments that exceed the €520 value limit with DPD. So, Sendcloud offers flexible, customised insurance that covers the contents of your parcel, no matter what the value.
Flexibility and Multiple Shipping Partners
What if you want to offer your customers multiple shipping options based on factors like shipping costs, delivery times or the size, weight and value of the merchandise? With MyDPD, your choice of logistics partners will obviously be limited to DPD and its own network of affiliated local carriers. That leaves your choices fairly limited, which is generally also a turn-off for customers. In fact, two out of three online shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if they’re not satisfied with the shipping options and carrier offered.
This is one area where Sendcloud offers a clear advantage over working with MyDPD alone. Using Sendcloud, you can offer your customers shipping from numerous leading carriers including UPS, DHL, GLS, local postal services and, of course, DPD. So, there’s no need to limit flexibility or force customers into a one-size-fits-all shipping solution. Instead, you can offer customer-friendly shipping solutions that work best for all your various shoppers’ preferences and needs.
Smart Shipping Rules
Within your Sendcloud portal, you can easily create shipping rules based on ‘If this…. then that…‘ formulas. This is another area where Sendcloud provides a clear advantage over MyDPD. The fully customisable shipping rules in Sendcloud allow you to preselect specific carriers and shipping options based on ‘if’ factors like parcel weight, size, value, destination country and shipment type. This is very useful when working with multiple shipping partners, so that you can always predefine the most (cost‑)effective shipping choices for your incoming orders. As a result, your orders are shipped up to three times more efficiently, saving you time and money, and enriching your shoppers’ customer experience.
MyDPD does not offer you the option of creating customised shipping rules. That means all your shipping orders will be subject to the same conditions. Of course, you can still offer your customers a choice between DPD’s standard or express delivery options.
Service
MyDPD offers an extensive B2B Help section with FAQs, handbooks and other instructions. You can also submit service queries online and receive answers from DPD’s B2B support team. Some of DPD’s online resources are currently only available in German, so it may be harder to find what you are looking for if you are searching for answers to specific questions in English or another language. However, DPD does offer multilingual support when you contact them.
Sendcloud also offers full-service support, helping you to set up your own Sendcloud portal and integrate multiple carriers. We assign a personal contact partner to your account, so you always have someone you can reach out to directly in case of any questions. The Sendcloud Helpcenter gives you quick access to useful information on all the most important topics. It is organised into easy-to-navigate categories to help you find what you’re looking for. Plus, we offer technical support in English, French, Dutch and German.
Integration
MyDPD offers standard plugins for integrating into most major shop systems. Sendcloud is easy to integrate into all conventional shop systems and marketplaces. While the MyDPD integration gives you easy access to your DPD shipping services, Sendcloud lets you manage all your carrier options within one single portal. This eliminates the need for multiple integrations with various shipping partners that you may contract with. You can integrate Sendcloud into the following shop systems and marketplaces:
- WooCommerce
- Shopify
- Shopware
- Magento
- STRATO
- PrestaShop
- Lightspeed
- Etsy
- eBay
- Amazon
- OXID
- and many others…
Making an informed choice
We hope this article has given you some new insights into what MyDPD can do, how it compares with Sendcloud and what you need from your delivery company. Our goal is to save you time and make your decision-making process easier. That’s the same approach that Sendcloud applies to our online shipping solutions for e-commerce.
If you’re curious about what Sendcloud can do for your online business, then please request your free demo to learn more. Find out why more than 15,000 online retailers already trust us for fast, efficient and affordable shipping solutions.
