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.
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!
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.
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.
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.