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What is fulfilment? Meaning, how it works and when it pays off

Fulfilment (or fulfillment) means someone else stores your stock and packs and ships your orders. How e-fulfilment works, what a 3PL is and when outsourcing makes sense.

Fulfilment is everything that happens between an order in your webshop and the parcel arriving at your customer: storage, picking orders, packing, shipping and handling returns. If you outsource it, a fulfilment company does it for you from its own warehouse: the fulfilment centre.

You will also see the spelling fulfillment, with a double l. That is the American spelling; fulfilment is British. Both are correct and they mean the same thing.

Fulfilment, e-fulfilment and 3PL: what is the difference?

Term What it means
Fulfilment / fulfillment Storage, order processing and shipping of orders, for any kind of business
E-fulfilment / e-commerce fulfilment Fulfilment for webshops and marketplaces: lots of small orders, shipped straight to consumers
3PL (third-party logistics) A logistics provider that does this for another company. Often broader: also B2B, pallets and transport
Fulfilment centre The warehouse where your stock is kept and orders are packed
Dropshipping You sell products you don't hold in stock yourself; the supplier ships them
LVB / FBA Fulfilment by the marketplace itself: Logistiek via bol (bol's fulfilment), Fulfilment by Amazon. Only for orders on that platform

How does fulfilment work?

  1. Inbound. Your supplier, or you, sends stock to the fulfilment centre. There they count and check the goods and give each product a fixed location.
  2. Storage. Your stock sits on shelves or pallets. A portal or your own software shows how much is left.
  3. Order processing. Your webshop or marketplace is connected, so an order reaches the fulfilment company automatically.
  4. Pick and pack. A member of staff (or a robot) takes the products from the shelf (pick) and packs them in a box or letterbox packaging (pack), with your own flyer or packaging if you like.
  5. Shipping. The parcel gets a label from PostNL, DHL, DPD, bpost or another carrier and leaves the same day, if the order came in before the cut-off time.
  6. Returns. When a customer sends something back, they check the product, put it back in stock and report it in your system.

When does outsourcing fulfilment pay off?

  • You ship more than about 50 to 100 orders a month. By then packing easily takes a few hours a week. Count your own hours and outsourcing is often cheaper.
  • Your house or shed is full. A fulfilment centre has space that grows with you, including the busy weeks around Black Friday and Sinterklaas.
  • You want customers to be able to order later in the day. Many fulfilment companies process orders until 22:00 or later, so your customer gets the parcel the next day.
  • You sell on several channels. A fulfilment company keeps one stock for your webshop, bol and Amazon at the same time.
  • You want cheaper shipping. Fulfilment companies combine the volume of all their clients and get better rates from carriers.

There are also reasons to keep doing it yourself (for now): very few orders, products you make to order one by one, or when packing by hand is part of your brand.

What does fulfilment cost?

You usually pay per order (picking and packing, often €1.60 to €2.40), plus shipping, packaging and storage. Some companies charge an all-in rate that already includes shipping. All cost items and two worked examples are in What does fulfilment cost?. The "from" prices that fulfilment companies quote themselves are on cheap fulfilment.

How do you choose a fulfilment company?

Don't just compare the price per order. These matter more:

  • an integration with your webshop and marketplaces;
  • the carriers your customers know, and a cut-off time that matches your delivery promise;
  • a minimum number of orders that suits your volume;
  • experience with your products (cosmetics with a best-before date, clothing with lots of returns, large or heavy products);
  • reviews from other webshops and clear terms (notice period, liability).

Use our checklist of 12 questions when you ask for quotes. Or browse all fulfilment companies in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, with their integrations, carriers and cut-off times.

Which fulfilment company suits your webshop?

On FulfilmentMatch you connect your webshop or shipping software. We read your orders from the last few months (only quantities, sizes and countries) and show which fulfilment companies suit your volume, products and channels, with a cost estimate. Start your match.

Further reading