Pro Automation
Tuned to your warehouse, live in days, run by me.
The box, the carrier, the split, the batch and the hold, decided before your team sees the order. The automations are already built and running in operations like yours. I tune them to your SKUs, packaging and carrier contracts, then keep them correct as you change. Your team keeps working in ShipStation.
Pre-built. Tuned by me.
Free for 30 days on your real orders.
Operations I build and maintain automation for
Not on day one. But reliably, as the operation matures.
Products change. Packaging changes. Carrier contracts get renegotiated. Temperature requirements appear. Inventory moves between locations. A channel is added, a warehouse is opened, a 3PL takes half the volume. Each change is reasonable on its own. Together they push your shipping logic somewhere no general-purpose tool was designed to follow.
This is not a defect in ShipStation. ShipStation serves a very large and varied merchant base, and it has to work for all of them. It cannot reasonably build the temperature threshold that governs your coolant spec, the batching sequence that only makes sense given your pick paths, or the joint cartonization-and-rating decision your rate card actually rewards. No horizontal platform can. That is the honest limit of generic automation, and it is where String begins.
At that point most teams are choosing between three options. Absorb it as permanent manual work, and pay for it in labour, errors and your best people's attention. Rip out the stack for a full warehouse management system: tens of thousands of dollars and months of retraining, to solve what is really a handful of decisions. Or hand fulfillment to a 3PL: the right answer when the problem is running a warehouse at all, an expensive one when it is a few dozen decisions inside a warehouse that already works.
String is the fourth, and the only one that leaves the operation where it is. I do one thing — I build, deploy and maintain the operational automation that runs inside ShipStation accounts. There is no dashboard, no seat to license, nothing for your team to learn, and no rules for you to configure. You tell me how your warehouse operates. My customers don't log into String. That is the point.
The software is not the product. What I actually sell is the accumulated knowledge of how these operations fail, and how they should be run. The automation is simply how that knowledge gets executed, on every order, without anyone having to remember it.
"There wasn't an existing interface that could handle that workflow. That's where String stepped in. They didn't just offer a workaround, they built a custom-coded solution from the ground up that is now effectively a turnkey integration."
These are the eight patterns I find most often in operations that have become operationally specific — multiple carriers, real packaging constraints, exceptions handled by judgement.
None of them show up as a line item. They show up as labour, exceptions, and a shipping cost per order that drifts upward while volume grows. Volume makes them expensive, but complexity is what produces them.
Carrier flat-rate programs only pay off if the order is packed into that carrier's specific box. If cartonization runs first and rate selection runs second, the cheaper option was already made impossible before rating ever happened. The two decisions have to be solved together.
The tell — Flat-rate volume is near zero, or suspiciously constant month over month.
Native rate comparison handles the clean middle of your order profile well. The money is in the exceptions — zone bands where a slower service arrives the same day, weight breaks that flip the winner, negotiated rates that only beat list past a threshold.
The tell — Two orders to the same zone, same weight, ship on different services with no reason.
Dimensional weight means an under-filled box is billed as if it were full. Box selection driven by what the packer reaches for, or by fit with no view of price, rather than by what each carton costs to send, quietly converts every oversized carton into a surcharge.
The tell — Your billed weight consistently exceeds your actual weight across a month.
Check yours: Billed on box size
When an order won't fit one box, the cost-optimal split depends on your packaging inventory and your rate card at the same time. What fits and what costs least are different questions, and most splits — by a packer under time pressure, or by a packing rule at import — only ask the first.
The tell — Multi-package shipments cost more per unit than the same items shipped separately.
Real batching is a function of zone, cutoff, service level, pick path and priority simultaneously. Systems that batch on a single attribute push the remaining logic onto whoever builds batches each morning.
The tell — Someone spends the first hour of every shift assembling batches manually.
Check yours: Automated batching
Whether an order needs an insulated box, more coolant, or a faster service is a function of the forecast at the destination on the delivery date — not a static rule set at the SKU level. Static rules are wrong in both directions: spoilage in summer, wasted dry ice in winter.
The tell — Your cold-chain packaging spec is identical in February and July.
Without a FIFO-aware hold, orders that stock can't fully cover still release, and get picked, and get short-shipped. The cost lands downstream as split shipments, re-picks and support tickets rather than in the fulfillment line item.
The tell — Split shipments and cancellations cluster right after a popular SKU sells through.
Every operation has an operator who just knows — which SKUs can't go ground, which addresses need a signature, which customer gets held for Monday. That knowledge is real and valuable, and it is also a single point of failure that takes vacations.
The tell — Error rates change measurably depending on who is working that day.
If any of these sound familiar, the free tools show whether they're in your account. Twenty minutes on a call shows what fixing them is worth.
Orders arrive in your ShipStation account exactly the way they do today. Nothing is rerouted and nothing passes through String first. String reads each order through the ShipStation API, makes the decisions, and writes the finished shipment back — before your warehouse ever sees it.
String — decision layer
Built & maintained by String
Reads
Decides
reads the order · writes back the shipment
Source
Shopify & other channels
Your system of record
ShipStation
Unchanged. Your team's only screen.
Execution
Your warehouse
Orders are never rerouted. If String were switched off tomorrow, your operation would keep running — it would simply go back to deciding by hand.
1
No code for your team to write, no keys to manage, no new dashboard. Connection takes minutes; the work that follows is mine.
2
I map your SKUs, packaging, carrier agreements and the exceptions your team currently handles by hand, then tune the pre-built logic so it makes those decisions the same way every time.
3
By the time an order appears on the floor, the box, the service, the carrier and the batch have already been decided. Nobody has to think about it.
4
New SKUs, new packaging, a renegotiated rate card, a rate increase, a new warehouse. The logic is maintained by me — it does not decay into another thing you own.
Carton selection
The cheapest box that fits, chosen together with the rate, not before it.
Pre-built, tuned to your rules
Check yours: Billed on box size
Multi-box split
When an order won't fit one box, the split that costs least, not just the one that fits.
Pre-built, tuned to your rules
Service & carrier
Rate selection that handles the exceptions: zone bands, weight breaks, negotiated thresholds.
Pre-built, tuned to your rules
Batch assignment
Batches built on zone, cutoff, service level and pick path at once.
Pre-built, tuned to your rules
Check yours: Automated batching
Hold / release
Orders held until stock can cover them, then released in order.
Pre-built, tuned to your rules
Routing
Orders sent to the right warehouse or account by your rules.
Pre-built, tuned to your rules
The cases that usually send a team back to deciding by hand. Each one is built in, and tuned to your products, packaging and carriers.
Flat rate when flat rate is cheaper
A carrier's flat-rate box only pays off if the order is packed into it. String prices the flat-rate option and your own cartons side by side, and packs into whichever ships for less.
Part of: Carton selection
Packing into the empty space
The neck of a bottle, the inside of a bin. Plenty of products leave room another item can fit into, and the packing logic uses it, so the order goes into the box it actually needs rather than the one its outer dimensions suggest.
Part of: Carton selection
Products that give
Pouches, bags, apparel. Malleable products are not packed as rigid blocks, so a soft item can take up space a rigid one could not, instead of pushing the order into the next box size.
Part of: Carton selection
Transit time set by temperature
For perishable orders, the forecast at the destination decides how fast the order has to travel. A hot week gets a faster service; a mild week does not pay for one.
Part of: Service & carrier
Ship-by dates that match reality
The ship-by date is worked back from the days your warehouse ships, the carrier's transit time, and the days the carrier actually delivers. If you don't ship on Fridays, it knows.
Part of: Service & carrier
05 — How you start
Twenty minutes on a call, where you walk me through the decisions your team is still making order by order: which box, which service, how to split it, what to hold, what to batch. I'll tell you on the call whether it's something I can build and roughly what it's worth to you.
Then I build it inside your ShipStation account, usually within a few days. You run it free for 30 days on your real orders, and the 30 days don't start until it's working the way you described.
From call to live
Step 5 is where you decide
Step 1
Twenty minutes, with me, not a salesperson. You describe how your warehouse runs and what is still being decided by hand. If ShipStation can already do it, I will tell you and you can stop there.
Step 2
A ShipStation API key. Your account stays yours, nothing is rerouted, and your team keeps working in the same screen they use today.
Step 3
Your logic, running on your real orders, usually within a few days.
Step 4
We compare real labels against what the same orders cost before. If it is not right yet, I keep tweaking and the clock stays paused.
Step 5
If it turned out not to solve the problem, we shake hands and part ways. I would rather that than sell you something you do not need.
You only pay if it solves the problem.
Thirty days of your real orders is a better answer than any projection I could write. If the numbers do not move, or the decisions you wanted automated turn out to be something ShipStation can already do, I would rather tell you that than sell you something you do not need.
Prefer email? paul@meetstring.com
Not sure it is even a String problem?
Most accounts I look at are missing configuration rather than missing logic. I will review yours against the twelve layers of ShipStation configuration, for nothing, and tell you which of the two you have.
Every fulfillment operation eventually accumulates rules that are specific to it. Each review explains the operational problem, how it was approached, and what measurably changed.
All four are anonymized to protect customer confidentiality. Every figure and quote is taken from the original engagement records. The operational lessons are the important part.
Cartonization
4 min
A packing process that depended on the judgement of whoever reviewed orders that day. The judgement was good. The dependency was the problem.
Key result
$9.33 → $8.49 average label
Read the review →
Rate Selection
4 min
The team knew their rules were mis-allocating orders when they built them. They built them anyway, because the alternative did not scale.
Key result
13.7% lower label cost, 60% faster to fulfil
Read the review →
Rate Selection
4 min
A carrier relationship that solved a real reliability problem, then kept being applied to orders it was no longer the right answer for.
Key result
$15.57 → $13.59 average label
Read the review →
Exception Monitoring
4 min
Rules made fulfilment faster and, at the same time, removed the human check that used to notice when an order never actually shipped.
Key result
$2.86 saved per shipment, delays caught before customers called
Read the review →
Also in the knowledge base
Frozen product · Multi-channel · Mixed in-house and 3PL
Migrating from a legacy platform to Shopify with multiple sales channels, split fulfillment and shipping rules dictated by a frozen product. I built the logic that made every one of those requirements hold at launch.
"What I thought would be a difficult ask was no big deal for the String team to implement."
Dan Gilland — Director of Ecommerce
Supplements · Manual batch construction
The team was building ShipStation batches by hand each morning — grouping by product, then choosing carriers. I built rate-aware carrier selection and auto-batching by product and ship date.
"Each morning our orders are already organized by product and ship date, which makes printing and processing incredibly streamlined."
Gains In Bulk
BigCommerce → ShipStation → Extensiv
No existing interface connected their stack. I built the integration from the ground up — shipping data, multi-package logic and real-time order synchronisation — as a turnkey path where none existed.
"What used to be a complex, manual process is now fully automated."
Operations lead
The pattern across all four is the same: the operation was already competent. What it lacked was a way to make its best decision every single time.
A meal-replacement brand's packing expert was excellent — and unavailable on holiday. A nutrition brand's rules were reasonable — and built on estimates. A beverage company's carrier partnership was genuinely good — and applied indiscriminately. An apparel brand's automation was faster — and quietly losing orders. Competence isn't the constraint at your volume. Consistency is.
Twenty minutes tells you which of these patterns is running in your operation right now. Thirty free days tells you what it was costing you.
What you are hiring
Every operation I take on adds to something no single warehouse can build on its own: a working knowledge of how these decisions fail. Cold chain, heavy freight, apparel, supplements, frozen product, cross-border — each one taught me something the next operation never had to discover for itself. That accumulated experience is what you are actually hiring. The software is simply how it reaches your orders, correctly, every time, without depending on anyone remembering it.
For the standard cases, yes — and it does them well. That is exactly what a horizontal platform should be good at, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
String exists for the rules that are specific to your business: the temperature threshold, the fragility rule, the batching sequence that only makes sense given your pick paths, the joint cartonization-and-rating decision. Those are not gaps in ShipStation's product. They are the point at which a general tool stops being able to encode a particular operation.
What ShipStation automation does, and where custom logic startsBecause a dashboard would be another system for your team to learn, log into, and eventually stop maintaining. Every operations manager I've worked with already has too many tabs open.
Your team keeps working in ShipStation, which they already know. The automation runs behind it. When something needs to change, you tell a person and it changes — you don't go configure it yourself at 6pm.
Sometimes you should, and I will say so. If your problem is genuinely warehouse execution — labour management, slotting, directed picking across a large building — that is a WMS problem and String is the wrong tool.
But most operations that get quoted a WMS are really a few dozen decisions away from fixed. Spending six figures and six months of retraining to encode those decisions is an expensive way to buy logic.
Your ShipStation account is yours and stays exactly as it is. Nothing is rerouted through String, so there is no migration to unwind and no data to extract — the automation simply stops making the decisions, and your team makes them by hand again, as they did before.
I think that's the right way to hold a customer: because leaving would cost you the expertise, not because leaving would cost you your data.
Start here
Twenty minutes to tell me what your team decides by hand, a ShipStation API key, and I build it. You run it free for 30 days on your real orders, and the 30 days do not start until it is right. If it does not solve the problem, I will tell you.
