3PL, FBA, or ship it yourself
Three real answers, and one of them is "keep doing it yourself and keep the money". What each option is genuinely good at, what none of them will tell you they cannot do, and the six moments that actually force the decision.
They are not alternatives, and we are not neutral
We are a 3PL. So take the obvious discount on anything here that sounds like an argument for using one, and hold us to the parts that are not.
The framing "3PL versus FBA" is wrong to begin with. Most brands past the first year end up using both, because they do different jobs: FBA is extraordinarily good at selling on Amazon and structurally incapable of serving anything else, and a 3PL is where inventory lives when it has to serve more than one channel. The real question is not which one wins. It is where your inventory should sit, and what gets fed from there.
What each one is actually for
Ship it yourself
Lowest fixed cost, highest personal cost- Almost no fixed cost. You pay for boxes and postage and nothing else.
- Total control over the unboxing, the insert, the handwritten note, the thing that makes early customers talk about you.
- You learn what your own product actually costs to pack and ship, which is knowledge you will use in every 3PL negotiation afterwards.
- You see every return and every damage, which is the fastest product feedback loop that exists.
- It does not scale past the hours in your day, and the hours it takes are the ones you should be spending on the product.
- You will not get a carrier rate anywhere near what a 3PL has negotiated.
- A container arriving needs somewhere to go, and a garage is not it.
- One good month becomes an operational emergency instead of a good month.
Who it suits. Pre-launch, early traction, and anything under roughly a few hundred orders a month where your time is not yet the constraint.
Amazon FBA
Unbeatable on Amazon, and only on Amazon- The Prime badge, which materially changes conversion on Amazon and cannot be bought any other way.
- Amazon handles customer service and returns for FBA orders, which is a real operational load taken off you.
- Multi-channel fulfillment can ship your own store's orders too, though usually at a worse rate and in Amazon packaging.
- Zero effort once inventory is checked in. It genuinely is the easy button for Amazon sales.
- Capacity limits. Amazon decides how much space you get, recalculated monthly and measured in cubic feet, driven by your sales velocity and inventory health. A good forecast does not override it.
- Storage gets expensive on anything slow, and aged inventory surcharges compound that deliberately.
- Custom packaging, inserts, bundles assembled to order and anything that looks like your brand rather than Amazon's.
- Crowdfunding waves, wholesale and B2B orders, and any channel Amazon does not own.
- Getting inventory back out is a paid removal, on Amazon's timeline.
Who it suits. Anyone selling meaningful volume on Amazon. Almost never the only place inventory should live.
A third-party logistics partner
Everything Amazon is not, and the place inventory lives- Receives containers directly, which neither of the other two options really does.
- Ships every channel from one inventory pool: your own store, wholesale, B2B, marketplaces, crowdfunding backers.
- Your packaging, your inserts, kitting and bundles assembled how you want them.
- Preps and forwards into FBA on your schedule, so Amazon holds only what Amazon is going to sell soon.
- Rate-shopped carriers, and inventory positioned near your customers rather than wherever Amazon put it.
- It is not free and it is not instant. There is onboarding, there is an integration, and there is a monthly minimum on most accounts.
- You are handing over the unboxing experience, so it has to be specified rather than assumed.
- It cannot give you the Prime badge. Nothing can except FBA.
- At genuinely small volume it is usually more expensive than your own kitchen table.
Who it suits. Once a container is involved, once more than one channel is involved, or once packing orders is eating the day.
Six moments that make the choice for you
Nobody switches because a comparison page told them to. They switch because one of these happened.
You have run out of physical space
The most common and the most obvious. If inventory is in a spare room, a garage and a friend's basement, the decision has already been made and you are just delaying it.
A container is on its way
A forty-foot container is roughly 67 cubic meters of cartons arriving on a truck that wants to be unloaded now. This is the single most common reason a brand goes from self-fulfillment to a 3PL in one step, and it is worth arranging before the vessel sails rather than after.
Packing is eating the day you should spend on the product
The honest test: what would you be doing with those hours instead, and is it worth more than what a 3PL charges? Early on the answer is often no. At some point it flips, and it flips permanently.
You are about to run a campaign or a launch
One enormous wave of slightly different parcels, all at once, to addresses collected months earlier. This is not a bigger version of your normal week and it does not go well by hand.
Amazon capped your capacity
If Amazon will not hold what you want to sell, the inventory has to sit somewhere that will, and be fed in as space frees up. That somewhere is a 3PL.
You have started selling wholesale or B2B
Pallet-out orders with routing guides, appointment scheduling and chargebacks for getting the labeling wrong. FBA does not do this and neither does your kitchen table.
Five things FBA does that surprise people
None of these are reasons to avoid FBA. They are reasons not to let it be the only place your inventory exists.
Capacity limits are not a forecast
Amazon recalculates how much space you get every month, in cubic feet, based on sales velocity and inventory health rather than on your plans. You can have the stock, the demand and the marketing ready and still not be allowed to send it in.
Storage is priced to punish slow inventory
Monthly storage rises sharply in the fourth quarter, and aged-inventory surcharges stack on top for units sitting past a threshold. A slow SKU in FBA costs materially more than the same slow SKU in a 3PL.
Removals are on Amazon's timeline
Getting inventory out is a paid removal order that takes weeks. If you need those units for a wholesale order next Tuesday, they are not available.
Prep requirements are exacting and unforgiving
Labeling, polybagging, suffocation warnings, expiry formats, case-pack rules. Get one wrong and the shipment gets an unplanned-service fee, or refused. This is precisely what an FBA prep service exists to absorb.
Returns come back into stock, or do not
Amazon decides whether a return is resellable. You find out from a report. For some categories the gap between what was returned and what got restocked is a real cost line nobody modeled.
No FBA fees are quoted anywhere on this page. They change on a published schedule and vary by size tier and season, so a number here would be wrong before you read it. Amazon publishes the current ones and those are the ones to model against.
The hybrid, in four steps
This is the shape we see working most often, and it is worth understanding even if you never hire anyone to run it.
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Container lands at the 3PL
The whole shipment is received, counted and checked against the packing list in one place, by people whose job that is.
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The 3PL holds the master inventory
One pool of stock, one source of truth, positioned near your customers rather than distributed by Amazon's algorithm.
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FBA gets fed, not filled
Prepped, labeled and forwarded in on a cadence matched to actual sell-through, so Amazon holds weeks of cover rather than months of storage fees.
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Everything else ships from the same pool
Your own store, wholesale, B2B, crowdfunding backers, retail accounts. In your packaging, with your inserts.
The point of the arrangement is that Amazon holds weeks of cover instead of months of storage fees, and everything Amazon cannot serve still ships from the same pool of stock. It also means a capacity limit is an inconvenience rather than a stockout.
Frequently asked
So which one should I use?
Probably more than one. The shape that works for most brands past the earliest stage is a 3PL holding the master inventory and feeding FBA, because it keeps the Prime badge on Amazon without handing Amazon control of everything you own. If you sell only on Amazon and only in small volume, FBA alone is fine. If you are pre-launch and shipping tens of orders, keep doing it yourself and keep the money. Whichever you pick, model the cost of goods coming back before you commit, because it is the line that most often turns a good margin into a thin one. Our page on 3PL at small volume goes through where that line actually falls.
Is a 3PL cheaper than FBA?
Not comparable that simply, because they are priced on different things and you are not buying the same product. FBA bundles storage, picking, shipping, customer service and returns into fees set by size tier. A 3PL charges those separately and you supply the carrier rate. For fast-moving small items on Amazon, FBA is often hard to beat. For anything bulky, anything slow, or anything sold off Amazon, a 3PL usually wins, sometimes by a lot.
Can a 3PL ship my Amazon orders?
Yes, as seller-fulfilled prime or merchant-fulfilled, and plenty of brands do. What it cannot do is give you the Prime badge on the same terms FBA does. Whether that matters depends entirely on how much of your revenue comes from Amazon search.
What is an FBA prep service?
Someone who receives your goods, applies Amazon's labeling and packaging requirements exactly, and forwards the shipment into an Amazon fulfillment center. Most 3PLs including us do it as a service line rather than as a separate business. It exists because Amazon's prep rules are strict, the penalties for getting them wrong are real, and factories in Asia frequently cannot be trusted to apply them correctly.
When is it too early for a 3PL?
When your order volume is low enough that the monthly minimum is a meaningful share of the bill, and when packing them is not yet costing you anything you would rather be doing. We tell people this regularly, and it costs us the work. It is still the right answer.
What happens to my brand experience?
It becomes a specification instead of a habit. Everything you currently do by instinct, the insert, the tissue, the way fragile items get wrapped, has to be written down and priced. Brands that do that well come out fine. Brands that assume it will be figured out are the ones with unboxing complaints in month two.
Do I have to pick one forever?
No, and you should not plan as though you have. Inventory placement is a decision you revisit every time your channel mix changes. The thing worth avoiding is an arrangement you cannot exit: understand the removal terms, the notice period and who owns the data before you commit anything.
Send us a month and we will tell you if it is too early
Orders, average units per order, carton dimensions and where your customers are. We will price it against the real lines, and if the answer is that you should keep shipping it yourself for another six months, that is the answer you will get. It costs us the work and it is still the right call.