Shopify 3PL integration, from order to tracking.
When a Shopify order lands, quote it across your carrier accounts, buy the label against your balance, and send tracking back to the store and your client.
The problem
Every new Shopify client means another integration to babysit.
A 3PL that fulfills for Shopify brands ends up with a different app, export, or script for every store. Orders arrive late or twice, labels are bought by hand in a carrier portal, and tracking is copied back so the customer gets a shipping email.
Brands shipping their own orders hit the same wall at volume: the shipping app that worked at fifty orders a day has no answer for rate shopping across your own accounts, spending limits, or what happens when a carrier is down.
How it works in Flows
A Shopify fulfillment integration in six steps.
The flow runs on the same orders, shipments, and carrier accounts as Orderly Hub, so there is no second copy of the order to keep in sync.
bridge_eventA Shopify order starts the runConnect the store as a Shopify bridge in Orderly. The flow listens for order_created on that bridge only, and each new order starts exactly one run, however many times the store sends it.
branchRoute the orderBranch on any field of the order, such as weight, destination, tags, or the shipping method the customer chose, and send each kind of order down its own lane.
orderly.rateRate shop across your carriersQuote the order across the carrier accounts connected to your organization and pick the cheapest, the fastest, or the best value. The quotes are kept on the run, so anyone can see why a carrier won.
orderly.label.purchaseBuy the label with funds heldThe label cost is held against your balance before any carrier is called. If the balance cannot cover it, the run fails into a high-priority exception instead of overdrawing.
bridge.taskFulfill the order in ShopifyPush the shipment back through the Shopify bridge, so the order is marked fulfilled in Shopify with its carrier and tracking number.
http.requestSend tracking to whoever needs itPost the tracking details to your client's system or your own webhook. Requests are signed by default, and credentials are sealed as flow secrets.
When something goes wrong
A carrier outage becomes an exception, not a lost order.
Give the rate and HTTP steps a retry policy with backoff; only failures that can succeed on another try, such as timeouts and rate limits, are retried. When a step fails for good, a recovery lane can alert the team or record the problem elsewhere, and the run opens an exception that keeps its place for 30 days. The label step itself can never be set to skip, so an order is never marked done without a label. The reliability page explains exceptions, alerts, and the watchdog.
Where it fits
One integration, installed for every store you serve.
For a 3PL, the same flow becomes a partner template with typed params, such as the client's carrier and warehouse code, and each client sees their own runs on white-label pages inside your product. Need a person to approve expensive labels first? See order to label automation. To design the flow yourself, start with the visual designer. Read the Flows docs ↗
Questions
Shopify 3PL integration FAQ.
Do we need a separate Shopify app for each client?
No. Each client's store connects as its own Shopify bridge. On Flows Pro and Dedicated you package the flow as a template and install it for each client against that client's bridge, so every copy hears only that client's orders and is metered to that client.
Can a retried run buy a second label for the same Shopify order?
No. A retry reuses the same idempotency key, so the label is bought once. Retry continues the run from the step that failed, so the steps that already succeeded, including a purchased label, are never repeated.
What happens when our balance is too low?
Purchase label holds the cost before calling the carrier. When the balance cannot cover it, nothing is bought: the run fails into a high-priority exception, your alert channels are told, and you retry from that step once funds are added.
Connect the store
Bring us the Shopify stores you fulfill for.
Tell us how orders reach you today, which carriers you ship with, and where tracking has to go. We will show you the flow and how it installs per client.