Sendle

Sendle's business model is focused squarely on the needs of small business - democratising access to big business logistics networks while selecting couriers based on quality, not price. We've built a composite network of parcel delivery providers that is designed to meet the needs of small business. We're not a traditional courier and we're not your run-of-the-mill courier aggregator. Sendle is a virtual courier network combining the best bits of design, software, existing courier infrastructure and support.

Small businesses spend about 40% of their time on administration and logistics. One of these costs is travelling to the post office to line up and send parcels, often during business hours. With Sendle, a busy small business owner can book in their deliveries from the comfort of home or their office and a courier will show up to collect their parcels. This means that small business owners are free to spend more time working on the bits they really want to.

In an age where “Free Shipping” is expected, complex price structures mean small businesses often struggle to accurately factor in the cost of delivery when selling online. Unlike the 5000+ price points at the post office, Sendle offers low, national flat-rates: There's a same-city price, a national price and remote price for 5 different sizes from 500g to 25kg. With just 12 price points to consider, small business customers can easily factor in delivery costs and sell with confidence, knowing that they won't be stung by an unexpected delivery fee.

To claim an account for a traditional courier company, small businesses are typically required to demonstrate historical parcel volumes, submit to credit checks, set up monthly account payments or direct debits, and then commit to ongoing volumes. As irregular senders rarely qualify for discounts, they need to pre-pay for a book of labels or box of satchels to reduce costs. Sendle removes all of this complexity: signup takes 30 seconds, there are no credit checks, historical data required or need to guarantee volumes. Small businesses can send what they have when they need, and all for about 40% less than lining up at the post office.

Logistics isn't usually considered to be a sexy industry. But our online Dashboard is a thing of beauty, designed for speed, efficiency and management prowess. The streamlined order form has time-saving assistive features such as saved contacts, 1-click rebooking, easy label printing and Google map visuals of delivery information. Customers requiring a more powerful booking experience can use Sendle's Batch Order Uploader which books up to 100 orders at once (enabling inline editing and checking of orders). Customers can also see a high-level overview of all of their deliveries, or click into each order for more detailed tracking and service updates.

One of the most common concerns of our customers is what happens when things go wrong. Late deliveries and lost or damaged goods hurt their finances, reputation and ability to grow. Sendle's approach is to actively prevent problems rather than just solve them. Our systems proactively monitor all deliveries for potential issues and alert our highly trained support team. The support team often solve problems without the customer's knowledge, actively improving their experience. We've also developed strong relationships with our courier partners and share information to improve networks and service.

Sendle uses powerful technology to reduce friction within the existing workflows of Sendle customers - streamlining their day and saving them time. Examples of this include Sendle's open-access API which can be built into an eCommerce store in a few hours, native integrations with major eCommerce platforms including Neto, Shopify and eBay, and booking options via business tools such as Xero. Additionally, our modern, Service Oriented Architecture enables us to improve each part of our service independently and has been crucial to scaling while maintaining a stable system. Our Continuous Delivery and zero-downtime deployment means that we can ship improvements multiple times a day without impacting users.