How Ecommerce Agencies Price Fulfilment Services

Pick the model by the client, not the agency

The question is not what an agency should charge for fulfilment in the abstract. It is what a particular client should be charged, and that turns on two things: how much volume the store ships, and how much of your work scales with the order count. Answer those honestly and the model chooses itself. Get them wrong and you either price yourself out of the account or run it at a loss for a year before you notice.

Three charging models are in use across agencies reselling sourcing and fulfilment. Each fits a different kind of client, and each fails a different kind. Take them in turn, then put your own figures through the arithmetic rather than an industry average.

The retainer: a flat monthly fee for managing the account

A retainer is a fixed fee your client pays every month for you to run the fulfilment relationship, regardless of how many orders move. It pays for the work that does not scale with order count: writing the product brief, deciding between a supplier's exact item and a similar one, approving packaging, wording the delivery promise on the store, and chasing a stuck parcel to a conclusion. That work exists whether the store ships forty orders in a month or four hundred.

Its real strength is the quiet month. A fulfilment account is most likely to be dropped in a slow season, which is exactly when a commission-only arrangement pays you nothing and you are tempted to stop answering. A retainer keeps the account funded, and keeps you attentive, through the months that actually decide whether the client stays with you.

Where it breaks is growth. A flat fee that looked fair at fifty orders a month is underpriced at five hundred, because your handling load rose with the volume and the fee did not. In the other direction, a client whose orders collapse resents a bill that will not flex. A pure retainer is a bet that volume stays roughly level, and dropshipping volume rarely does.

The per-order commission: a percentage carried inside the price

A commission is a percentage added on top of the net fulfilment cost of each order, sitting inside the single unit price your client pays. It is the model most agencies reach for first, and for a store shipping real, steady volume it is the cleanest: it scales with the account on its own and asks nothing of the client in a month they barely trade.

Here is the mechanic that makes it work. RyanFulfil quotes a net cost for the product, the route and a stated set of assumptions — the same kind of landed net cost a direct seller sees on the pricing page. You name the commission you want. It is added into the quote, and on a referred client that quote discloses that a partner fee is included. You are not marking up a price you set; you are naming a number that rides inside a cost RyanFulfil quotes.

Guidance is around 2%. That is neither a cap nor a floor — it is the level at which a client's landed cost still stands up against sourcing the same product direct from a marketplace like AliExpress. Set it higher and the client carries the difference in the price their own customer pays, so you are trading margin against how competitive their store stays. On a product with room in it a higher number holds; on a price-sensitive item it pushes the client to check what they could pay elsewhere.

Where commission breaks is the management-heavy, low-volume client. A store that ships thirty orders a month but needs constant sourcing decisions, packaging revisions and issue-chasing will pay you almost nothing on 2% while consuming a retainer's worth of your time. A single large pre-stock or consignment order is the same problem in miniature: one line, a great deal of work, and a commission on net cost that under-rewards it.

The hybrid: a smaller retainer plus a smaller commission

The hybrid is what most established agency clients settle on, because it matches the shape of the actual cost. A modest retainer covers the management floor — the work that happens regardless of volume — and a modest commission captures the upside as the store grows. Neither number has to be large, because between them they pay for both halves of what you do.

The risk is charging twice. Set both the retainer and the commission at the level you would charge if each were your only fee, and the client feels double-billed the moment they add it up. A hybrid works only when each component is visibly smaller than a standalone version of it. Say plainly what the retainer buys and what the commission is for, so the two do not read as the same charge counted again.

A worked illustration on numbers you choose

The arithmetic is worth seeing once, on figures you supply. Everything below is an example you type in, not a RyanFulfil rate — the net cost in particular comes from a real product and a real route, never from this page.

Suppose you enter a client shipping 300 orders a month, a net fulfilment cost of, say, 18.00 a unit in your currency, and a commission of 2%. The client's price per order becomes 18.00 plus 2% of 18.00, which is 18.36. Your margin per order is the 0.36 difference. Across 300 orders that is 108.00 for the month. Add a retainer you have set at, say, 150.00 and the monthly total is 258.00; a one-off setup fee of 200.00 lands only in the first month, making that first month 458.00.

Change any input and the whole thing moves, which is the reason to run it on your own numbers rather than a headline average. The agency margin calculator runs exactly this arithmetic in your browser, recalculates as you type, and prints every line of working next to its result. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere.

What that number is, and what it is not

The figure is gross spread, not profit, and it is arithmetic on inputs you chose — not a projection of what you will earn. It excludes everything on your side of the account: your time, payment and transfer fees, any refund or goodwill you absorb, and the tax you owe on the revenue. Subtract those before you decide an account is worth running.

It also depends entirely on the net cost being real. Until you hold an actual quote for an actual product and route, the number you type is a guess and so is the answer. Learn to read the quote you build on first: how to read a landed-price quote from a China fulfilment agent sets out the five labels every line needs before you can price against it, and why landed cost is the number that tells you whether you are profitable covers what that cost has to absorb.

Which model, and who gets to set the price

Which of the three models is fully yours to set depends on the path you run the client through, because the path decides who holds the price.

On Co-Manage and White Label your agency contracts with the client, invoices the client, takes first-line support and sets the client's price — so the retainer, the commission and the setup fee are all yours to name, and RyanFulfil invoices you behind them. On the Refer path RyanFulfil contracts with, invoices, supports and prices the seller; what you name there is the commission, and the quote issued to that seller discloses that it is included. The Agency Desk page sets out all of this column by column. The three charging models are the same in either case; what changes is how much of the final price you control.

One honesty point sits underneath all of it: none of these numbers is a guarantee. A retainer can be cancelled, a commission earns nothing in a month the store does not sell, and a client can move between direct, co-managed and white-label status with their own consent. Price the account for the work it actually takes, not for a best month you are hoping repeats.

The next step

Decide the model against the client in front of you, then put your own figures through the margin calculator before you quote anyone from them. When you know which path fits, apply to the Agency Desk — the form asks what you sell and how many stores you run, and tells you which path fits before you send it. For how the money then moves between you, your client and the warehouse once an account is live, how fulfilment billing and prepaid balances work covers the mechanics.