TL;DR: Sendcloud in 30 seconds
- Sendcloud is a shipping platform from the Netherlands: orders from Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy and 100+ other systems land in one screen, where you print labels for DHL, DPD, GLS, UPS and 170+ other carriers. More than 30,000 stores use it.
- The free plan really is free: no subscription, no label fee, you only pay postage at Sendcloud’s pre-negotiated rates. You do not need your own contract with any carrier.
- From the Lite plan upwards you pay twice: 39 euros a month plus 0.13 euros per label, and the label fee applies even when you ship on your own carrier contract. That fee is the single most criticised point.
- Prices have climbed sharply: the Lite plan cost 29 euros in spring 2025 and 39 euros today. That is 34 percent more in 17 months.
- Users praise the interface and the time saved, but complain about surcharges billed weeks later and a support team that sits behind an AI bot since 2025. Phone support starts at 109 euros a month.
- Our rating: 3.9 out of 5. The most convenient route for beginners without a carrier contract, and a cost question for growing stores.
- Try it yourself: Start with Sendcloud for free – the free plan has no time limit.
As long as you ship five parcels a week, you type the addresses at the post office counter and think nothing of it. At five parcels a day that turns into the hour you need most urgently elsewhere. This is exactly the moment most store owners search for shipping software for the first time, and most of them end up at Sendcloud.
The promise is simple. Your orders appear automatically in one list, you tick them, click print, and the labels for DHL, DPD or GLS come out of the printer. Tracking emails, a returns portal and pickup-point selection at checkout come with it.
We looked at what the free plan is worth, how prices have moved since 2025, where the cost traps sit, and what European merchants report in forums and on review sites. Sendcloud is the market leader, but it is not the cheapest option for every store.
Our rating: 3.9 / 5
The most mature shipping software for small European stores, with a free plan that works without your own carrier contract. Points come off for paying twice through subscription and label fee, two price rises in eighteen months, surcharges billed after the fact, and support that only picks up the phone on expensive plans.
| Ease of use & setup | ★★★★½ 4.6 |
| Feature set | ★★★★½ 4.5 |
| Value for money | ★★★½☆ 3.5 |
| Pricing transparency | ★★★☆☆ 3.2 |
| Support | ★★★☆☆ 3.2 |
| Fit for DACH sellers | ★★★★☆ 4.4 |
🔍 Rated with our 5-criteria framework – every score can be recalculated.
Not an affiliate link. We earn nothing from this recommendation.
What is Sendcloud?
Sendcloud is software that sits between your store and the carriers. It pulls orders from your shop system, turns them into shipping labels, sends tracking messages to your customers and handles returns. You do not need a single contract with DHL, DPD or GLS, because Sendcloud brings its own negotiated rates. If you already have a contract, you can plug it in.
The company was founded in Eindhoven in 2012 by three founders who ran an online store for phone accessories and were fed up with shipping. Rob van den Heuvel still runs it today. A German subsidiary in Munich has existed since 2016 and issues the invoices for German customers. With around 440 employees, 30,000+ connected stores and revenue of about 53 million euros in 2025, Sendcloud is the largest provider of its kind in Europe. 2025 was also the first year it turned a profit.
That matters to you because Sendcloud raised around 150 million euros in venture capital in 2021, with SoftBank among the investors. Investors like that expect growth, and the price development of the last eighteen months fits that pressure. More on that below.
Sendcloud on video
This independent tutorial walks through the platform from connecting a store to printing the first labels:
Video: Digital Wizardry (independent tutorial, May 2025)
Which carriers and stores Sendcloud connects
Sendcloud advertises 170+ carriers, but what counts is which ones work in your country without your own contract. The distinction matters: with some carriers you ship on Sendcloud’s rates immediately, with others you must bring your own business account. For Germany, the largest market this review focuses on, the picture looks like this:
| Carrier | On Sendcloud rates | With your own contract |
|---|---|---|
| DHL Paket (Germany) | Yes, small parcel from €3.40 | Yes, from Lite |
| DPD | Yes, €4.02 to €4.63 depending on plan | Yes, from Lite |
| GLS | Yes | Yes, from Lite |
| UPS | Yes, from €3.95 | Yes, from Lite |
| Hermes | No | Only this way |
| Deutsche Post (letters, Warenpost) | No | Only this way |
| Austrian Post | Yes, from €4.00 | Yes, from Lite |
| Swiss Post | No | Only this way |
The prices shown are Sendcloud’s own starting rates, net of VAT. The full rate card with every weight band only becomes visible after you sign up, which we treat as a transparency issue further down. Important: Hermes and Deutsche Post only work with your own contract. Anyone who wants cheap Warenpost letters for small items needs a business account with the postal service first.
Store integrations are extensive and, for beginners, complete: Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware 5 and 6, Wix, Magento, Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Kaufland and TikTok Shop are connected directly. For Etsy sellers in Germany, Sendcloud is close to mandatory: since July 2025, Etsy only admits Billbee and Sendcloud to its shipping interface there. Otto and JTL-Wawi are not connected directly, so those run through Billbee or plentymarkets.
The key features
Labels in bulk. The core. Orders arrive automatically from your store, you select them all, click once and get every label as a single PDF. Since summer 2026 the packing slip is attached in the same file. Labels print at A6, either on a thermal printer or on ordinary A4 label sheets with four per page. A thermal printer is not required, it just becomes a sanity question at around ten parcels a day.
Shipping rules. You define that orders under one kilo go out as DHL small parcels, everything above two kilos via DPD and everything to Austria via Austrian Post. Sendcloud then chooses by itself. The free plan has no rules at all, Lite has five, Growth ten and up.
Tracking messages. Customers receive emails about shipment status, from Lite also by SMS and WhatsApp. The tracking page carries your logo from Growth, but the Sendcloud logo only disappears on the Premium plan at 229 euros. That is a price tag worth knowing before you wonder why a third-party brand sits under your own.
Returns portal. Customers register returns themselves and print the label. It sounds like basic equipment, but it only starts at Growth for 109 euros a month, and there with a maximum of ten rules. Paid returns and custom return reasons require Premium. On the free and Lite plans you create return labels by hand.
Pickup-point selection at checkout. Your customer chooses the DHL Packstation or DPD shop around the corner while ordering. That reduces delivery problems and is included in every plan. Dynamic delivery dates at checkout, by contrast, are reserved for the Pro plan at 799 euros.
Collection. Parcels do not have to go to the branch. For DHL, a collection through Sendcloud costs 1.74 euros per parcel for up to ten parcels, DPD collects for free but requires at least ten parcels a day, and UPS charges 3.70 euros per collection with no minimum. All need one working day of notice.
On top of that come customs documents for shipments to Switzerland, shipping insurance from 0.38 euros per parcel and, since 2026, free address validation on every plan. What Sendcloud is not: an inventory system. Stock, warehouse and invoicing remain the job of your store or a tool like Billbee.
What Sendcloud costs
This is where it gets uncomfortable, because the pricing model has three layers: a subscription, a fee per label and the actual postage. All prices are net of VAT. The following figures are the German rate card, which Sendcloud sets per country; Austria is slightly cheaper on Lite, and other countries differ.
| Plan | Monthly | Per label | What matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | €0 | no fee | Sendcloud rates only, no own contracts, no shipping rules, 2 store integrations, 1 user |
| Lite | €39 €31 billed yearly |
€0.13 €0.11 yearly |
Own contracts, 5 shipping rules, collections, customs documents, 400 labels a month, 3 users |
| Growth | €109 €87 yearly |
€0.12 €0.10 yearly |
Returns portal (limited), branded tracking page, Pack & Go, phone support, 1,000 labels, 5 users |
| Premium | €229 €183 yearly |
€0.11 €0.09 yearly |
Full returns portal, Sendcloud logo removable, shipping analytics, 10,000 labels, 10 users |
| Pro | €799 €639 yearly |
€0.09 | Dynamic checkout, marketplace API, dedicated success manager, 30,000 labels |
Exceeding your label allowance costs an extra 0.15 euros per label, so 0.28 euros each on Lite. Cancelled labels still count. Yearly billing is 20 percent cheaper but cannot be cancelled or downgraded during the term. The trial runs for 14 days without a credit card, though a SEPA direct debit mandate is required before the first label prints.
A worked example for 100 parcels a month. On Lite you pay 39 euros subscription plus 13 euros in label fees, so 52 euros of software before a single parcel has moved. On the free plan you pay nothing for software but slightly more postage: a DPD parcel costs 4.63 instead of 4.30 euros. Across 100 parcels that is 33 euros. On postage alone, Lite only beats Free from roughly 200 DPD parcels a month. What you actually buy with Lite is shipping rules, a third store integration and the ability to use your own contract.
The label fee applies even on your own contract
If you connect your own DHL business account, you pay postage directly to DHL. Sendcloud still bills 0.13 euros for every label created, which is stated word for word in its billing help article. At 500 parcels a month that is 65 euros on top of the subscription, purely for generating a PDF. This fee has been the main reason for years why merchants with volume move on to Billbee or to the carrier’s own portal.
How prices have moved
We traced the German pricing page through the Internet Archive. In April 2025 the Lite plan cost 29 euros with a 0.10 euro label fee. In November 2025 it was 32.50 euros and 0.11. Since June 2026 for new customers and August 2026 for existing ones it is 39 euros and 0.13. That adds up to 34 percent more base fee and 30 percent more label fee in 17 months. Growth rose from 89 to 109 euros in the same period, Premium from 175 to 229 euros.
For context, Sendcloud’s DPD rates fell slightly over the same period, from 5.30 to 4.63 euros on the free plan. If you only look at postage, you have not lost out. If you pay a subscription, you have.
What works well day to day
The strongest point is setup. Connect the store, enter the sender address, sign the direct debit mandate, done. Ease of use scores 4.3 out of 5 on Capterra, and in the Shopify App Store Sendcloud sits at 4.6 from over 500 reviews. The same sentence keeps appearing in German reviews: label creation works flawlessly and saves a lot of time.
The second is shipping without a contract. DHL in Germany only grants business accounts from around 200 parcels a year and has charged a monthly flat fee from 7.95 euros since July 2025. Below that threshold, the only option used to be the post office counter. Sendcloud closes exactly that gap, and does so on the free plan.
Third, the breadth of integrations. There is hardly a shop system or marketplace Sendcloud does not know, and on Etsy it is one of two admitted solutions in Germany. If you sell through several channels, you get one shipping list instead of five different back ends.
Where the limits are
Surcharges billed later. The most frequent complaint in German forums and on Trustpilot. Carriers re-weigh and re-measure parcels and add surcharges, and Sendcloud passes them through on an invoice weeks later. In the Sellerforum, a merchant describes DPD surcharges for parcels that were lighter than declared. Trustpilot reviewers report surcharges that surfaced two to three months after shipping. The problem originates with the carriers, but Sendcloud does not make it transparent enough. Since summer 2026 the software at least shows a surcharge estimate before you buy the label.
Support behind a bot. Since 2025 you are greeted by an AI assistant called Scout, which only hands over to humans during office hours. Phone support starts at Growth. Reviews reflect that: customer service sits at 3.9 on Capterra, 14 percent of Trustpilot reviewers give one star, and the reason is almost always support. A German user wrote in February 2026 that support exists only until the contract is signed.
Sendcloud rates are not always cheap. The pre-negotiated prices are an entry point, not a bargain. In the Sellerforum a merchant calculates that DHL through Sendcloud was more expensive than the consumer prices at the counter. An Austrian store quotes 25 euros through Sendcloud for a parcel to the Netherlands against 14 euros direct. You only see the full rate card after signing up, so compare it before printing your first label.
Claims. If a parcel goes missing on Sendcloud rates, you depend on Sendcloud as the intermediary. Insurance runs through an external provider, and reviews of the claims process are among the worst in the whole profile. Shipping on your own contract lets you claim directly with the carrier, which is usually faster.
Important features sit high up. Returns portal from 109 euros, your own branding without the Sendcloud logo from 229 euros, delivery dates at checkout from 799 euros. If you need these things, you quickly pay three times what you originally budgeted.
What applies specifically to Germany, Austria and Switzerland
This is where Sendcloud does well. The interface, help centre and support are available in German, invoices come from Sendcloud GmbH in Munich with German VAT. Data sits with Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt, the company is ISO 27001 certified, and a data processing agreement is provided as a PDF without a separate signature. Some sub-processors for the support system and email delivery are US companies, which is disclosed.
For Austria, Austrian Post is available on Sendcloud rates from 4.00 euros, as are DPD and GLS, and the Lite plan costs 35 instead of 39 euros. For Switzerland, Swiss Post only works with your own contract, and for shipments from Germany into Switzerland Sendcloud generates the customs paperwork automatically. Sendcloud does not list Switzerland among its fully supported countries, though.
What users say about Sendcloud
| Platform | Rating | Volume |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify App Store | 4.6 / 5 | 502 reviews |
| G2 | 4.5 / 5 | around 150 reviews |
| Trustpilot | 4.3 / 5 | 3,940 reviews, 14 % of them one star |
| OMR Reviews (German) | 4.3 / 5 | 158 reviews |
| Capterra | 4.0 / 5 | 97 reviews, customer service 3.9 |
The picture is more consistent than with many other tools: the software itself is considered good, the complaints revolve around money and reachability. On Trustpilot, Sendcloud replies to just under half of the negative reviews, usually pointing to the carriers’ liability limits. The German portal OMR Reviews rates it a solid 4.3 but has not collected new reviews for over a year, so it does not reflect the 2026 price rises.
A side note: Sendcloud withdrew its WooCommerce plugin from the official WordPress directory itself in April 2025, after it had sat at 3.6 stars there. WooCommerce stores have connected through Sendcloud’s own integration since, which works, but it says something about plugin maintenance.
Sendcloud compared to the alternatives
| Solution | Cost | Advantage over Sendcloud |
|---|---|---|
| Billbee | from €9, about €48 at 100 orders, no label fee | Inventory, invoicing, stock and Otto integration included; needs your own carrier contract though |
| DHL business portal | software free, monthly flat fee from €7.95 | Direct DHL rates without an intermediary; only from about 200 parcels a year, DHL only, no store import |
| shipcloud | from €49 plus €0.08 per shipment | German company from Hamburg, strong via API; no free plan, no returns portal |
| Shopify Shipping | included in the Shopify plan | Available in Germany since 2025 at no extra cost; DHL only, domestic only, no collection |
| Packlink PRO | €0, Plus plan €25, no label fee | Own rates from the first parcel without a base fee; only 2.6 out of 5 on Capterra over support and lost labels |
| JTL-Wawi | Start edition €0 | Complete inventory system with a free shipping module; Windows software with a learning curve, own contracts required |
The decision comes down to almost a single question: do you have your own carrier contract or not? Without one, Sendcloud’s free plan is unbeatably convenient, because you ship at reasonable prices immediately. Once you hold a DHL business account, Sendcloud’s label fee becomes a pure surcharge, and Billbee offers considerably more for similar money, namely invoicing, stock and multichannel.
Shopify merchants have had a third option since 2025: Shopify Shipping with DHL directly in the back end, at no extra cost. If you only need DHL, domestic shipping and no collection, that is enough. For everything else, such as DPD for heavy parcels, shipping to Austria or a returns portal, you end up back at Sendcloud.
Who Sendcloud is for
A good fit if you ship fewer than 200 parcels a year and cannot get your own contract, if you sell on Etsy, if you want to handle several stores or marketplaces from one list, or if you regularly ship to Austria and Switzerland. The free plan covers the start completely.
A poor fit if you already hold a DHL business account and just want to print labels, if you need an inventory system with invoicing and stock, if you depend on a returns portal under 100 euros a month, or if you want a direct contact at the carrier for surcharges and claims.
Our verdict
Sendcloud is the shipping software that gets you from the post office counter to automatic label creation fastest. The interface is exemplary, the integrations are complete, and the free plan solves the actual beginner problem: shipping at reasonable prices without a carrier taking you seriously only from 200 parcels upwards.
What holds the rating at 3.9 is the pricing model. Subscription plus label fee plus postage, two increases in eighteen months, key features only on expensive plans, and surcharges that surface on the invoice weeks later. Sendcloud earns well from merchants who grow, and that is precisely when switching to Billbee or to your own DHL contract becomes attractive on paper.
Our recommendation: start on the free plan and, after signing up, compare Sendcloud’s full rate card with the counter prices for your typical parcels. Stay on Free until the missing shipping rules genuinely cost you time. And do not justify the move to Lite by postage, but by features, because on postage alone it only pays off from about 200 parcels a month.
Try Sendcloud yourself
The free plan includes two store integrations, DHL, DPD, GLS and UPS shipping at Sendcloud rates and tracking emails. No subscription, no label fee, no time limit.
Not an affiliate link. We earn nothing from this recommendation.
Frequently asked questions about Sendcloud
Is Sendcloud really free?
Yes. The free plan has no subscription and no label fee, you only pay postage at Sendcloud’s rates. It includes two store integrations, one user and tracking emails. It does not include your own carrier contracts, automatic shipping rules or the returns portal. There is no parcel limit, only unfranked letters are capped at 50 a month.
What does Sendcloud cost at 100 parcels a month?
On the free plan only postage, around 463 euros net with DPD in Germany. On Lite you add 39 euros subscription and 13 euros in label fees, while postage drops to about 430 euros. All in, Lite costs roughly 19 euros more than Free at 100 parcels. Only from about 200 DPD parcels a month does the cheaper postage offset the subscription.
Can I use my own DHL contract with Sendcloud?
Yes, from the Lite plan at 39 euros a month. DHL then bills postage directly to you, but Sendcloud still charges 0.13 euros for every label created. Own contracts cannot be connected on the free plan. Hermes and Deutsche Post only work with your own contract on Sendcloud in any case.
Which plan includes the returns portal?
Growth at 109 euros a month, with a maximum of ten return rules and the basic functions. Paid returns, custom return reasons and removal of the Sendcloud logo require the Premium plan at 229 euros. On Free and Lite you create return labels manually.
Why do I get additional charges from Sendcloud?
Carriers re-weigh and re-measure parcels and add surcharges for incorrect data, bulky goods, remote delivery areas or fuel. Sendcloud passes these amounts on with the next invoice, sometimes weeks later. Always enter weight and dimensions exactly and check the invoices in your account, which are broken down by carrier and tracking number. Since 2026 Sendcloud shows a surcharge estimate before you buy a label.
Sendcloud or Billbee: which fits my store?
Sendcloud if you have no carrier contract and mainly need labels, tracking and returns. Billbee if you already hold a DHL business account and also want to manage invoices, stock and several sales channels. Billbee starts at 9 euros and charges no label fee, but brings no shipping rates of its own. Many merchants start with Sendcloud and switch once they get their first own contract.
Is Sendcloud GDPR compliant?
Sendcloud is a Dutch company with a German subsidiary in Munich, data is hosted with Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt, and the company is ISO 27001 certified. A data processing agreement is provided as a PDF and applies through your account without a separate signature. Some sub-processors for support and email delivery are based in the US, which is disclosed in the sub-processor list.
