Best fulfilment and 3PL options for European ecommerce

Getting the product to the customer's door is where a lot of European ecommerce margin quietly disappears. Fulfilment — the storage, picking, packing, shipping and returns handling behind every order — is often your second-biggest cost after the goods themselves, and it scales with every parcel you send. This guide walks through how fulfilment works, the three main models (self-fulfilment, a 3PL, and Amazon FBA), the European-specific factors that matter, and how to choose.

What "fulfilment" actually covers

Fulfilment is the whole physical journey after checkout. In practice it means five jobs: storing stock somewhere, picking the right items when an order comes in, packing them, shipping via a carrier, and processing returns when they come back. You can do all of this yourself, hand it to a third party, or use a marketplace's own network.

The reason it deserves proper thought is that the costs are per-order and relentless. Unlike a website or a brand shoot, fulfilment doesn't get paid off — every single parcel carries a storage share, a pick-and-pack charge and postage. Get the model wrong and you can be busy and growing while your margin leaks. If you haven't sat down and worked out what each order really nets, do that first with our ecommerce margin calculator — fulfilment is one of the biggest inputs, and it's the number founders most often underestimate.

The three models

Self-fulfilment (do it yourself)

You hold stock at home or in a small unit and pack orders by hand. It's the natural starting point: near-zero fixed cost, full control over how parcels look, and you learn exactly what's involved. The catch is that it doesn't scale. Packing is time you're not spending on marketing or product, and once volume climbs, the "free" labour becomes your most expensive input. As a rough rule of thumb, in-house works while you're under roughly 200 orders a month; above that the economics usually tip towards outsourcing (source: FLEX Fulfillment).

A third-party logistics provider (3PL)

A 3PL stores your stock in their warehouse and handles picking, packing, shipping and often returns on your behalf. You send them a bulk shipment; they fulfil orders as they arrive. This is the standard route for growing brands that want to keep their own branding and channel mix (your own site, marketplaces, wholesale) while offloading the physical work. Around 31% of European ecommerce brands outsource to a 3PL, versus 46% in North America — the market here is younger but growing (source: Redstag Fulfillment).

Amazon FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon)

You send stock into Amazon's warehouses and they pick, pack, ship and handle customer service and returns — with Prime eligibility as the big draw. It's powerful if Amazon is a core channel, but you're tied to their fee schedule and their network. Amazon is cutting European FBA fees in 2026 by an average of £0.15/€0.17 per unit — one of its largest-ever reductions — with parcel fulfilment fees dropping by an average of £0.26/€0.32 in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain from 15 December 2025, and low-price FBA rates extending to products at or below £20/€20 from 5 January 2026 (an average £0.40/€0.45 cut on newly eligible items). Note there are small offsetting increases — around £0.02/€0.02 per unit — on storage, return-to-seller and liquidation fees (Sources: Amazon EU 2026 fee announcement). FBA and a 3PL aren't mutually exclusive: many sellers use FBA for Amazon orders and a 3PL for everything else.

What European 3PL fulfilment costs

Pricing is modular, so compare like for like. The typical building blocks across European providers are:

• Storage: usually charged per pallet per month, roughly €8–€45 depending on size and how long stock sits (long-tenancy stock costs more).
• Pick and pack: around €2.50–€5.00 per order for small to mid-size goods, often a base fee plus a per-extra-item charge.
• Setup / onboarding: a one-off €100–€1,000 depending on complexity.
• Account management: often €70–€230 per month, or an hourly rate for ad-hoc work.
• Shipping: the carrier cost, usually passed through (sometimes with a small margin).

All in, a lightweight consumer product tends to land somewhere around €5–€10 per fulfilled order once storage, pick-pack and postage are added up (Sources: The Fulfillment Advisor; Extensiv; Masson International). Treat these as ranges, not quotes — the real number depends on your product's size and weight, your volume, and which countries you ship to.

The European factors that make or break it

Europe isn't one market, and fulfilment is where that bites hardest.

Coverage and location. A single warehouse in, say, the Netherlands or Germany can reach most of Western Europe in 1–3 days and is often enough to start. If a big share of your orders go to one country, holding stock closer to those customers cuts both delivery time and cost.

Cross-border cost and customs. Post-Brexit, UK–EU shipments mean customs paperwork, potential duties and VAT handling in both directions. Even within the EU, VAT registration thresholds and the One-Stop Shop (OSS) scheme affect how you charge and remit tax. Ask any 3PL directly how they handle customs documentation and whether they can hold stock on both sides of the UK–EU border.

Returns. This is the quiet killer for cross-border sellers. International orders come back at roughly 2.4x the domestic rate, and in fashion or consumer goods, return rates of 30–40% are normal (source: Branvas). A good European 3PL runs regional return hubs so a UK customer returns to a UK address and an EU customer to an EU one — local inspection, faster refunds and consolidated freight back to your main warehouse, which can compress a 30-day return cycle to under a week. When you compare providers, weigh returns handling as heavily as outbound shipping.

Peak and integration. Check that the 3PL integrates cleanly with your store platform and channels, and ask how they cope with Q4 peak — capacity and accuracy under load separate good providers from cheap ones.

How to choose

Work through it in order:

1. Know your numbers first. You can't judge a fulfilment quote without knowing your per-order margin — run yours through the margin calculator before you talk to anyone.
2. Match the model to your stage. Under ~200 orders/month with time to spare: self-fulfil and learn. Scaling, multi-channel, or drowning in packing: move to a 3PL. Amazon-heavy: use FBA for those orders.
3. Map your customers to locations. Put stock where your demand is; don't pay to ship every parcel across the continent.
4. Interrogate returns and cross-border. Get specifics on return hubs, customs handling and VAT/OSS support — not just the outbound rate card.
5. Compare all the fee lines, not the headline. Setup, storage, pick-pack, account management and surcharges add up; a low pick-pack fee with high storage can cost more overall.

All of this assumes you actually have products worth shipping — if you're still at the sourcing stage, start with how to find products to sell online. And fulfilment is just one piece of the wider setup covered in our guide to starting an online business in Europe.

Getting it right from the start

Fulfilment decisions are easier to make well before volume forces your hand — the store, the channels and the numbers all shape which model fits. If you're building or rebuilding your ecommerce store and want it to integrate cleanly with a 3PL or marketplace from day one, see our web development work, or book a free consultation and we'll help you map fulfilment, margins and platform together.