Short answer: a fulfillment center is built to ship individual orders to consumers, while a warehouse is built to hold inventory. A 3PL warehouse like PickPackShip does both: long-term storage plus same-day pick, pack and ship.
What does a traditional warehouse do?
A traditional warehouse is a storage building. Goods arrive on pallets, sit on racking for weeks or months, and leave in bulk, usually on another pallet or in a container. Inventory turns slowly, staffing is light, and the pricing model is space based: you pay per pallet, per bin or per square foot.
What does a fulfillment center do?
A fulfillment center is built around order flow rather than storage. Inventory is stored in pick faces so single units can be retrieved quickly, orders are packed individually, and carriers collect every day. Pricing is activity based: you pay per order, per item picked and per package.
What is a 3PL warehouse then?
A third-party logistics provider combines both models under one roof and one contract. At PickPackShip your pallets are stored on racking at $30 per pallet per month, and the same building picks, packs and ships individual e-commerce orders from $3.25 per order, the same day we receive them.
Which one does your business need?
- Bulk storage only: if you move full pallets to retailers or distributors, a warehouse is enough.
- Direct-to-consumer only: if you ship small parcels and hold little stock, a fulfillment center fits.
- Both: if you import containers, hold safety stock and also ship to consumers, a 3PL warehouse avoids paying two vendors and moving inventory between them.
What questions should you ask before you sign?
- Is receiving, storage and fulfillment priced separately so you can model your own volumes?
- Can they unload containers on site, or does drayage go somewhere else first?
- Which carriers do they ship with, and can you use your own carrier accounts?
- Does the warehouse management system show real-time inventory, and does it connect to your store?
- Who will you actually talk to when an order goes wrong?
How does PickPackShip answer those questions?
We publish our rates instead of hiding them, unload containers at our Paterson, New Jersey facility minutes from the Ports of New York and New Jersey, ship with UPS, FedEx, USPS and DHL or your own accounts, track inventory in real time in our WMS, and give every client a dedicated account manager rather than a ticket queue.
See the full 3PL pricing list or read our 3PL warehouse FAQ.
