Pricing
Simple prices, and never a fee per parcel
Despatch is free for fifty orders a month. Above that you pay for packing benches, not labels, so your busiest week costs the same as your quietest. Every other module is one flat price on top, or on its own.
- No card for the free plan
- Starts read only, so nothing is bought until you say
- Monthly plans cancel with a month’s notice
- All prices exclude VAT
Free
Trying it properly, on your own orders.
No setup fee, no card, no expiry.
- 1 packing bench
- 1 Royal Mail account
- 50 orders a month
- Every despatch feature
- No card needed
Bench
One packing bench, one poster.
Plus £250 setup, once. Cancel with a month’s notice.
- 1 packing bench
- 1 Royal Mail account
- Parcels unmetered
- Every despatch feature
- Email support, next working day
Shop
A shop floor and a back room, or two sites.
Plus £250 setup, once. Cancel with a month’s notice.
- Up to 3 packing benches
- 2 Royal Mail accounts
- Split an order across both
- Future dated batches
- Email support, same working day
Group
Several sites, or more than one brand.
Plus £250 setup, once. Cancel with a month’s notice.
- Unlimited packing benches
- Unlimited Royal Mail accounts
- Your own domain
- A named contact, by email, same day
A packing bench is one PC with a printer attached to it. Prices exclude VAT, which is added at 20%.
The rest of the suite
One flat price per module, added to any despatch plan, the free one included, or taken on its own. They are coming soon, and these are the prices they open at.
Stock control
Stock by colour and size, held by orders as they arrive, suppliers and lead times, Amazon quantities, and counting on a tablet.
A till for the shop counter, on the same stock: £29 a month per till, + VAT.
Delivery dates
A real delivery date at checkout and on the product page, for every basket, with your services, cut-offs and bank holidays.
Returns
The returns portal for your customers and the dashboard for your staff. No charge per return, however many come back.
Order support
The WhatsApp assistant and the inbox behind it, with 300 conversations a month included.
After that, 25p a conversation. WhatsApp’s own message charges are passed on at cost.
Order emails
An email in your own colours at each stage of an order, sent once and never twice.
Site search
Results as the customer types, and a record of what people search for and do not find.
Supplier feeds
A supplier’s stock and restock dates set on your website each morning, and their new lines brought in as drafts.
The suite
Despatch on the Shop plan, with stock control, delivery dates, returns and order support. Despatch starts straight away; the rest as each one opens.
£72 a month less than buying them separately, which is £351 a month.
What changes between the plans
The software is the same on every plan, free included. There is no feature held back to make you upgrade. These are the only things that differ.
| Free | Bench | Shop | Group | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Packing benches | 1 | 1 | 3 | Unlimited |
| Sites | 1 | 1 | 2 | Unlimited |
| Royal Mail accounts | 1 | 1 | 2 | Unlimited |
| People with their own login | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Orders a month | 50 | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Send one order from two Royal Mail accounts | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Future dated batches | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Your own domain rather than a dispatchthread.co.uk address | — | — | — | Yes |
| Support | Email, when we can | Email, next working day | Email, same working day | Named contact by email, same day |
| Setup done for you | — | £250 once, or free on annual | £250 once, or free on annual | £250 once, or free on annual |
Every feature, plan by plan
| Free | Bench | Shop | Group | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Size | ||||
| Packing benches | 1 | 1 | 3 | Unlimited |
| Sites | 1 | 1 | 2 | Unlimited |
| Royal Mail accounts | 1 | 1 | 2 | Unlimited |
| People with their own login | 2 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Orders a month | 50 | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Your own instance and database, never shared with another business | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Your own domain rather than a dispatchthread.co.uk address | — | — | — | Yes |
| At the packing bench | ||||
| A live queue of everything waiting, with the contents, the service paid for, the weight and where it is going | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pack part of an order, one box at a time, and pick what goes in each box | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Paper only comes out of the printer at the bench that asked for it | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Reprint the packing slip and its label together, from one button | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Weights and box sizes remembered per product, and editable afterwards | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Two benches cannot pack the same order at the same time | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Three ways to send it | ||||
| Print now: the slip and the Royal Mail label together | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Check stock first: label printed, but the shipment and the customer email held until the slip is scanned | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Slip only: nothing bought at Royal Mail until somebody scans the slip at a bench | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Future dated batches that release their tracking on the morning you choose | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| Royal Mail | ||||
| Labels bought on your own account, at your own rates, with nothing added on top | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tracked 24 and 48, Royal Mail 24 and 48, and whatever else is on your account | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Parcel or large letter decided by weight, or always parcel, your choice per account | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Your Click and Drop reference is the order number your customer quotes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Labels kept so a lost one can be reprinted rather than bought twice | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| End of day manifesting stays where it is, in Click and Drop | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Send one order from two different Royal Mail accounts | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| BigCommerce | ||||
| Orders read straight from your store, no import and no spreadsheet | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A shipment written holding only what was actually in that box | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tracking reaches the customer through BigCommerce's own email, not ours | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Orders move through Awaiting Fulfillment and Awaiting Shipment as you work | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Remaining quantities recounted from BigCommerce immediately before anything is bought | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Your paperwork | ||||
| Six by four packing slips and labels on thermal printers | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Slips that run to more than one sheet, numbered, with the barcode on the first only | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Quantities above one marked so a packer cannot read past them | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sheets printed in the order the pile needs to come off the printer | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Your own layout, your terms on the back, a returns note in the box | Custom work, quoted as a fixed price | |||
| Your rules, editable by you | ||||
| Which checkout delivery option maps to which Royal Mail service | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Which products are made to order, and the lead time shown against them | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Which of your shops fulfils what, and therefore which account is charged | — | — | Yes | Yes |
| A preview of exactly which waiting orders a rule change would affect, before you can save it | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Running it | ||||
| One login per person, and what they can see and print decided by their shop | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Your BigCommerce and Royal Mail credentials encrypted, and never written to a log | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A record of who did what, kept three years | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A bench's print token revoked on the spot if a PC goes missing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| A print agent on each bench that starts with the PC and restarts itself if it stops | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Every rule change kept, so a bad one is undone in seconds | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Getting help | ||||
| Written setup guide you can follow yourself | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Email, when we can | Email, next working day | Email, same working day | Named contact by email, same day |
| Setup done for you | — | £250 once | £250 once | £250 once |
A bench means one PC with a printer attached to it. Free is limited by orders a month rather than by what the software will do, because you cannot judge despatch software on a cut down version of it.
What you will also pay for, and to whom
Postage
To Royal Mail, on your own account, at whatever rates you have negotiated. DispatchThread takes nothing on top and never sees the money.
Your BigCommerce plan
Whatever you already pay. DispatchThread uses an API account on your existing store, which costs nothing extra.
Thermal printers
If you do not already have one per bench. Any six by four thermal label printer will do; several common models are already in daily use.
A barcode reader
Only if you want the two checking modes. A basic wired reader is enough, and most shops already have one.
Questions about price
Is the free plan really free?
Yes, and it does not expire. Fifty orders in every 30 days, on your own orders, with all three despatch modes. An order counts once, however many parcels it goes out in. No card, and no setup fee. If fifty orders a month is genuinely all you post, stay on it and we will not chase you.
What happens at fifty orders?
The queue keeps working and you can still print packing slips, but no more labels are bought until your 30 days come round again or you move to a paid plan. Nothing is deleted and nothing is held to ransom.
What if I grow mid season?
Add a bench whenever you need one and we bill the difference from that month. On a paid plan you are never cut off in your busiest month for going over a parcel limit, because there is not one.
Can I stop out of season?
Monthly plans cancel with a month's notice at any time of year. Your data is kept for ninety days in case you come back, then deleted.
Are the prices with or without VAT?
Without. VAT is added at 20% on the invoice.
What counts as a packing bench?
One PC with a label printer attached to it. Two people packing at one PC is one bench; a second PC with its own printer is a second bench, wherever it is.
Can I have a module without despatch?
Yes. Each module is priced on its own and works without the others. They are better together, because they share what they know, but that is a reason to add one rather than a condition.
What counts as a conversation on order support?
One customer’s chat on WhatsApp, however many messages are in it, counted once for each day it is active. Three hundred a month are included, the count starts again each month, and you can see where you are in your settings.
Why is there a setup fee?
Because setup on a full installation is real work: connecting your store, your Royal Mail accounts, mapping your delivery options to services and installing the print agent on every bench. It is included if you pay annually, and it is never charged on the free plan, which you set up yourself with our written guide.
Every shop does one thing differently
Usually it is small, usually nobody else needs it, and usually it is the thing that decides whether new software gets used or quietly abandoned. We build those. It is not an upsell bolted onto the product, it is how the product got good in the first place.
Your paperwork, your way
A packing slip laid out how your packers read it. Your terms on the back of it. A returns note in the box. Picking sheets grouped the way your stockroom is arranged rather than the way the order arrived.
Your rules
How your delivery options map to services. Which products are made to order and what lead time they carry. Which shop fulfils what, by product, by category, by brand, or by whatever it actually is in your business.
Getting your data in
Weights and dimensions imported from a spreadsheet instead of typed in over a fortnight. History brought across from whatever you use now, so day one is not an empty screen.
You describe the problem, not the solution. We tell you whether it is a config change, a small piece of work, or a bad idea, and we say which of the three it is honestly, because talking you into building the wrong thing costs us more than it earns.
Anything chargeable is quoted as a fixed price before a line is written. No day rates running on, no open ended invoices. If it turns out harder than we thought, that is our problem rather than yours.
Small things, of the kind that take an afternoon, we usually just do. Especially in your first month, when you are still finding out what you need.
Anything that would turn DispatchThread into a different product before the despatch side is beyond argument. Accounting, warehouse picking routes, a shop front. A tool that half does five jobs is worse at the one that matters.
Three things are not on that list, because they are things we intend to add rather than refuse: inventory, more shop platforms, and more carriers. Each of them arrives when the despatch side has earned it and when enough people are waiting on it, rather than alongside everything else.
We will also say no when the honest answer is that you do not need it. That happens more often than you would expect, and it is usually the most useful thing we say all week.
Fifty orders a month, free
Free for fifty orders a month, with no card and no end date. Run it beside whatever you use now. It starts read only, so nothing is bought at Royal Mail until you turn it on.