How to choose a 3PL in the UK

This guide sets out the criteria experienced operators use to weigh up e-commerce fulfilment services in the UK, not the ones sales teams lead with. If you’re still deciding whether to outsource at all, start there first.

1. Warehouse location and network

While the 3PL is the company operating your fulfilment, usually across several sites and carriers, a fulfilment centre is the physical warehouse. For UK brands, next-day delivery depends on holding stock in the UK, so location and volume of warehousing is the first thing to nail down. If European expansion is on your roadmap, ask whether the provider also has EU warehouse capacity or a proven partner network, since shipping every EU order from the UK now means customs admin and slower delivery. Be cautious of inventory spread thinly across lots of small sites too: it adds complexity for little benefit. At the scale most growing brands operate, one primary site with regional overflow is usually easier to manage and easier to forecast against.

2. Platform integrations

Direct integrations with Shopify, Amazon, Magento and eBay are a given now, not a differentiator, so the real question is how they’re built. Syncing orders manually between your store and a 3PL adds unnecessary risk and takes up valuable staff time, which is why it’s worth asking exactly which integrations are native and update in real time, and which lean on middleware or a scheduled export. As a rule, the fewer moving parts between checkout and the warehouse floor, the fewer points at which an order can fail. For premium brands, an order that needs a gift message or branded insert should reach the warehouse floor with that instruction attached, not lost in a nightly export.

3. Peak capacity and Q4 planning

What happens in November? A 3PL that processes orders comfortably in July can still buckle under Black Friday and Christmas volume. Get documented capacity commitments for peak and a concrete account of how they coped in previous Q4 periods. Vague answers here are a red flag; what you want are numbers: how many extra staff they take on, where their throughput ceiling sits and whether your SLA still holds when volume triples. A provider handling 500 orders a day in spring won’t automatically manage 5,000 a day at peak.

4. Pick and pack accuracy

Pick and pack accuracy is one of the few measurable indicators of operational quality a 3PL will share before you sign, so ask for their accuracy rate and whether it’s written into the contract. The strongest providers will put an accuracy SLA in the contract rather than talk in vague ranges: International Logistics Group (ILG), for example, commits to a pick accuracy SLA of 99.5%, with real-world performance higher. Anything offered as an approximate range rather than a firm number should prompt a closer look at their QA process.

5. Returns management

Returns are part of the customer experience, not just a cost line. Does the 3PL process returns in-house or outsource them to a third party? What is the turnaround from receipt to restocking? Can they handle grading and repackaging for premium products? Brands in beauty, fashion and wellness have specific requirements around returns condition assessment that a generalist 3PL may not meet. At ILG, that assessment follows condition rules agreed with each client up front: as-new goods go back into live, sellable stock; items with a recoverable issue such as damaged outer packaging are repacked or refurbished to a sellable standard; and anything used, damaged beyond repack or hygiene-compromised is quarantined and handled to the client’s instruction. For beauty and wellness the seal is a hard line, an opened or tamper-compromised product never re-enters sellable stock, however it looks.

6. Visibility and reporting

You should be able to see your stock in real time without paying extra for the privilege, so before you sign, ask for a live demo of the client portal and confirm exactly what you’ll see: stock levels, order status, returns and SLA performance. As a simple benchmark, you should be able to check your live stock at 11pm on a Sunday without emailing anyone. It matters because poor visibility is the complaint brands raise most often after a switch and it’s the one that almost never comes up in the sales conversation.

7. Category experience and account management

A 3PL specialising in generic B2C parcels may not fit a premium beauty brand with fragile packaging, or a subscription brand with complex kitting. Check their experience in your category, then find out who your named account manager will be and what their background is: the best providers assign someone who understands your commercial context, not only your operational one. If the answer is ‘a team’ or ‘the support desk,’ keep pushing. At ILG, every account has a named Corporate Account Manager who owns the relationship and answers for how it performs, backed by an Account Director for seniority and continuity. The point is simple: your named contact should be an accountable individual who knows your account, not a shared mailbox.

Red flags to watch for

When you’re choosing a 3PL provider, these are the warning signs worth walking away from:

• No firm SLA numbers committed to in the contract
• Vague answers when you push on peak capacity
• No named account manager offered before you sign
• Reluctance to share client references in your product category
• Pick accuracy stated as a rough figure, not a contractual one
• Pricing quoted verbally, with no line-item breakdown

Questions to ask before you sign

Before committing to any 3PL fulfilment in the UK, put these questions to each provider:

1. What is your contractual pick and pack accuracy rate?
2. Who will be our named account manager, and what is their background?
3. How do you handle peak capacity and what is your throughput ceiling?
4. Can we see a live demo of the client portal before signing?
5. Can we speak to existing clients in our product category?
6. How do you process and grade returns for premium products?
7. What does onboarding involve, how long does it typically take, and is there any downtime in trading?
8. What is the full commercial model, rate card, minimums and any pass-through charges?
9. What delivery services do you offer, and do you operate both UK and EU hubs?
10. Do you carry out value-added services such as personalisation, gifting and kitting in-house?

How ILG works with growing brands

ILG runs fulfilment for international businesses including premium beauty brands Charlotte Tilbury, Gisou and The INKEY List, whose orders arrive picked to the right item and packed to brand standard. It does this from 10 UK fulfilment centres, including its Northampton site and East Grinstead headquarters plus an EU hub in Poland. ILG manages more than 30 million parcels a year across 240 countries, with one platform connecting over 1,000 carrier services including DPD, DHL and Royal Mail.
A Yusen Logistics Company, ILG is a member of both the British International Freight Association (BIFA) and the United Kingdom Warehousing Association (UKWA), the bodies that set UK freight-forwarding and warehousing standards.

Brands that switch without disruption plan a phased migration, running stock and systems in parallel before moving across. See how ILG handles e-commerce fulfilment for growing UK brands.