ShipStation

What it does

ShipStation is a shipping platform that handles carrier rates, label printing, and batch fulfillment. It is not a sales channel. The Commerce Kitty plugin is a fulfillment bridge. It sends new orders into ShipStation, waits for you to buy and print labels there, then pulls the resulting shipment and tracking information back into Commerce Kitty.

This plugin is a good fit if you already have ShipStation set up with negotiated carrier rates, automation rules, or warehouse workflows and you want to keep using it while centralizing your multi-channel order management in Commerce Kitty.

Setup

1. Log in to your ShipStation account.
2. Open Account Settings (the gear icon) and choose Account > API Settings.
3. Click Generate New API Keys if you do not already have a key pair.
4. Copy the API Key and API Secret.
5. In Commerce Kitty, open Settings > Plugins, click New, and choose ShipStation.
6. Paste the API Key and API Secret into the form and save.

Once saved, assign the plugin to the channels whose orders you want to fulfill through ShipStation.

Fields

API Key

Found in ShipStation under Account Settings > API Settings. Identifies your ShipStation account to Commerce Kitty.

API Secret

Issued alongside the API Key. Commerce Kitty stores it encrypted and never displays it back after you save. If you rotate the key pair in ShipStation, update this field.

Plugin Options

Export Orders

Sends new Commerce Kitty orders into ShipStation so they show up in your ShipStation dashboard ready to ship. The buyer, shipping address, line items, and any order-level notes are included. Orders are created in ShipStation with the channel name preserved so ShipStation automation rules can target them.

Import Shipments

When you ship an order in ShipStation, Commerce Kitty pulls the resulting shipment record back. This keeps your order statuses accurate without having to mark orders shipped twice.

Import Tracking

Brings back the carrier and tracking number from each ShipStation shipment and attaches it to the Commerce Kitty shipment. From there, Commerce Kitty can push tracking back out to the original sales channel (Shopify, Etsy, eBay, etc.) through whichever plugin owns that channel.

Limitations

ShipStation's API is rate limited. For stores with very high order volume, there can be a short delay between placing an order in Commerce Kitty and seeing it appear in ShipStation.

Commerce Kitty does not buy labels or pick rates through this plugin. You still do rate shopping and label printing inside ShipStation. The plugin is a bridge, not a replacement for ShipStation's shipping UI.

Orders that already exist in ShipStation from a direct store integration (for example, a native Shopify-to-ShipStation connection) should not also be exported from Commerce Kitty, or they will appear twice. Pick one source of truth per channel.