The nation’s smallest online retailers now have a way to keep pace with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon — at least when it comes to the speed of delivery.

Thanks to a partnership announced today with courier start-up Postmates, merchants using Shopify’s web and mobile tools to manage online sales can outsource same-day, local package delivery to an independent contractor in the area.

The alliance means mom-and-pop shops have the potential of effectively delivering products to nearby patrons in an hour or two, thus satisfying shoppers’ increasing desire for right-here, right-now service.

× Shopify and Postmates partner for local package pickups and drop-offs


“There is a human desire for instant gratification,” said Niko Downie, business development lead at Shopify. “Anecdotally, (the speed of delivery) has a really, really big impact on purchase decisions.”

Shopify, a publicly traded company headquartered in Canada, is valued at $2.5 billion. It sells e-commerce software to more than 243,000 merchants around the world, and the bulk of its retailers are small or medium-sized businesses. In partnering with Postmates, Shopify is gifting its U.S. clientele with an easy way to tap one of the delivery start-up’s 25,000 couriers spanning 40 U.S. markets (covering around 200 total cities).

Shopify estimates that nearly 21,000 of its merchant customers can benefit from the Postmates relationship. In doing so, they’ll potentially get a leg-up on Amazon, which is increasingly ramping up its speedy delivery program and offers a variety of options — one-hour, same-day, next-day and two-day — to Prime customers depending on their location.

As it stands, 10 percent of orders from Shopify merchants are locally made purchases, Downie said.


Online orders placed with Postmates same-day delivery can be tracked in real time. (Courtesy, Shopify)

Shoppers who buy from a participating Shopify merchant in their vicinity will see a same-day delivery option during the online checkout process, and will be able to track the location of their package and courier at any given point after a purchase is completed. Same-day delivery rates start at $5 but vary based on the distance between the merchant and customer.

Exact terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but the new program is primarily designed to boost Shopify’s appeal to online retailers, which should attract new customers and grow sales. In the fourth quarter of last year, the company’s sales totaled $70.2 million, growing 99 percent over the year-ago quarter, though it posted a net loss of $6.3 million.

The partnership should also boost the volume of deliveries for the privately held, San Francisco-based Postmates, which competes with GrubHub and DoorDash in the crowded food tech market and is seeking to distinguish itself by offering quick delivery on supplies and clothes. The company last year launched software to let other retailers integrate with its delivery logistics network and has partnered with American Apparel.