Most UK e-commerce founders we speak to wait too long to outsource fulfilment. The decision is usually made when the founder is packing parcels at 11pm two nights a week and customer service replies start slipping. By that point you've already lost three months of growth.
The clearest signals it's time to outsource: you're shipping 80+ orders a week, you spend more than 6 hours/week on pick-and-pack, you've turned down a wholesale order because you couldn't fulfil it, your error rate is creeping above 1%, or you're paying retail postage rates instead of negotiated business ones.
A switch to a UK fulfilment partner like MOVANA Express typically costs three things in month one: a one-off onboarding fee (£100–£300), the cost of moving your stock (we cover this for new customers), and a few hours of integration work to wire up Shopify, WooCommerce or your custom store.
Per-order pricing then breaks down into pick fee, pack fee and postage. For a typical sub-2kg domestic UK parcel you should expect 80p–£1.20 in pick and pack plus the chosen postage rate. That's not much more than your time costs at any reasonable hourly rate.
The biggest gain is rarely cost — it's speed. Customers in the UK now expect 1–3 day delivery as standard. A fulfilment centre with same-day cut-offs at 17:00 lets you offer that as a default, which is the single biggest conversion lever in checkout.