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.