EasyPost IPO: Postage API to Go Public in 2022

EasyPost, the shipping API that has supplied discounted postage for billions of packages, has just come out with a major announcement: the company is going public. The EasyPost IPO is slated for the middle of 2022, and will serve as further evidence that the growing eCommerce market—and the online sellers who power it—are major driving forces in the global economy.

A History of EasyPost, from Founding to IPO

Like most businesses, EasyPost began out of a need; founder Jarrett Streebin had started a small eCommerce business, but couldn’t figure out an easy way to buy the necessary postage to send his products to his customers. So, rather than seek the solutions his business needed elsewhere, he decided to build the shipping software himself.

Speaking to Forbes in regards to the company’s upcoming IPO, Streebin detailed EasyPost’s origins:

“I had an eCommerce business and I needed to connect USPS to my website to where customers could generate a shipping label on the website,” Streebin said. “I started looking at a company called Endicia, that has since been bought by Stamps.com. But they were basically a portal for USPS. It seemed to be lacking compared to what I saw with other APIs. Given that, I said, ‘Well, why don’t I just try and do a Stripe for shipping?’”

So far, Streebin’s efforts have paid off. Since its inception in 2012, thousands of businesses have joined EasyPost to ship billions of packages throughout the United States (and the world) every day. EasyPost’s customer base ranges in size, from small online businesses to large, public companies. Not yet a decade old, the company has raised close to $100 million from investors such as billionaire Ram Shiriam, Google Ventures, and even Ashton Kutcher.

Should I Consider EasyPost for My eCommerce Business?

If your online business needs a cheaper, more efficient way to ship, EasyPost might be a viable solution. EasyPost integrates into the back-end of any online store and streamlines the shipping process whenever a customer checks out. This way, online sellers can easily generate labels for their orders, and send packages to their customers at discounted rates from over 100 different shipping carriers. However, individuals and small businesses can’t log onto EasyPost’s website and start buying labels right away. Instead, it takes a bit more work “on the back-end” to make EasyPost a part of your shipping process.

EasyPost is different from other online shipping software solutions in the sense that it’s solely an API. Integrating it into an online store requires some basic development knowledge (or access to a developer who can help). For less tech savvy entrepreneurs who just need an easy way to buy and print shipping labels for cheap, there may be other plug-and-pay online shipping software options to consider.

For the nascent eCommerce entrepreneur weighing shipping software options, a good place to start is to visit our Reviews page. There, you can read first-hand testimonies about different shipping software companies, all written by real shippers like you.