RELAYSHIP vs EZ FULFILL
EZ Fulfill alternative: when email beats an FTP feed.
EZ Fulfill needs a structured file on FTP. Your supplier just sends an email.
EZ Fulfill bulk-updates tracking and marks orders fulfilled from a file your supplier drops on FTP, SFTP, or Dropbox. That is genuinely great, as long as every supplier maintains a feed. Most don’t. Here’s the honest comparison.
TL;DR
Pick EZ Fulfill if your suppliers already maintain clean tracking feeds on FTP, SFTP, or Dropbox: structured files, consistent columns, one feed per supplier. When that exists, polling it on a schedule is a solid, simple model.
Pick Relayship if your suppliers just email you dispatch confirmations (body text, HTML, or a PDF shipping label) and you have no realistic way to make a private agent, a small manufacturer, or an Alibaba supplier stand up an FTP feed.
Feature comparison
| Feature | EZ Fulfill | Relayship |
|---|---|---|
| Input method | File upload, or FTP / SFTP / Dropbox feed | Forwarded dispatch email + PDF label |
| Supplier setup required | Yes — maintain a structured feed | None — they keep emailing |
| Reads unstructured email / PDF | No — needs a structured file | Yes — email body, HTML, or PDF |
| Multi-supplier | Yes — multiple feeds, multi-location | Yes — one forwarding address, any number |
| Real-time vs scheduled | Scheduled hourly / daily syncs | Real-time on email arrival (~60s) |
| Per-supplier learning | No | Yes — corrections train each domain |
| Confirmation queue | No — runs whatever the feed says | Yes — confidence-gated human review |
| Value metric | Per file / feed sync | Per successful upload, real-time only |
The real trade-off
EZ Fulfill and Relayship solve the same end from opposite ends of the pipe: tracking on Shopify, orders fulfilled, customer notified. EZ Fulfill assumes the data already exists in a clean, structured file: rows, columns, an order reference, a tracking number. Point it at the FTP, SFTP, or Dropbox folder where your supplier drops that file and it polls on a schedule. When the feed is good, it is hard to beat.
The catch is the assumption. Someone has to produce that file, on time, every time, in a consistent format. Large structured suppliers and established 3PLs do this. Private dropshipping agents, small manufacturers, and the average Alibaba seller do not. They send you a dispatch email with the tracking number buried in the body, or a YunExpress or 4PX PDF label attached, and that is the entire handoff.
Relayship reads that handoff directly. It pulls the tracking number, carrier, order reference, SKUs, and address out of the email body, HTML, or PDF, runs a four-tier match cascade to find the Shopify order. Above your confidence threshold, it calls fulfillmentCreateV2 with the right line items and tracking so Shopify notifies the customer. No feed to stand up, no schedule to wait on. The email lands, and roughly a minute later the tracking is live.
There is also a timing difference worth naming. EZ Fulfill syncs on an hourly or daily schedule, so tracking is as fresh as the last poll. Relayship fires on arrival, so a dispatch email at 2pm becomes a customer notification by ~2:01pm. For impatient customers and chargeback-sensitive stores, that gap matters.
When EZ Fulfill is the right call
Honestly: if your suppliers already maintain reliable FTP, SFTP, or Dropbox feeds, EZ Fulfill is a clean fit and you should use it. A structured file is more reliable to parse than free-text email — there is no extraction step that can misread a label. EZ Fulfill’s multi-feed, multi-location, scheduled-sync model is built exactly for that world, and bolting an email parser onto a problem you’ve already solved with a feed buys you nothing.
Where I’d steer you to Relayship instead: your tracking arrives as email, your suppliers won’t (or can’t) build a feed, your shipments split across multiple parcels, or one supplier email carries several tracking numbers at once. Relayship is split-shipment and batch-email aware: one email with N tracking numbers becomes N independently matched shipments. Every correction you make becomes a few-shot example for that supplier’s domain, so the match rate climbs over the first ~10 shipments. You only pay for tracking that actually lands on Shopify; failed extractions, duplicates, and non-dispatch noise are free.