Sooner or later every growing store in Egypt asks the same question: keep fulfillment in-house or hand it to a 3PL. People treat it as a cost-per-order decision, but the pricing models here aren't as clean as the per-order number they quote you. Here's how the main players actually charge, and the catch hiding in each.
The players
A handful of companies cover ecommerce fulfillment in Egypt:
- Bosta (Bosta Fulfillment)
- Flextock
- Khazenly
- Mylerz
- ShipBlu
They all do the same core job: warehouse your stock, pick and pack orders, and get them to the customer, usually through last-mile partners. Where they differ, and where it costs you, is how they price storage.
Two pricing models, and the catch in each
Per-order (most of them). You pay per order shipped. Sounds clean: no sales, no cost. The catch is they cap how much stock you can hold. The rule I keep hitting is you can't keep more than about 200% of the orders you'll ship in a month sitting on their shelves. Ship 1,000 orders a month and they don't want much more than ~2,000 units parked with them. That's a real problem if you import in bulk, carry slow movers, or stock up for a season. You end up splitting inventory or getting pushed onto storage fees anyway.
Storage-based (Bosta). Bosta is the odd one out. They charge on whatever shelf space your inventory occupies as of the 25th of the month, sold or not. No inventory cap to fight, but dead stock costs you every month it sits there. It rewards tight inventory and punishes overstocking.
Neither model is "better." They suit different businesses. Lean, fast-moving catalogs do well on per-order. If you need real inventory depth, the storage model can work out cheaper than being forced to split stock across locations.
The actual numbers
I'll use Bosta because I know its pricing first-hand. Fulfillment only, picking and packing your order, runs about 18 to 20 EGP per order. The all-in number, where they also handle shipping and everything in between, is more like 80 to 100 EGP per order. That gap is almost entirely the shipping leg, so know which number you're being quoted before you compare one provider to another. A "cheap" fulfillment quote and an "expensive" all-in quote can be the same company.
(Rates move, so treat these as recent ballparks and confirm the current numbers when you quote.)
When in-house still wins
The honest comparison isn't sticker price, it's your true cost per order in-house. Take your monthly fulfillment opex, labor plus rent plus packing, and divide by orders shipped. Ship 10,000 orders out of a 20,000 EGP/month setup and that's 2 EGP an order in handling, which makes a 3PL's 18-20 look expensive.
But that 2 EGP ignores your time, your mistakes, and the ceiling on how fast you can grow. Most founders undercount in-house cost badly. My rule from running this: in-house wins while volume is low and you have spare hands. A 3PL wins the moment fulfillment becomes the thing stopping you from growing.
How to actually decide
- Get every quote as cost per order, and separate fulfillment-only from all-in (with shipping). Compare like for like.
- Match the pricing model to your inventory shape: lean and fast favors per-order; deep inventory favors checking the storage model.
- Calculate your real in-house cost per order, including your own time, before you call a 3PL expensive.
For transparency: I use Bosta at the store I run, so my read is shaped by that. Your product mix and order shape might point you somewhere else, and that's the point of doing the math.
If you want this modeled on your real numbers before you sign a 3PL contract, get an ops audit or book a call.