AfterShip Returns & Exchanges

I had an extremely frustrating experience with AfterShip Returns and honestly regret wasting so much time setting it up.

As a Shopify business owner, I spent HOURS configuring their return portal, workflows, customer messaging, replacement flows, uploads, and policies — only to discover that one of the most basic and essential return workflow features was locked behind a more expensive plan.

Our business simply wanted to approve replacements without forcing customers to return low-value items. This is a completely normal workflow for modern ecommerce businesses. Instead, the system keeps showing customers return shipping instructions and “items you need to return,” which creates confusion and a terrible customer experience.

What makes this worse is:

• Slow customer support responses
• Being passed between multiple agents
• Generic copy-paste replies
• Wasting time explaining the same issue repeatedly
• Basic functionality hidden behind higher pricing tiers

The most disappointing part is that this wasn’t some advanced enterprise feature. It was a simple operational requirement that many Shopify stores would reasonably expect to have access to.

After spending hours onboarding and customizing everything, they eventually told me the feature required upgrading to a more expensive Pro plan just to allow “keep the item” returns/replacements.

So basically:

1. Spend hours setting everything up
2. Discover critical workflow limitations later
3. Pay more money to unlock practical functionality

This feels incredibly misleading from a merchant perspective.

The support team kept apologizing, but apologies don’t give businesses back their wasted time. The overall experience felt designed to push users into higher-tier plans after they are already invested in the setup process.

If you’re considering AfterShip Returns for a serious ecommerce operation, I strongly recommend testing EVERY workflow limitation first before committing time to setup.

For us, this was a huge waste of time, energy, and effort.

To your reply -> thanks for offering printer less returns with Green returns for extra 40 USD a month - completely worth it . Next time do let people know how to use the printerless returns with the green return option

I have been using this app for a couple years and they have just updated the integration with Shopify so as soon as a return is submitted to their portal (even credit or exchange request) the value of that order comes off your sales total. I have been in contact with the app to understand (unsuccessfully) how it all works as it's a nightmare for reporting. I have been emailing Ryanne for weeks who responds every 8 days. They havent been able to tell me what happens to the sale total when the return is later refunded to a credit (which we offer via a different app). I'm ready to move into a new returns app now the function and the service are both painful.

I have never regretted installing an app more than Aftership Returns. I tried to save some money by not going with Loop and it has been a huge mistake. The amount of time I've spent managing this buggy platform has been much more than the money saved. The exchange for other items feature is not working at all! it's charging customers full price for the exchange order instead of applying the value of the return to their new order. I am now in customer support hell and will likely lose these repeat customers.

Told us it could do certain features, kept telling us it's possible and we kept trying to make it work. Finally they spent time with their team and realised they were giving us the wrong information.

Wasted our time and energy.

The the way users are managed is unfair and broken. Why do I need to pay for additional seats on top of the per-return rate.

Avoid.

Terrible support, completely wasted my time. I will be removing this app.
I wouldnt use this company

Support has been so terrible I have had to change my review from 5 stars to 1 star. We had a great year with this app but it suddenly broke down and the support has been useless to say the least. I have been working with them in chat and email back and forth daily for two weeks and they frequently just tell me the issue is my courier account even though it's THEIR discounted USPS account that is now broken. Their app won't allow the courier to be deleted and my new personal courier accounts that have been added are not working either.

Priyanka was a HUGE help with trying to get my organizations straightened out in the system and getting me all set up to run my store with returns. Forever grateful for the customer service with this app. *** UPDATE** Well apparently my store was never connected to the app and I was receiving a bunch of error messages and customer complaints. I reached out to customer service for assistance and they kept closing my case. Samad was rude and impatient and was not helpful at all. I am deleting this app and do not recommend.

Works well and has a simple process. A few areas of improvement are needed - it would be good to go direct from one state to another, like approved to refunded and skip the shipment received and other intermediate steps. Also the canned English needs a lot of work on both grammar and punctuation and not all can be user edited and thus is a little cringe worthy when people need to read it. UPDATE: A lot of great innovation has gone into this product. Still an issue with not being able to edit some language (US Spelling everywhere) but upgrading from 4 star to 5 nonetheless. 6 months use almost now. UPDATE 2: It keeps nagging you to leave a review. Review begging is not good form and is very crass. Despite having left a review already and closing/dismissing the review begging banner, it keeps coming back every day to beg you. Is this an app store or the fish markets? Now 2 star. Update #4. Stop nagging for a review!

Useless Customer Support cannot provide any help with the issue. This doesn't allow us to provide the customer with the return label for 2 months. I even talked to their supervisor over the phone and got nothing! Our business struggles just because Aftership doesn't care about their long-term customers. They also ignore me in chat for the whole months already. We will switch to another tool.