FBA, Easy Ship or Self Ship? Choosing the Right Amazon Fulfilment Model in India

Amazon India gives sellers several ways to get orders to customers. The right choice depends on your product, your margins and how much of the operation you want to run yourself.

The four models

FBA: hands-off, Prime-eligible

• Pros: the Prime badge, faster delivery promises, Amazon handles customer returns and delivery issues, and fewer dispatch metrics count against you.
• Cons: storage and fulfilment fees, inbound shipping costs, and long-term storage charges on slow stock.
• Best for: fast-moving products with healthy margins and predictable demand.

Easy Ship: your stock, Amazon's delivery

• Pros: no inventory sent to Amazon, flexible for large catalogues, and Amazon's logistics for delivery.
• Cons: you're responsible for packing and dispatching on time, so late dispatch and cancellations affect your account health.
• Best for: wide catalogues, slower-moving SKUs, and sellers testing demand before committing stock to FBA.

Self Ship: full control

• Pros: use your own courier rates and networks, useful for bulky or special-handling products.
• Cons: you own every delivery problem, tracking must be accurate, and Prime is generally not available.
• Best for: oversized, fragile or very specialised items, or sellers with strong existing logistics.

Seller Flex: a hybrid for larger sellers

Seller Flex lets Amazon manage fulfilment operations from your own warehouse, with Amazon delivering. It's typically offered to larger sellers by invitation, and can give Prime-like delivery promises without moving stock into Amazon's fulfilment centres.

How we usually recommend choosing

1. Put your top 20% of SKUs by sales into FBA for the Prime badge and stronger Buy Box performance.
2. Run the long tail on Easy Ship to avoid storage costs on slow movers.
3. Use Self Ship only where product size or handling makes the other options impractical.
4. Review quarterly: move SKUs into FBA as they prove demand, and out when they slow.