Guide
3PL or self-storage: which do you actually need?
Self-storage gives you a locked room. A 3PL gives you a team who receive, hold and dispatch your stock. The difference matters more than the price does.
Self-storage rents you a locked space that you access yourself; third-party logistics provides a service in which someone else receives, stores, handles and dispatches your stock on your instruction. Self-storage is appropriate when goods simply need to sit somewhere safe and you are willing to do the moving. A 3PL is appropriate when goods need to arrive, be checked, be held, and then go out again without you handling them.
The two get compared on price per square metre, which is the least useful basis available, because they are not selling the same thing. One is renting you a room. The other is doing the work.
Self-storage suits
Stock that is static, low in value, or personal. A business between premises. Records and equipment nobody needs weekly. Anything where you are content to drive over, unlock a roller door and load your own van.
A 3PL suits
Stock that moves. Goods arriving from suppliers on schedules you do not control, needing to be checked on arrival and dispatched later to customers or sites.
It also suits anything where the condition of the item is the value. Self-storage takes no view on whether your console arrived scratched, because nobody was there when it did.
The question that usually settles it
Who is going to be there when the container arrives? If the honest answer is you, or somebody you employ, self-storage may be enough. If the honest answer is that nobody can reliably be there, you need a service rather than a space.
Related services
Tell us what you need.
Every proposal starts with understanding your business: what you move, how much, how often.