What budget should I sat for a project of the following?

[70403bd9]

Greetings, 

Hello to everyone hope all is well with you all! I'm not completely new here to Upwork, although I'm still inexpireanced when it comes to posting jobs. I always have a difficult time when it comes to hiring or finding someone to hire for a project. I'm a Web Developer well, sort of, I mean self taught, I know the basic's of about every language under the sun, no j/k but I do know basics of like PHP, Switft 3, JavaScript, Java, but I also know like HTML5 CSS3, I know enough that I get buy, building websites, using CMS such as wordpress, editing source code, etc. I've also built apps with Swift3 Xcode, I've studied basic's of. Python and in particular, selentium, and very little web scraping and automation. 

So I know development is time consumming for developers/programmers. So I always like to be fare when budgeting, but I also find that no matter what I set budget, people will bid full ammount. if I lower it, they still bid full ammount or close to. So it's kinda pointless, but not. So Heres what i'm trying to have done. I'm not even sure if it's possible.

I'm needing to come up with away to help my business, find Carriers/Shippers in USA. I'd like to somehow find database that has info on them, or software, but if not, I figured having a program// or web app made that can web scrape data from multiple sites, or even automate and web scrap, carrier, shipper qoutes, and prices from many website calulators for shipping esitmate. (think uShip) problem with uship is I don't think it's the cheapest, we sship furniture, most is just bearly over UPS, Greyhound, FEDX, etc limit. So that's where we need away, to enter in the products, name, size, weight, pickup location and deliver location, and hopefully have app, run check, and find cheapest price, or carrier for the job.

I'm not sure if theres Datasets out there, I could use or have a developer use like API? or if they have to web scrape, or even like should it be python, web app, umm I just  ain't sure. If anyone has any exsperince with this, or could possibly help answer my question, or give me some advice, I would much surely appreciate it. I want to spend some money on this, if I can get a nice setup, even maybe a program, with database, of my own, that we can maybe stock up or own personal shippers, that we might get from sites like uship, where later, we just met and do business offline. I'm not sure, but even find carriers, and knowing thier routes, would be great, but anything that can help speed up or stream line this finding right shipper, or service to use thats cheapest, would really help our business.

Sorry for long Post, just really tired, trying to find a solution for this.

Warm Regards,

Johnny G

[prestonhunter · Accepted solution]

You should not be setting any budget for a project like this.

This project will certainly fail if you try to set a budget for the whole thing.

You need to use hourly contracts. Or use very precise, targeted fixed-price contracts for individual, modular components.

If this was my project, I would start with using ShipStation. You may end up needing nothing more.

[70403bd9]

So you have experience with the software? We just need something to use to ship items that are just over FedEx, ups, greyhound size limits. Which is quiet often.thanks for your reply.

[prestonhunter]

re: "So you have experience with the software? We just need something to use to ship items that are just over FedEx, ups, greyhound size limits."

John:
I have worked with ShipStation quite a bit. I do not solicit work through the Community Forum, so I wouldn't be available to work on your project.

But I can tell you that for a person with a ShipStation account, it is relatively easy to use this service programmatically to determine what shipping methods are available, and what their costs are, for FedEx, UPS, and many, many other shipping methods.

You could look into this entirely on your own, or you could post an hourly job on the main site (https://upwork.com) to talk to somebody. If you hired 3 or 4 people to discuss your project with you WITHOUT mentioning ShipStation, I bet they would all tell you that ShipStation is the best or one of the best options for your project.

[70403bd9]

Yeah, I'm reading over it, I'm it looks good lot of partners, just trying to look if it provides, carriers for bigger, items like couches, dressers, etc.

Thanks again for the help, yeah I'll definitely probably need to hire freelancer to help set up something like this.