The website attracts a variety of transport providers, including vehicle shipping companies, household movers, general freight transporters, and other types of logistics companies that essentially look for jobs via the Shiply Load board, where users (customers) are posting moving requests that the providers can then bid on.

Shiply got its start back in 2008 in the United Kingdom, but eventually expanded to several additional countries including the US and Canada.

In August 2010, when the company expanded to France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, 15% of shipments on Shiply already crossed national borders and 10% of its business came from the German website.

The ASA concluded: "The home page breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.9 and 3.10 (Qualification).

Shiply Ltd's details shall remain in place until such time as www.shiply.com clearly and prominently states the significant condition of its cancellation policy on its home page.

An investigative piece [18] found that many of the companies bidding on loads do not have active DOT numbers required by the FMCSA to haul freight.

Shiply has been covered in the UK media as successful start-up business during recession times,[11][19] as a provider of cheap shipping alternatives,[5][20][21][22] and as an innovative idea for tackling climate change.

[23][24] In 2010 Shiply was awarded the Shell Springboard Climate Change Innovation Prize,[24] and was runner-up in the Dutch Postcode Lottery's 2010 Green Challenge competition.