Shipping labels 101
A shipping label is the sticker that goes on a parcel telling the carrier (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, Royal Mail, etc.) where to deliver it, who's paying, and what's inside. Without one, a carrier won't touch the box.
If you're selling physical products online, you'll generate thousands of these. Doing it right saves 30-50% on shipping costs vs. walking parcels into the post office and paying retail.
The four options for printing labels
1. Carrier websites directly
USPS, UPS, FedEx all let you create and print labels on their sites. You paste the destination address, pay the rate, print, stick on box.
Pros: zero setup, works today, no third-party fee. Cons: no batch processing, retail rates (the most expensive tier), manual re-entry of every customer address.
Fine for five orders a month. Painful at fifty.
2. Multi-carrier shipping software
The category of tools that connect to every major carrier, negotiate commercial rates, and plug into your ecommerce store:
- Shippo: popular with Shopify/WooCommerce stores, pay-per-label
- ShipStation: deeper feature set, monthly subscription
- EasyPost: developer-focused, API-first
- Pirate Ship: USPS-only, free (no software fee; you just pay USPS)
- Sendcloud: Europe-focused
All of these pull orders from your store, auto-fill the address, show you rate comparisons across carriers, print labels in batches, and sync tracking numbers back.
Pros: commercial discount rates (10-30% off retail), batch printing, multi-carrier comparison. Cons: subscription or per-label fees; another tool to manage.
3. Marketplace-integrated labels
If you sell on eBay, Etsy, or Amazon, they each have native label printing built into the seller dashboard with negotiated rates. Use it.
Pros: zero setup if you're already on the marketplace. Cons: only works for orders from that specific marketplace.
4. Fulfilment outsourced to a 3PL
Once you're past ~100 orders/week, outsourcing fulfilment to a 3PL (Third Party Logistics provider) usually makes sense. You send your inventory to the 3PL; they pick, pack, and ship on your behalf. Labels are handled on their side.
Pros: you stop doing shipping logistics entirely. Cons: monthly storage fees, per-pick fees, minimum volume commitments.
What to pick based on where you are
| Volume | Recommended approach |
|---|---|
| <20 orders/month | Print at home using the carrier site or Pirate Ship (USPS) |
| 20-200 orders/month | Shippo or ShipStation, connected to your store |
| 200-1000 orders/month | Same as above, plus 3PL conversations starting |
| 1000+ orders/month | 3PL fulfilment with a shipping-software layer for edge cases |
How Shoprocket fits in
Shoprocket handles the checkout and order side. Once an order comes in, the data (customer name, shipping address, items, dimensions if configured) is available via:
- Your Shoprocket dashboard: view/export individual orders
- CSV export: bulk export for manual label generation
- Webhooks: push new orders automatically to Shippo, ShipStation, or your own systems
From there, pick whichever label tool fits your volume. We stay out of the carrier-rate-negotiation business because Shippo / ShipStation / Pirate Ship already do that well. What we give you is structured order data they can consume.
<!-- EXAMPLE ONLY. Grab your real snippet from Sales channels → Embeds in your dashboard -->
<script src="https://cdn.shoprocket.io/loader.js" data-pk="pk_yourkey"></script>
<div data-shoprocket="catalog" data-embed-id="emb_xxx"></div>
Paste on any site, take orders, fulfil them using whichever label software makes sense. Zero platform transaction fees, 200+ payment methods, order data clean enough to hand to any shipping tool.
Common mistakes
Paying retail shipping rates
If you're printing labels on USPS.com or UPS.com and paying the rates shown, you're paying ~20-30% above what commercial shipping software will charge for the same service. Over a year, that's real money. Shippo or Pirate Ship pay for themselves on their first week of use.
Wrong box size for the contents
Carriers charge by dimensional weight, not actual weight, once the box is above a certain size. Shipping a 2oz product in a 12×12×8 box costs as much as shipping a 10lb product in that same box. Buy boxes that fit your products.
Missing the customs declaration
International shipments need a customs form (CN22 for most, CN23 for higher-value). Skip it and your parcel sits in customs for weeks before getting returned. Every shipping tool above generates this automatically once configured.
Tip: If you're based in the US and doing more than 10 orders a week with USPS, get a free Pirate Ship account immediately. It's USPS commercial rates (Commercial Plus, the cheapest tier) with no software fee. Most sellers save 30-50% vs. USPS.com retail rates within the first week.
TL;DR
- Carrier websites are fine for <20 orders/month
- Shippo, ShipStation, or Pirate Ship save 20-30% vs. retail rates once you're past that
- Marketplace-native labels work for marketplace-exclusive sellers
- 3PL makes sense past ~100 orders/week
- Shoprocket handles the order data; any shipping tool can consume it
Start a free trial if you need the commerce side. Pricing: $29 onward, no platform fees on any plan.
Building ecommerce tools for independent sellers since 2013.
