ORIGINAL REDDIT POST

What’s the best thermal label printer for automated shipping?

Hey everyone, I’m trying to improve my shipping workflow and was wondering how others are handling this. Right now I create UPS labels through the UPS eCommerce portal after an order comes in from Shopify. What I’d like is for the process to be as hands-off…

Original postr/smallbusiness

Hey everyone, I’m trying to improve my shipping workflow and was wondering how others are handling this. Right now I create UPS labels through the UPS eCommerce portal after an order comes in from Shopify. What I’d like is for the process to be as hands-off as possible. My ideal workflow would be: - Create the label in the UPS portal. - The shipping label prints automatically to a label printer. - If a commercial invoice is generated, that prints automatically to a regular A4 printer or the same printer would be great! - No extra clicks, no opening PDFs and hitting Print every time. We’re a small business, so we’re only shipping around 1–5 packages a day. (But growing) Because of that I’m not looking for an expensive warehouse setup or enterprise hardware. Budget max of around 400-500$ I’m mostly wondering: - What label printer are you using? (Rollo, Munbyn, Brother, something else?) - Has anyone automated printing from the UPS eCommerce portal? - Did you use UPS APIs, browser automation, PDF watching, or another approach? - If you were starting from scratch today, what would you buy and how would you build it? I’m a Python developer, so I’m happy to write some automation if that’s the best route. I’m just trying to avoid buying the wrong hardware or overengineering it. Would love to hear what setups are actually working for people.

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u/yyyogev

any Zebra-style thermal printer will do, but wht make each label in the UPS portal by hand? You can have Shopify orders generate the label and push it straight to the printer, invoice and all, so it's properly hands-off