A parcel locker in checkout is no longer an advantage, it is the price of entry - a store with no point selection on a map hands its carts to the competition. Polish buyers are used to it: they want to click their parcel locker on a map, get a notification and collect it on the way. The other side of the coin is your packing table: every parcel needs a label, a courier booking and a tracking number - and all of that can happen automatically.
Two routes: direct or through a broker
- Direct integration with the carrier - official plugins (InPost, DPD, DHL and so on) connect the store to the carrier’s API: a point map in checkout, label generation from the order, statuses. You pay for shipments under YOUR contract with the carrier - at higher volumes, negotiated rates are unbeatable
- A shipping broker (Furgonetka, Apaczka and similar) - one account, many carriers, rates negotiated by the broker. For small and medium stores often cheaper than your own contracts, and the broker’s plugin gives you every courier at once. The downside: an extra intermediary in complaints
In practice: a small store starts with a broker (no contracts, good rates from the first parcel); as it grows it negotiates its own contract with one or two main carriers and keeps the broker as a supplement. With multichannel selling across marketplaces, shipping is often taken over by an order integrator - I described that variant in the piece on Baselinker.
What has to work in checkout
- The point map (parcel lockers, DPD Pickup points and so on) - the chosen point saved to the order; without it your team emails the customer to ask for the locker number, which is back to the middle ages
- A delivery price list that makes sense - free delivery above a threshold (it raises the average basket), cash on delivery priced higher (it discourages the most expensive option), weights and dimensions if your range needs them
- Validation - a phone number in the format needed for SMS notifications, a postcode; wrong details are the most common reason for “addressee unknown” returns
- Speed - the point map pulls in the carrier’s scripts; wired in badly it can slow the whole checkout, and a slow checkout loses carts
What has to happen automatically after the order
A healthy flow: order paid, label generated (from the order data, with no retyping), courier booked or parcel added to the next collection, tracking number returned to the order, customer emailed the tracking link, status set to “shipped”. Every manual step in that chain is seconds on one parcel and a full-time job at three hundred a month. While configuring, test the edge paths too: cash on delivery, multi-parcel shipments, return labels.
What helps: print a “parcel from A to Z” checklist and walk it on one test order after every plugin change or update - exactly as with safe updates. Shipping breaks quietly: the store works, payments go through, only the labels have stopped generating - and you find out from a customer asking where the parcel is.
Frequently asked questions
What does a shipping integration cost? Carrier and broker plugins are free or cheap - the real cost is configuration and testing; I give the exact figure after looking at the store. It gets more expensive with multi-parcel shipments, stock in several locations and unusual delivery pricing rules.
InPost directly or through a broker? With a small number of parcels a broker usually wins on price and simplicity - no contracts, good rates from the first shipment. As volume grows, run both variants on your own numbers - your own InPost contract can be noticeably cheaper, and the official plugin is mature.
Can the customer change the parcel locker after ordering? Carriers allow redirects through their own apps. In the store something else matters more: that the point selection is saved correctly from the start - most “changes” are repairs for missing validation in checkout.
Sitting on this yourself and unsure where to start? I speed up and repair existing sites and stores - Core Web Vitals, outages, the features that are missing. Tell me what is happening and you will get a concrete quote with a date.