Automatic An Post labels without a business account

What An Post asks for before it gives you an API key

Every automatic label route needs an An Post business account, and An Post publishes the bar for opening one on its own business services FAQ. Send more than 40 parcels a week and you can become a parcels account holder, with an account manager and access to eCommerce Hub. That is roughly 2,080 parcels a year.

Under the threshold, An Post's published answer is to order prepaid parcel labels from its Business Desk or from the driver who calls to you. So every guide to automating An Post labels, the ones on this site included, opens on the same step: get an eCommerce Hub account, turn on API access, copy the key. A shop sending 15 parcels a week never gets past it.

What you need instead

There is a second route, live since September 2026. EirLink connects to a prepaid EirPost balance rather than to an An Post account, and the labels that come out are ordinary An Post tracked labels. Nothing in the setup needs an An Post account.

• A Shopify store selling physical products.
• An EirLink account, which imports the orders and creates the labels.
• An EirPost account with balance on it, which is what pays for postage.
• A sender address, and a returns address if you use one.
• Packed weights on your Shopify products, because every parcel is priced by weight band.
• No An Post account number, no API key, no account manager.

The setup, in the order it happens

An Post's own eCommerce Hub route asks you to build a custom app inside Shopify, grant it read and write on assigned fulfilment orders, fulfilment services, orders and product listings, then copy an Admin API access token that Shopify shows you exactly once, and all of that comes after you already have the account. The route below takes about twenty minutes and needs none of it.

1. 1Create an EirLink account and verify the email. Two minutes.
2. 2Create an EirPost account on eirpost.ie, or sign in if you already have one. Two minutes.
3. 3Top up the balance by card. €10 is the smallest top-up, and it is non-refundable and never expires, so load what you will get through in a fortnight. Three minutes.
4. 4In EirLink, open Settings, then Carriers, and press Connect EirPost. Approve the connection on eirpost.ie and EirPost appears beside your other carriers. Two minutes.
5. 5Add your sender address. One minute.
6. 6Connect your Shopify store and approve the access it asks for. Recent unfulfilled orders import straight away, so you are not starting from an empty dashboard. Three minutes.
7. 7Take one real order, create the EirPost label, print it, and check the tracking number landed back on the Shopify order before you do anything else. Five minutes.

What a label costs, and what it will not carry

Prices are published per destination and weight band, in four bands up to 2 kg, across 51 destinations. A domestic parcel up to 0.5 kg is €6.90 on the discounted rate and €10.00 on retail. To Great Britain the same parcel is €8.00 discounted and €15.00 retail. To the United States it is €13.50 and €20.00. The discounted rate applies on Plus, which is €19 a month, and on the first three labels of a free account.

This route carries parcels up to 2 kg and nothing heavier, and it sells one product, the An Post tracked parcel, so there is no service to choose per order.

Handing the labels over to a rule

Once a few labels have gone out by hand, EirLink's automation rules can pick EirPost for you. A rule matches on destination country, total weight, order value or Shopify tags, and sets the carrier. Rules are ordered and the first match wins, so one rule covering most of your traffic is a sensible start.

Creating the label without you is a separate switch, and it stays off until you turn it on. When you do, there is a delay of up to an hour before the label fires, which absorbs the address edits and cancellations that arrive minutes after checkout. The order is checked again when the delay ends, so a cancelled order never gets a label.

What goes wrong, and how you would know

None of these fail silently. Each one surfaces on the order itself or in the exceptions list, with the reason attached.

• The parcel is over 2 kg. EirLink checks the weight before it calls anything, so you hear about it on the order rather than at the label.
• The balance does not cover the label. The order lands in the exceptions list with a top-up link and a retry beside it, and nothing is charged.
• You guessed a weight light. An Post weighs every parcel, and the difference comes off the balance after the monthly An Post invoice and shows in your EirPost ledger. Broadly right is fine, nobody weighs to the gram.
• Nothing imports from Shopify. Automation only sees paid orders, so check the order is paid and unfulfilled before looking anywhere else.
• The connection was revoked on eirpost.ie. The carrier shows as disconnected, and a rule pointing at it raises an exception rather than quietly shipping through a different carrier.

When your own An Post account is the better answer

Once you are past 40 parcels a week, open the An Post account. Your own eCommerce Hub account bills postage at the rates you negotiate, carries the full An Post service range, and has no 2 kg ceiling. A published table is fair, but it is not your rate card.

You do not have to choose on a single day either. EirLink runs both, so the prepaid balance can keep handling small parcels while your eCommerce Hub account takes everything else, with one rule deciding which is which.