Shipping Label Guides
Everything that decides whether a label works: the format a carrier expects, the print settings that quietly ruin barcodes, where shipping costs actually go, and the marks regulated goods need.
Guides in this section
Free Shipping Label Maker
A shipping label maker turns two addresses into a print-ready file. Ours produces a PDF sized for either a 4×6 thermal printer or standard letter paper, with no account and no software install.
How to Create a Shipping Label
Creating a shipping label means producing a document a carrier can read. There are two routes — a carrier account that also sells you postage, or a generator that produces the label alone — and picking the wrong one is the most common mistake.
How to Print a Shipping Label
Most label problems are print problems, not label problems. The file is usually fine; the print dialog quietly rescaled it. Here is what to set, and what to do if you have no printer at all.
How to Get Cheap Shipping Labels
Label costs split into two very different things: the postage, which is where nearly all the money is, and the physical label, which is pennies. Most people optimise the wrong one.
Lithium Battery Shipping Labels
Lithium cells are regulated as dangerous goods. Which mark your parcel needs depends on the cell type, the watt-hour rating, and whether the battery ships alone, with equipment, or inside it — and the rules are revised regularly.
Need the template itself?
If you just want to fill in a label and print it, use the shipping label template tool — it takes both addresses and gives you a print-ready PDF in 4×6 or letter format. The guides below cover everything around that: choosing a size, getting the print settings right, cutting the cost, and handling regulated shipments.
What goes on a shipping label
Every shipping label carries the same core information, and the layout conventions exist because two different readers have to use it. Automated sorters scan the barcode; when automation fails, a person reads the address. A good template serves both.
The recipient address is the most prominent element and belongs in the lower-centre area of the label. The sender address sits smaller, top-left. Any barcode needs a blank margin on all four sides — the quiet zone — because scanners use that blank space to work out where the barcode begins and ends. Crowding it with text or a border is one of the most common reasons a label scans inconsistently.
4×6 or letter size?
These are the two formats worth using, and the choice follows your printer rather than your preference.
4×6 inches is the industry standard, sized for direct-thermal printers such as Rollo, DYMO and Zebra. It prints edge-to-edge with no trimming, uses no ink, and takes a couple of seconds per label. If you ship regularly, this is the setup that costs least to run.
Letter size (8.5×11) works with any inkjet or laser printer, either on adhesive sheets or on plain paper attached with clear tape. There is nothing second-rate about it — carriers accept letter-format labels without issue. It is simply slower per label and costs more in ink than thermal stock costs in labels.
The combination to avoid is printing a 4×6 label onto letter paper and trimming it by hand. Hand-trimmed labels usually end up marginally undersized and the cut edges lift in transit.
Print at 100%, always
If you take one thing from this page, take this. In the print dialog, set scaling to Actual size or 100% — never Fit to page, which is usually the default.
Fit-to-page shrinks the label by a few percent so nothing is clipped by the printer’s unprintable margin. That small reduction narrows the barcode modules past the width scanners are built to read. The label looks perfect to you and scans intermittently in the sorting facility — which is the worst kind of failure, because you have no idea anything is wrong until the parcel is delayed.
Check the first label with a ruler. A 4×6 label should measure exactly four inches by six.
What a template does not include
A template produces an address label. It does not buy postage, and it cannot generate a valid carrier tracking barcode — those are issued by the carrier at the moment postage is paid for. Any tool claiming to generate a working tracking barcode is producing something that will not scan.
That still leaves plenty of real uses: prepaid drop-offs, couriers who invoice monthly, internal transfers between your own sites, return labels enclosed in an outbound box, and freight consignments where the carrier issues paperwork separately. If you need postage purchased and tracking issued, you want a carrier account instead — and knowing which of the two you need is the thing that trips up most first-time shippers.