It's entirely possible to run a small shipping operation through the Post Office counter — buy postage in person, hand over parcels, done. Plenty of sellers start out this way. The question is when it stops being the efficient option.
What the counter route actually involves
Buying postage at the counter means queuing, having each parcel weighed and priced individually, and paying at point of sale — no printer, no software, no account setup required. For someone shipping a handful of parcels a week, this simplicity is genuinely appealing; there's no setup cost or learning curve.
What Click & Drop changes
Click & Drop moves the weighing, pricing and label generation online, ahead of time, so a visit to a Post Office (or a scheduled collection) becomes a drop-off rather than a transaction — no queuing to buy postage, since it's already been bought and the label already printed. This requires the setup covered in our Click & Drop setup guide plus a thermal printer, but removes the per-parcel counter time entirely.
The volume tipping point
For a handful of parcels a week, counter queuing time is a minor inconvenience. Once you're shipping daily, or in double-digit volumes, counter time compounds into a genuine chunk of the working day — and business account pricing through Click & Drop (see our account types guide) is also typically cheaper than counter retail pricing at that volume, making the switch a win on both time and cost.
Drop-off vs. collection
Once you're using Click & Drop, you're not tied to visiting a Post Office at all — many business accounts can arrange scheduled collection instead, removing even the drop-off trip. This is where the time savings compound further for higher-volume operations, though it typically requires the business account tier rather than personal.
What you lose by skipping the counter
The main trade-off is upfront setup: a thermal printer, correctly configured label stock, and getting comfortable with the Click & Drop interface before your first real batch. For low, irregular volume, this setup cost may not be worth it yet — but for anyone shipping consistently, it pays for itself within weeks.
Set up once, skip the queue every time
Correctly sized 100 × 150mm direct thermal labels, ready to print the moment you set up Click & Drop.
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