A generous, easy returns policy is one of the most effective tools for building customer confidence — particularly for first-time buyers. Studies consistently show that customers are more likely to buy from stores where the returns process is clear and simple. Return labels are a key part of that equation.

The TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin makes generating return labels as simple as generating outbound labels.

What Is a Return Label?

A return label is a pre-paid shipping label that the customer uses to send the product back to you. You absorb the shipping cost, but you gain significant advantages: controlled return flow, carrier account consolidation, and a professional customer experience.

Generating a Return Label

From any WooCommerce order screen where an outbound label exists, you’ll see a Generate Return Label button. Click it, select the carrier and service for the return (you might use a different service than the outbound — USPS First Class for lightweight returns, for example), and the plugin creates a pre-paid label addressed from the customer back to your store.

Sending the Return Label to the Customer

Once generated, you can:

• Email the label directly to the customer from the order screen
• Download the PDF and send it via your own email or helpdesk
• Include it in the original shipment — download and print alongside the outbound label

For high-value items or segments where return rates are low, including the return label in the box is a powerful trust signal even if most customers never use it.

Return Label Expiry

Return labels have an expiry date set by the carrier. Most are valid for 30–90 days. The plugin displays the expiry date on the order screen so you know when a label is no longer usable.

Cost Control

You see the cost of each return label before generating it — the same live rate you’d see for an outbound label. This lets you make informed decisions about when offering return labels makes financial sense (high-value orders, VIP customers) versus when you’d prefer to handle returns case-by-case.

Self-Service Returns (Coming Soon)

The roadmap for the EasyPost plugin includes a self-service return portal where customers can initiate a return from their My Account page without contacting support. Watch the plugin page for updates.

Questions about return label setup? Visit the ThePluginForge support page.

Download TheForge EasyPost Shipping free →

Once a label is generated and a package is on its way, the tracking experience is one of the most important parts of your customer’s post-purchase journey. “Where is my order?” is the most common customer service question in ecommerce — and with proper tracking automation, you can answer it before the customer even asks.

How EasyPost Tracking Works

EasyPost provides a unified tracking API that works across all connected carriers. When a label is generated with the TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin, a tracking number is automatically associated with the order in WooCommerce.

EasyPost then monitors the shipment and sends webhook events to your site as the package moves through the carrier network — picked up, in transit, out for delivery, delivered, exception, and so on.

Automatic Order Status Updates

The plugin listens for EasyPost tracking webhooks and updates your WooCommerce order status automatically. You can configure which tracking events trigger which order status changes:

• Label created → move order to “Shipped”
• In transit → add order note with tracking update
• Out for delivery → add order note
• Delivered → move order to “Completed”
• Exception / delivery failure → add flagged order note for manual review

Customer Tracking Emails

When a label is generated, the plugin can automatically email the customer their tracking number and a link to the carrier’s tracking page. The email uses your existing WooCommerce transactional email templates, so it matches your branding.

For each carrier, EasyPost provides a direct tracking URL. The plugin formats this into a customer-friendly link — e.g. “Track your USPS shipment →” — rather than a raw tracking number the customer has to paste somewhere.

Tracking Numbers on the Order Page

Every generated tracking number appears on the WooCommerce order screen (for you as the admin) and on the customer’s My Account → Orders page. Customers can click the tracking link directly from their account without needing to find the email.

Webhook Setup

For tracking webhooks to work, EasyPost needs to be able to send events to your site. The plugin provides your webhook URL in the settings — you paste this into your EasyPost dashboard under Webhooks. Once configured, tracking events flow automatically.

If your site is on a local development environment or behind a firewall, webhooks won’t be receivable — this is expected. Webhooks only work on publicly accessible production sites.

Tracking Without Webhooks

If webhooks aren’t an option, the plugin can poll EasyPost for tracking updates on a schedule using WordPress cron. This is less real-time than webhooks but still gives you automated status updates — just with a delay of up to your configured polling interval.

Need help configuring tracking? Visit the ThePluginForge support page.

Download TheForge EasyPost Shipping free →

Carrier shipping rates are calculated based on the size and weight of the package you’re sending. If your WooCommerce store sends rate requests with inaccurate package dimensions, you’ll either overcharge customers (and lose sales) or undercharge (and eat the difference). The solution is accurate packing calculation — and that’s what 3D bin packing does.

What Is 3D Bin Packing?

3D bin packing is an algorithm that determines how a set of items can be arranged inside one or more boxes, given each item’s dimensions and each box’s dimensions. It considers not just whether items fit, but finds the smallest valid combination of boxes.

The TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin runs this algorithm for every cart — testing every combination of item orientations (rotating items to try all six faces) and every combination of available boxes — to find the configuration that uses the smallest total box volume.

Why It Matters for Shipping Rates

Carriers charge based on whichever is greater: actual weight or dimensional weight. Dimensional weight is calculated as (length × width × height) / divisor. If you tell the carrier your box is 24″ × 24″ × 24″ when it’s actually 12″ × 12″ × 8″, you’ll be quoted a much higher rate.

Accurate packing calculation means:

• More accurate rate quotes at checkout
• No surprise carrier invoices for dimensional weight overages
• Fewer wasted boxes (smaller packaging = lower material costs)
• Potentially lower actual shipping costs from better box selection

Setting Up Your Box Sizes

Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping → EasyPost → Packing and add the box sizes you actually use in your warehouse. For each box, enter:

• Box name (for your reference)
• Outer dimensions (length × width × height)
• Inner dimensions (what items can actually fit inside)
• Box weight (the weight of the empty box, added to the shipment weight)
• Max weight (how much the box can safely hold)

Add all the box sizes you use. The more accurately your box inventory is configured, the more accurate your rates will be.

Product Dimensions and Weight

For the packing algorithm to work, every product in your WooCommerce store needs weight and dimensions set. These are standard WooCommerce fields on the product → Shipping tab. If a product has no dimensions set, the plugin falls back to a configurable default — but it’s much better to set them correctly at the product level.

Multi-Box Shipments

When an order’s items don’t fit in a single box, the algorithm splits the shipment into multiple boxes and rates them as a multi-piece shipment. EasyPost handles multi-piece shipments natively, so the rate you get back is accurate for the actual number of boxes you’ll be shipping.

Overriding the Packing Algorithm

Some products should always ship in their own box — fragile items, products with awkward shapes, or anything that can’t be combined with other products for safety or quality reasons. You can mark individual products as “always ship in own box” and the packing engine will exclude them from combination packing.

Questions about packing configuration? The ThePluginForge support page has documentation and a help desk.

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Flat-rate shipping is a guess. Sometimes you guess too high and lose the sale. Sometimes you guess too low and eat the difference. Live carrier rates remove the guesswork entirely — your customer pays exactly what shipping actually costs, and you charge exactly that amount.

Here’s a complete look at how live rates work in the TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin.

The Rate Fetching Flow

When a customer enters their shipping address at checkout, the plugin sends a rate request to the EasyPost API. That request includes:

• The customer’s destination address (street, city, state/county, postcode, country)
• Your store’s origin address
• Package weight and dimensions (calculated using the 3D bin packing engine)
• Which carriers and services you’ve enabled in the plugin settings

EasyPost returns rates from every connected carrier and service in typically under a second. The plugin filters the response to show only the services you’ve enabled, then displays them to the customer.

Which Carriers Are Supported?

EasyPost connects to over 100 carriers globally. For most WooCommerce stores, the relevant ones are:

• USPS — Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, First Class, Media Mail, Parcel Select
• UPS — Ground, 2nd Day Air, Next Day Air, Worldwide Expedited
• FedEx — Ground, Express, Overnight, International
• DHL — Express, Paket, eCommerce
• Regional carriers (vary by country)

You connect your own carrier accounts to EasyPost, so the rates you receive are your negotiated rates, not retail rates.

Enabling and Ordering Services

Not every carrier service makes sense for every store. A craft shop doesn’t need UPS Next Day Air. An electronics retailer might need it. The plugin’s carrier management panel lets you enable exactly the services you want to offer, drag them into your preferred display order, and add handling fees or discounts per service.

Rate Caching

Making a live API call for every keypress in the address field would be slow and expensive. The plugin caches rates intelligently: once rates have been fetched for a given address and basket combination, they’re cached for a configurable period. Return visitors or customers who refine their address see instant results without another API call.

Delivery Estimates

EasyPost returns estimated delivery days alongside each rate. The plugin can display these next to the rate label. You control the format: “Estimated delivery: {days} business days”, “— arrives in {days} days”, or any custom string with the {days} placeholder.

Free Shipping Threshold

You can configure a free shipping threshold directly in the plugin settings. Orders above a certain value get free shipping — the plugin adds a “Free Shipping” option to the rates list and can optionally hide the paid options when the threshold is met.

Troubleshooting: No Rates Appearing

If no rates appear at checkout, the most common causes are:

• Missing package dimensions — products need weight and dimensions set in WooCommerce
• No carrier accounts connected in your EasyPost dashboard
• No services enabled in the plugin’s carrier management panel
• Address too incomplete for EasyPost to rate — the customer needs to enter at least a postcode

Full documentation and troubleshooting help is available at the ThePluginForge support page.

Download TheForge EasyPost Shipping free →

If you’re fulfilling more than a handful of orders a day, printing shipping labels one at a time is one of the biggest drains on your operational time. Open order, create shipment, select service, generate label, download PDF, print — then repeat for every single order. At 50 orders a day, that process takes most of your morning.

The TheForge EasyPost Shipping & Bulk Label Printing plugin was built specifically to solve this. Here’s a complete look at how the labels panel works and how to get the most out of it.

The Labels Panel: What It Is

The labels panel lives directly inside the WooCommerce orders screen. You don’t need to visit a separate dashboard or log into a carrier portal. Every order you have in WooCommerce is accessible from the same interface you already use to manage your store.

From the labels panel you can:

• Generate a label for any individual order in one click
• Select multiple orders and generate all their labels at once
• Download all generated labels as a single merged PDF
• Void labels you no longer need
• Track shipment status without leaving WordPress

How Bulk Label Generation Works

Select your orders using the standard WooCommerce order checkboxes, then choose Generate Labels from the bulk actions dropdown. The plugin sends each order’s details to EasyPost — customer address, package dimensions, selected carrier service — and receives a label back for each one.

The plugin uses the shipping service the customer chose at checkout wherever possible. If no carrier was selected (for example, on orders placed before the plugin was installed), you can configure a default fallback carrier and service for bulk generation.

Merging Labels into a Single PDF

Once labels are generated, click Print All Labels. The plugin fetches every generated label and merges them into a single PDF file — one download, one print job. If you’re using a thermal label printer (which you should be — they’re dramatically faster than laser or inkjet for shipping labels), the PDF is formatted to print one label per page.

Voiding Labels

Printed a label for an order that was then cancelled? No problem. Void the label directly from the order screen and EasyPost will request a refund from the carrier. Most carriers process voids within 24–48 hours.

Package Dimensions and Weight

For accurate labels, the plugin needs package dimensions and weight. You can set these at the product level (the plugin reads WooCommerce’s built-in weight and dimensions fields) or define custom boxes at a store level. The 3D bin packing engine figures out the best box combination automatically — you don’t have to calculate it manually.

Setting Up Your Default Carrier

Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Shipping → EasyPost to configure which carrier and service are used when generating labels without an explicit customer choice. You can set different defaults for domestic and international orders.

Carrier Account Credentials

The plugin connects to EasyPost using your EasyPost API key, which in turn connects to your carrier accounts. You’ll need an EasyPost account (free) and at least one connected carrier account. EasyPost supports USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and dozens of regional carriers — connect the ones relevant to your business.

Tips for High-Volume Stores

• Sort orders by status before bulk-selecting — process “Processing” orders as a batch to avoid accidentally labelling “On Hold” orders
• Use a thermal label printer — laser labels work but thermal printers are faster and the consumables are cheaper
• Set up automatic order status updates — the plugin can move orders to “Shipped” automatically once a label is generated
• Schedule your fulfilment run — generate all your labels at the same time each day, just before your carrier pickup window

Need help setting up the labels panel? Visit the ThePluginForge support page for documentation and assistance.

Download TheForge EasyPost Shipping free →

Most WooCommerce stores cobble together their shipping setup piece by piece — a rate plugin here, a label solution there, manual address checks somewhere else. The result is a fragmented workflow that slows down fulfilment and bleeds money. Here’s what a proper setup looks like.

Step 1: Live Carrier Rates at Checkout

Start with accurate rates. The TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin connects to USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL and more via the EasyPost API, fetching real rates for every customer’s exact address and basket at checkout. No more guessing, no more flat-rate losses.

Step 2: Smart Box Packing

Carrier rates are calculated per parcel. The more accurately you can work out how many boxes an order needs, the more accurate your rates. TheForge’s 3D bin packing algorithm tests every combination of items and boxes to find the cheapest valid configuration.

Step 3: Address Validation

Validate every customer address before the order is placed. Bad addresses mean returned shipments and double shipping costs. EasyPost’s built-in verification catches problems at checkout, not at the post office.

Step 4: One-Click Label Generation

Once an order is placed, generate the label directly from the WooCommerce order screen. No logging into a separate carrier portal, no copy-pasting addresses.

Step 5: Bulk Label Printing

At the end of each fulfilment run, select all your ready orders and print every label as a single PDF. Combined with a thermal label printer, this turns a 90-minute job into a 10-minute one.

Step 6: Tracking and Webhooks

EasyPost sends real-time tracking updates. TheForge’s plugin receives them via webhook and automatically updates order statuses and sends customer tracking emails — without you lifting a finger.

Start with TheForge EasyPost Shipping — it’s free →

Address problems are one of the most frustrating and expensive issues in ecommerce fulfilment. A customer types their postcode wrong, the package bounces back, and you’re out the shipping cost — sometimes twice.

Validate Addresses in Real Time

The TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin validates customer addresses against the EasyPost address verification service as they type at checkout. A green tick means the address is deliverable. A warning means there’s a problem — before the order is ever placed.

Warn or Block

You choose the behaviour. Set it to warn only — the customer sees a warning but can still check out. Or set it to block checkout — no order goes through with an unverifiable address. Particularly useful for high-value orders where a failed delivery would be costly.

No Extra Plugins Required

Address validation is built directly into the EasyPost plugin — no separate extension, no extra subscription, no third-party service to configure. It works with EasyPost’s existing verification API.

USPS Address Standardisation

For US addresses, EasyPost normalises the address to USPS standards — correcting apartment formats, adding missing ZIP+4 codes and standardising state abbreviations. The cleaned address is what goes on the label.

Get TheForge EasyPost Shipping free →

Flat-rate shipping sounds simple, but it almost always means one of two things: you overcharge customers and lose sales, or you undercharge and eat the difference. Neither is acceptable when you’re running a real business.

Why Live Carrier Rates Matter

When WooCommerce fetches shipping rates live from USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL at the moment of checkout, your customers pay exactly what shipping actually costs — no more, no less. That’s what the TheForge EasyPost Shipping plugin delivers.

How EasyPost Works

EasyPost is a multi-carrier shipping API used by major ecommerce companies. TheForge’s plugin wraps EasyPost in a clean WooCommerce-native interface, so you get enterprise-grade carrier access without enterprise complexity.

Rate Caching for Performance

Live API calls at checkout could slow your store down. TheForge caches rates intelligently so repeat visitors with the same address and basket see instant results without another API call.

Service Control

Not every carrier service makes sense for your store. The plugin’s carrier control panel lets you enable only the services you want to offer, drag them into priority order, and add handling fees or discounts per service.

Delivery Estimates

Show customers estimated delivery days next to each rate at checkout. Set the format exactly how you want it: “Ships in {days} days”, “— {days} day delivery”, or anything else.

Download TheForge EasyPost Shipping free →

If you’re running a busy WooCommerce store, printing shipping labels one at a time is a genuine productivity killer. You open an order, generate the label, download it, print it — and repeat that 50 times a day. There’s a better way.

Bulk Label Printing with EasyPost

The TheForge EasyPost Shipping & Bulk Label Printing plugin connects your WooCommerce store directly to the EasyPost carrier network — and lets you generate and print labels for every open order at once.

Select your orders, hit Bulk Print, and every label lands in a single PDF ready for your printer. No switching tabs, no downloading individual files.

Live Rates from Every Major Carrier

Customers see real-time rates at checkout from USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL and dozens more. The plugin fetches rates live from EasyPost so your customers always see accurate prices — no more overcharging or eating unexpected costs.

Smart 3D Bin Packing

The built-in packing engine tries all item rotations to work out the smallest box combination for every order. Fewer boxes means lower shipping costs and a smaller carbon footprint.

Address Validation at Checkout

Invalid addresses cause failed deliveries and wasted labels. The plugin validates every customer address in real time as they type, showing a green tick or a warning before they ever place the order.

Return Labels, Insurance & Carrier Pickup

Generate return labels for customers in one click. Add EasyPost shipment insurance to any order. Schedule carrier pickups without leaving your WooCommerce dashboard.

Get Started Free

The plugin is available free on WordPress.org. Download TheForge EasyPost Shipping →