- Short answer
- If your carrier isn't on Shopify's list, you buy the label through your own account, an app, or another carrier — not through Shopify Shipping.
- Where the list applies
- Shopify's own carrier accounts cover eight countries: US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain
- Rates are not labels
- Some carriers have apps that supply calculated rates at checkout — that is not buying a label
- The context of both routes
- On its troubleshooting page Shopify names both routes as fixes for specific label errors
- Tracking and delivery status
- You type the tracking number in yourself; without one you mark the order delivered by hand
- What still works
- You can still send the shipping confirmation email — select it when you fulfill, if you have their email address
Is your carrier on Shopify's list?
Shopify Shipping sells labels through Shopify's own carrier accounts, and only in eight countries — US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain — with a set carrier list in each: USPS and FedEx in the US, Purolator in Canada, SEUR in Spain among them. If your carrier is not on your country's line, Shopify Shipping will not sell you its label. One distinction the same page draws is easy to misread: "Some shipping carriers have apps that can provide calculated rates in your checkout" — that is rates, not labels.
What does Shopify say to do?
On its troubleshooting page Shopify publishes both routes as fixes for specific label errors. The first sits under the error "The shipping address is invalid":
Buy a shipping label using your own carrier account or a third-party app, and then fulfill the order manually.
The second route sits under "The service you selected is unavailable" and repeats when a carrier is temporarily down: you can "contact another carrier directly to purchase a label outside of Shopify". The first route keeps your carrier and moves the purchase outside Shopify Shipping; the second, in Shopify's own wording, is contacting another carrier. After Sendle ceased shipping operations, Shopify's own Sendle page tells stores fulfilling from Australia to buy labels from a locally available carrier or connect an Australia Post MyPost Business account. Which carriers you can connect an account of your own to, and from which countries, is a separate answer.
What do both routes break in your workflow?
Both end in the same place — you fulfill the order by hand, then package it and attach the label yourself. The tracking number is typed in by hand, and it is what keeps the rest working: "when a tracking number is present, delivery status comes from the shipping carrier" — without one, nobody marks the order delivered but you. The customer's shipping confirmation is opt-in: when you fulfill, you select Send a notification to the customer, an option available only when you have their email address.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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