Royal Mail delivers to around 32 million addresses across the UK, and its parcel volumes rose 7% to 1.4 billion in the year to March 2026. Parcels now go out up to seven days a week, and its sorting network can handle around 8 million a day.
Its parent company, International Distribution Services, has been owned by Daniel Křetínský’s EP Group since April 2025, and Parcelforce Worldwide is part of the same group. Sellers can drop parcels at around 30,000 points, including 3,300 lockers and 8,500 Royal Mail Shops, with Quadient’s UK lockers joining the network under a deal agreed in September 2026.
Services sellers use
Tracked 24 and Tracked 48 are the everyday options for online orders: delivery in one or two days for parcels up to 30kg, with a photo on delivery. Business accounts are aimed at sellers sending at least 1,000 items a year. Special Delivery Guaranteed promises the next working day, with compensation cover of up to £2,500.
For sellers shipping to the EU, Royal Mail began offering delivery with duties paid upfront in July 2026, with Etsy the first marketplace to offer it.
Click & Drop
Click & Drop is Royal Mail’s free label tool, and sellers pay only for postage. It pulls in orders from Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, TikTok Shop, Temu and Tesco Marketplace, among others, and Superdrug and Halfords joined the list in January 2026. Labels can be printed at home, or from a QR code at lockers, shops and delivery offices.
Since June 2026, it also produces customs forms automatically for business account holders.
The APIs
The Click & Drop API lets another system create orders, fetch labels, build manifests, handle returns and mark orders as dispatched, up to 100 orders per call and five calls a second. It uses a single API key, and labels through the API are available to business account holders.
The Tracking API returns a parcel’s full event history with an estimated delivery window, summaries for up to 30 items at once, and proof of delivery. Business customers set it up through their account manager, and integrations check it on a schedule. Larger shippers can also use the Pro Shipping API.
Claims for lost parcels
For business accounts, claims are made online with proof that the parcel was posted. Under Royal Mail’s terms, a Tracked 24 or 48 parcel can be claimed as lost from seven working days after it was due, and within 30 days after that. Compensation covers the proven cost price of the goods, up to a set limit, and Special Delivery has its own longer window.
Spotting the parcels worth claiming
Those time windows are why our Royal Mail claims system watches tracking statuses for a seller losing about 16 parcels a week. Every two weeks it lists the parcels that look lost, each with the purchase orders proving what the items cost already attached, and the support team files the claims through Royal Mail’s form.
The system stops at the form on purpose, leaving the last couple of minutes of each claim to a person. Compensation that used to go unclaimed now comes back every month. Postage also counts in our order-level P&L, costed from the service used for each parcel.