Sell into Riga, Tallinn or Warsaw and you learn quickly that most customers do not want the parcel at home. They want it in a locker, and they want to choose which one. Shopify's own checkout shows carrier pickup points for stores in four countries, none of them in the Baltics or Poland. Everyone else adds a picker. This is what Shopify supports on each plan as of October 2026, the three ways to add a picker, and what goes wrong after launch.
Why the locker decides the checkout
Parcel lockers by market
96% / 95%
Estonia / Latvia use parcel terminals
Gemius 2025 Baltic study: 1,777 Estonian and 2,101 Latvian respondents aged 18–74. Courier delivery: 51% and 57%. S1
57%
Lithuania, down from 66% a year earlier
Still ahead of courier delivery, which fell from 49% to 37%. Gemius 2025, 1,473 respondents aged 15–74. S1
72%
Polish online shoppers for whom a locker is the most-used delivery method
84% used one in the past year and 73% would make it their default. Gemius and IAB Polska, published 30 September 2026. S2
Gemius publishes neither the question wording nor the fieldwork dates for the Baltic figures, which come from pop-up questionnaires on popular websites; shares sum to more than 100%. The Polish report pairs an online (CAWI) survey of online shoppers with panel data; we could not find its fieldwork dates. S1,S2
The locker is the default, not the alternative: in Estonia and Latvia 95% or more of respondents use one. S1 Lithuania is the exception. Terminals still lead there but lost nine points in a year, so a store selling there should treat courier delivery as a first-class option, not a fallback. S1
The rest of Europe is heading the same way, more slowly. Geopost's 2025 E-shopper Barometer, 30,700 interviews across 22 countries, found parcel lockers “overtaking parcel shops to become the second most preferred delivery method, after home delivery”. S3 Geopost is the DPD group and runs lockers itself; the national surveys above carry more weight.
What matters for the picker itself is density. Last Mile Experts puts the average distance to a locker in Polish cities at 350 metres, from 2024 data in the free summary of its paid 2025 report. S4 InPost alone had 29,912 lockers in Poland at the end of June 2026 S5; Omniva reported 1,321 parcel machines across the three Baltic states in January 2025. S6 A shopper in Kraków is not choosing between two lockers. They are choosing among many within walking distance, and a picker that lists them badly is choosing for them.
What Shopify supports on its own
Three Shopify terms sound like lockers. One is. Local pickup lets customers “pick up their online orders at one of your retail locations” S7 - your own premises, not a carrier network. Pickup points are carrier lockers, post offices and parcel shops, shown as a map or list in the checkout. S8 Checkout extensions are the slots an app uses to add its own picker.
Shopify's built-in pickup points are “currently only available to stores in France, Italy, Spain, and the UK”, with Evri, Colissimo, Correos, Mondial Relay, Poste Italiane or Royal Mail, or to eligible Shopify Plus stores using a custom app. S8 For apps, Shopify labels pickup points early access and limits them to custom apps on development or Plus stores: “Public apps in the Shopify App Store and custom apps built for stores on non-Plus plans aren't eligible to build for pickup points.” S9 The function behind it is, as of 13 October 2026, documented only in Shopify's unstable API version. S10 For a store in Vilnius or Warsaw there is no native locker network to switch on.
| Feature | What it does | Who can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Local pickup | Customer collects from one of your own retail locations S7 | No plan requirement stated S7 |
| Pickup points (built in) | Carrier pickup points and lockers on a map or list in the checkout S8 | Stores in France, Italy, Spain and the UK with six named carriers; otherwise Plus with a custom app S8 |
| Pickup point generator (Shopify Function) | Lets a custom app fetch points from an outside provider and show them in the checkout S10 | Custom apps on development or Plus stores; early access; unstable API only S9,S10 |
| Checkout UI extensions in the shipping step | App blocks inside the checkout's information, shipping and payment steps S11 | Plus only S11 |
| Thank-you and order status page extensions | App blocks on the pages shown after payment S12 | All plans except Starter S12 |
| Delivery customization (Shopify Function) | Renames, sorts and hides delivery options S13 | Public apps: all plans except Starter. Custom apps: Plus only S12,S14 |
| Carrier-calculated shipping | An app or carrier returns the shipping options and prices shown at checkout S15 | Advanced and Plus; Grow for a monthly add-on fee or on annual billing; not included on Basic S15,S16 |
Checked on shopify.dev and help.shopify.com on 13 October 2026; Shopify changes these often. Prices as displayed on shopify.com/pricing that day, in US dollars on yearly billing: Basic $29, Grow $79, Advanced $299 a month; Plus from $2,300 a month on a three-year term. S16
Two rows decide most of what follows. Checkout UI extensions for the information, shipping and payment steps “are available only to stores on a Shopify Plus plan” S11, so outside Plus no app can draw a locker map inside the shipping step. Carrier-calculated shipping, which lets an app add lockers as ordinary shipping options, is included on Advanced and Plus; Grow stores “can add CCS for an additional monthly fee or by switching to annual billing” S15; Basic is listed as “Not included”. S16
Three ways to add a locker picker
A picker sits either inside the checkout or after payment, and there are two ways to do the first. InPost's developer documentation lists exactly these three modes: a list of points in the checkout on ordinary plans, a map in the checkout on Plus, and a map on the order summary after payment. S18 The other decision is whose app it is.
| Approach | Shopify plan | What the customer sees | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lockers as shipping options in the checkout | Advanced or Plus; Grow on annual billing or with the add-on S15 | A short list of the nearest points with prices, usually no map S18,S19 | A plan or billing change removes it S17 |
| Picker widget in the shipping step | Plus only S11 | Map or list; can stop the customer continuing until a point is chosen S20 | Plus starts at $2,300 a month S16 |
| Picker on the thank-you and order status pages | All plans except Starter S12 | Map or list, after payment S19,S20 | Customer leaves without choosing S20 |
Plans and app behaviour as documented on 13 October 2026. A carrier's own app uses one or more of these surfaces; it is a choice of vendor, not a fourth surface.
1. Inside the checkout, before payment
Outside Plus, lockers in the checkout arrive as shipping options: the app uses carrier-calculated shipping to return the nearest few as rate lines, each with a name and a price. InPost's official app works this way, with the merchant choosing how many of the machines nearest the customer's address to show S18; Sendcloud, a shipping platform that competes with us, offers “a list of up to five nearby points” with no map on Grow and Advanced. S19
On Plus an app can do more. The DPD app that DPD Lithuania links to from its site offers a checkout block that shows a list, or a map if the merchant adds a Google Maps key, and “can block the checkout (the customer cannot continue) if the Pickup point is not selected”; that block “works only for Shopify Plus stores”. S20,S21 InPost's interactive map in the checkout is likewise Plus-only. S22
Choosing before payment means the order arrives complete, locker included. Outside Plus, the price is a short list of names with no map, on a plan that has carrier-calculated shipping.
2. On the thank-you page, after payment
The thank-you page is the one checkout surface every plan except Starter can extend. S12 The customer chooses “parcel locker” as the shipping method and pays; the picker appears on the page that confirms the order. Shopify shows that page once. A customer who comes back later sees the order status page instead S23, so put the picker on both; the DPD app does, on every one of its own plans, the free one included. S20 Sendcloud uses this route on Basic, where it says choosing before payment is not available. S19
It can show a proper map. Its weakness is the customer who closes the tab. The DPD app's documentation is candid that the customer “can leave the Thank-you page without selecting a pickup point”, which leaves an order with a locker method and no locker; it flags those in the order list. S20 Sendcloud's answer is to assign the nearest point to the shipping address automatically when it imports the order. S24 Either is reasonable. Having no answer is not.
3. The carrier's own app, or one that covers several
InPost publishes an official Shopify app S22, and DPD Lithuania points merchants to a partner's app. S21 A carrier app knows only its own network, and in the Baltics that matters more than it looks: in Gemius's 2024 study around 70% of Estonian respondents had used Smartpost parcel machines, against 15% in Latvia. S25 A store selling into both countries needs more than one network in the same checkout. Two carrier apps means two pickers, two settings pages and two places a locker ID can end up. More on that in why one carrier is never enough.
What to check before you choose
Most locker pickers look alike in a screenshot. The differences show up in these places.
- Which plan it needs, today and after a change. Ask which surface the app uses on your plan, and what happens after a plan or billing change. S17
- Distance sort, not alphabetical. Carrier location data is not sorted by distance unless the app asks: InPost's points API returns results “sorted in an ascending order using the
namefield” by default. S26 With the nearest locker 350 metres away on average in Polish cities S4, a list sorted by locker ID puts a stranger's locker ahead of the one downstairs. That is reasoning, not a measured effect; it takes thirty seconds to test. - A cash-on-delivery filter. Cash on delivery is offered by 64.9% of Lithuanian and 60.7% of Polish online stores, according to ECDB, which does not publish its method or data period. S27 Carrier location data can record payment point by point - InPost's points API has a
payment_availablefield, “Availability of payment at a given point” S26 - so, on our reading, a picker that shows every locker to a COD customer can send some of them to a locker that cannot take the money. Check that the list narrows when COD is selected. - Several carriers in one list. If you sell in more than one Baltic country, or into Poland as well, check that lockers from every network you use appear in one picker, labelled by carrier.
- Where the locker ID lands, and who reads it. InPost's app writes the choice to the order's attributes - “InPost Parcel Locker: RZE285” in its example S18; the DPD app saves it in the same place and books the shipment to the pickup point, not the shipping address. S20 The Shopify address stays the customer's home, so a label tool, 3PL system or ERP that reads only the address ships to the door. Sendcloud warns that other systems can receive the order “without the service point information” if they process it first. S24
- Mobile and express checkout. With 58% of Polish respondents finishing most purchases on a phone S2, test the picker at phone width. Test express wallets too: Shopify's own pickup points are switched off when the customer pays with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay or PayPal S8. Whether a given app has a similar gap is something to test; we have not seen it documented.
- What happens when no locker is chosen. Auto-assign the nearest point, hold the order, or email the customer: each of these is a policy. An order that waits for a packer to notice is not.
Setting it up, step by step
The steps are the same whichever app you choose.
- 1
List your countries and their networks
For each destination country, write down the one or two locker networks your customers actually use. Use national figures, not a Baltic average: Smartpost is a major network in Estonia and a minor one in Latvia. S25
- 2
- 3
Name the shipping methods for people
“Omniva parcel locker” and “DPD courier” beat “Standard” and “Express”. The name is what the customer chooses, and often what software keys on later: Omniva's module for Basic stores recognises its locker orders by a keyword that must match the rate name. S28
- 4
- 5
Connect the locker to the label
Place one test order per carrier and check that the locker ID is on the printed label and in the carrier's booking, not just in the order's notes.
- 6
Test like a customer
Phone and desktop, an express wallet, a cash-on-delivery order, an address in each country you serve, and a customer who closes the thank-you page without choosing.
- 7
Common problems and how to avoid them
- Locker orders with no locker. The customer closed the thank-you page before choosing. S20 Decide the fallback before launch: auto-assign the nearest point to the shipping address S24, or flag the order and contact the customer.
- The locker is on the order but not on the label. The choice sits in an order attribute; the address is the customer's home. S18,S20 Test one real order per carrier, including one paid cash on delivery.
- The picker quietly stopped working. On Plus stores Shopify started shutting down additional scripts and apps with script tags on the thank-you and order status pages after 28 August 2025 S29, and 26 August 2026 was the deadline for upgrading those pages, after which remaining stores were upgraded automatically. S30 Guides built on pasted scripts are still online - Omniva's Shopify installation guide still tells Starter and Basic stores to paste a map script “in Additional scripts” S28 - while the DPD app says only its app-block mode has worked since August 2025. S20 If your picker went in as a pasted script, check it today.
- Lockers vanish after a plan change. Shopify deactivates the carrier service when a store stops qualifying. S17
- Two maps in one checkout. Two pickup-point tools running at once can each show a map; Sendcloud warns about exactly this when Shopify's native pickup map is enabled alongside its own. S24 One picker per surface.
Most of the decision comes down to two questions: which Shopify plan you are on, and how many locker networks your customers use. Answer those and the choice of surface mostly makes itself. The mistake worth avoiding is treating the locker as a cosmetic shipping option. In Tallinn or Kraków, it is the delivery address.