The printer's own software or a Shopify app: which one, and when

LabelCraft - barcode labels for Shopify that print at exactly the size you set.

The guarantees behind every label

Exact to ±0.1 mm

Every label prints at the size you set - measured, not approximate.

Never a silent failure

Overflow or a missing barcode always raises a visible warning before you print.

Whole-dot barcodes

Every bar lands on whole printer dots, so codes stay crisp and scan first time.

Your barcodes, untouched

We never overwrite or reassign a product's existing barcode.

You unbox a label printer and its maker's software is right there. It knows the printer, and it prints. So do you need a Shopify app at all? Sometimes you do not. A vintage shop that tried LabelCraft went back to its printer's own app a few days later. No complaint, no bug. This guide is our honest answer to the choice that shop made: which tool fits which job.

The short answer

One label at a time: use the printer's software. You list a piece, print its label, and the next piece comes later.
Many labels from your Shopify products: use an app. A delivery, a weekly intake session, a price change across a collection.
In between: start with the printer's software. Switch the day you catch yourself typing product data that is already in Shopify.

When the printer's software wins

For one label, it is hard to beat. It is already installed, and it knows your printer. In DYMO Connect, the label list only offers labels the selected printer takes, and a LabelWriter 550 tells the software which label size is loaded. Typing one title and one price takes seconds, which is faster than opening any app, finding the product and picking a template.

If you list a piece, print its label, and the next piece arrives an hour later, keep doing exactly that. No app saves you time there, LabelCraft included. One thing to get right: the code you print must be the one in the product's Barcode field in Shopify. When Shopify POS cannot match a scanned code to a product, it shows Unrecognized barcode.

Free printer software can do batches too

Many people think printer software prints one label at a time. It does not, and that is worth knowing before you pay for anything. From the makers' own help pages, read on September 24, 2026:

DYMO Connect for Desktop imports an Excel sheet, an Access table or a .csv file, and lets you place a column on a text or barcode object to print a group of labels.
Brother P-touch Editor (Windows) imports XLSX, XLS, CSV and TXT files, among others, and can merge a column into a barcode.
Avery Design & Print Online is free, runs in the browser, imports .xls, .xlsx and .csv files, and can merge barcodes and QR codes.
Phomemo and NIIMBOT phone apps can import an Excel sheet to print labels in a batch.
ZebraDesigner Essentials is free, but its data comes from the keyboard, the date, the time or a counter. Reading an Excel, Access or text file is a ZebraDesigner Professional feature.

So the real question is not batch or no batch. It is where your data lives, and how often it changes.

What a batch costs there: the round trip

To print a batch from the printer's software, your data has to leave Shopify first. You export your products to a CSV file (in the Shopify admin, Products → Export), cut it down to the items you need, add how many labels each one gets, import it, link the columns to the label, then print. The software works from that copy. DYMO's own guide says it plainly: changes to the data have to be made in the source file, and the data imported again.

Once, that is fine. It gets expensive when it repeats: every delivery, every week, every price change. That repeat is the whole case for an app.

When a Shopify app wins

An app earns its place when the labels come from your Shopify data, many at a time. Here is what LabelCraft does in those moments, with nothing exported:

A delivery arrives. Receive & label reads the shipments you received in Shopify and sets each line's labels to the quantity you accepted. It is part of the Retail Pro plan.
A batch of new products. Print a collection loads every variant of a collection, a vendor, a tag or a product type, and sets all the quantities in one click.
A price change. LabelCraft reads prices from Shopify when it loads your products, so a reprint after a price edit carries the new price, with nothing retyped.
Products without a barcode. Generate missing barcodes gives each variant a unique code and writes it back to Shopify, so the label and the till agree.

Every label prints at exact size, to +/-0.1 mm, on Dymo, Zebra, Brother, Rollo, Munbyn or Phomemo rolls and on Avery sheets, and a barcode too narrow to scan is flagged before you print, not after.

Install free - 200 labels per month →

Related: labeling a one-of-a-kind inventory, the Dymo guide, the Brother guide, or ask LabelCraft support which tool fits your shop.

Related guides

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