Shopify Order Printer is a template engine. It renders a packing slip or invoice from your order data, in your layout, and puts a Print button next to it. It does that job well. What it fundamentally does not do is print on its own.
The short answer: Order Printer is the right tool for documents a person prepares: invoices, packing slips, batches printed before a courier pickup. It is the wrong tool for events a system reacts to: an order landing in a kitchen at 19:40 on a Saturday. For that you need the order to be pushed to a printer the moment it is paid, with no browser involved.
The two jobs are genuinely different
| Order Printer | Automatic order printing | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | A person clicks | The orders/paid webhook |
| Requires a browser session | Yes | No |
| Requires someone present | Yes | No |
| Typical output | A4 invoice, packing slip | 80 mm thermal ticket |
| Batch printing | Yes, its main strength | Not the point |
| Latency | Whenever someone gets to it | Under a second |
This is not a "which product is better" question. A fulfilment team printing forty packing slips before the 5pm pickup is exactly the case Order Printer was built for, and no cloud print API improves on it. A pizzeria that needs the ticket in the kitchen before the customer closes the tab is the opposite case, and no amount of template work in Order Printer solves it.
Many shops end up using both.
What "automatic" actually requires
Three pieces, none of which involve a screen:
- A trigger. Shopify's
orders/paidwebhook, fired the moment payment is confirmed. - A printer reachable from the internet. Either a cloud printer with its own 4G/Wi-Fi/Ethernet connection, or an existing USB printer behind a Raspberry Pi adapter. No computer stays on in the shop.
- Something to connect the two. The Shopify connector if you want it configured in minutes, or your own handler if the routing logic is specific.
The full walkthrough of both routes is in how to print Shopify orders automatically.
The workarounds people try first
"We just leave the Orders tab open." This works until the session expires, the tablet sleeps, or the person steps away. It also means somebody is responsible for watching a screen during service, which is the cost you were trying to remove.
Browser auto-print extensions. They automate the click, not the reachability. The machine still has to be on, logged in, with the right tab focused, and browser updates break them regularly.
Printing from the email notification. Order confirmation emails are not a reliable transport: they are delayed, filtered, and formatted for humans. Tickets printed this way arrive minutes late and lose their structure.
Each of these reintroduces the fragile human step Order Printer already had, with extra moving parts.
Keeping the layout you built
The usual worry when leaving Order Printer is losing the carefully tuned template. Thermal tickets are a different medium (42 characters per line, no page, no CSS), but the structural elements survive: bold and double-height headers, a printed logo, line items, totals, a QR code linking to the order, an automatic cut. The receipt layout reference covers the markup, and logo printing covers branding.
If you genuinely need an A4 invoice rather than a ticket, keep Order Printer for that and automate only the operational ticket. Splitting the two is usually the right design, not a compromise.
How to decide
Ask one question: does a person decide when this document is printed?
If yes (invoices, batches, reprints on request), Order Printer is the better tool and you should keep it. If no, and the print should happen because something occurred in the system, then the browser is the wrong place for it, and an automatic push is the only design that does not depend on someone watching.
Test it on the free plan before changing anything in your fulfilment process.
FAQ
Can Shopify Order Printer print automatically?
No. It renders a document from a template and shows a Print button; a person has to click it in a browser. Automatic printing requires a webhook pushing the order to a printer.
Should I uninstall Order Printer if I automate printing?
Usually not. Order Printer remains the better tool for invoices and batched packing slips prepared by a person. Automating only the operational ticket and keeping Order Printer for documents is a common, sound setup.
Will I lose my Order Printer template?
The layout has to be reworked for an 80 mm thermal ticket, but the structural parts carry over: bold headers, logo, line items, totals, QR code and automatic cut are all supported.
Do browser auto-print extensions solve this?
They automate the click, not the reachability. The computer still has to be on and logged in with the right tab focused, and browser updates break these extensions regularly.