Nowadays, running a successful online store requires automating many tasks, including the automatic printing of order receipts, invoices, and shipping labels. Although printing may seem like a trivial task of low importance, it can often become a source of stress and issues for a store manager.
Choosing the right printer model and adjusting its settings to meet your needs is relatively simple tasks, but they significantly impact your order management system. Take a few minutes to read this article — you might discover valuable solutions to improve your WooCommerce store.
Roll up your sleeves and get ready to learn more about thermal vs. inkjet and laser printers, printer settings, thermal receipt, and automatic print receipt so your WooCommerce store can thrive in this highly competitive environment.
Laser and Inkjet vs. Thermal Printers
You can run an online store effectively without understanding the working principles behind different types of printers, but having this knowledge gives you a strategic overview of your order management system.
Laser printers use a laser beam to fuse toner powder onto paper, standing out for their colour accuracy, printing quality, and speed. Inkjet printers, on the other hand, use liquid ink sprayed through nozzles to produce high-quality colour prints.
Thermal printers rely on heat to produce images and text. Some use direct thermal printing on heat-sensitive paper, while others use thermal transfer technology, which involves ribbons for better output quality.
The type of documents you need to print depends on your store’s activity, but typically, store owners print order receipts, order statuses, invoices, and similar paperwork. For these tasks, a thermal printer is often the best choice.
If the term “thermal printer” is unfamiliar to you, here’s some good news, — you’ve probably seen one in action without realizing it. Every time you receive a receipt from a supermarket, the POS printer uses thermal printing technology.
You’re probably more familiar with inkjet and laser printers, commonly used at home or in the office. So why do businesses often prefer thermal printers? After all, you’re likely quite satisfied with the quality of your laser or inkjet printer — aren’t you?
While inkjet and laser printers are ideal for legal documents, photos, and creative projects, they fall short when it comes to efficiency and speed. As a store admin, efficiency and speed often matter more than ultra-high print quality — and that’s where thermal printers truly excel in the e-commerce space.
Advantages of Thermal Printers
Thermal printers offer several key advantages for store admins, making them the go-to choice in commerce:
Speed: Serving customers quickly is crucial, and thermal printers are extremely fast, helping reduce wait times.
Cost-effectiveness: Thermal printers are robust and work well in various environments. Plus, they don’t require ink cartridges, which significantly lowers operational costs.
Minimal maintenance: Compared to other types of printers, thermal receipt printers need far less maintenance, saving both time and effort.
Compact size: Thermal printers are often smaller and more compact, making them more convenient for frontline employees to use in busy workspaces.
Receipt print quality: Designed specifically for printing receipts, thermal printers consistently deliver clear and reliable results, making them the superior choice for this task.
Ways to Print WooCommerce Orders on Thermal Printers
Considering the advantages mentioned earlier, you’re probably more interested in thermal printing by now. However, choosing the right thermal printer is only half the battle. Properly configuring it and minimizing manual printing is just as important. While manual printing isn’t necessarily wrong, automatic printing saves valuable time and reduces the risk of human error.
The most convenient way to print WooCommerce order receipts is by using WordPress plugins. While there aren’t many options available, the existing plugins are reliable and support automatic printing. Plus, they streamline the order fulfillment process and work seamlessly with any printer.
WordPress Plugins to Print Order Receipts
It’s often said that there’s a WordPress plugin for every problem — and thermal printing is no exception. The following plugins offer a range of useful features, so be sure to review them carefully before choosing the right one for your business.
BizPrint
BizPrint is a true Swiss Army knife for WooCommerce stores and one of the most popular tools for automatic receipt printing. The sales strategy behind the plugin is simple and effective: anyone can download it from the official website or the WordPress repository and test it with 25 free prints — no credit card required. This way, you can explore its features without any upfront cost or risk of disappointment.
BizPrint is fully compatible with WooCommerce and works seamlessly with any printer on Linux, Mac OS, or Windows OS. The setup process is straightforward and requires no technical expertise.
Here are the key features that make BizPrint a top choice for automatic order receipt printing:
Custom Branding on Order Receipts
BizPrint allows you to print your company logo on order receipts. Additionally, you can print custom text to leave a lasting impression on your customers. This might seem minor, but remember — the devil is in the details.
Print to Multiple Locations
Many businesses need order receipts printed in various locations simultaneously — like the kitchen and logistics department, or the client’s location and the sales office. BizPrint supports automatic printing to different locations, helping reduce operational costs and eliminating potential issues in handling receipts, invoices, and other documents.
Unlimited Printer Locations
You can configure multiple printers to meet all your business needs, regardless of their geographical location. The order receipt printing is fully automated and occurs simultaneously across all printers.
Automatic Printing
Retail stores, fulfillment stations, and online shops need an automated system for printing order receipts and packing slips to make shipping more cost-effective. Once again, BizPrint is the perfect choice for your business growth. It not only prints packing kits but also offers the option to generate PDF versions of the documents.
Suitable for Points of Sale
BizPrint is completely compatible with any point-of-sale device, making it easy to use for direct sales.
WooCommerce Order Receipt Cloud Thermal Printing
The plugin’s name is quite descriptive — it reflects its purpose. Webkul, the skilled team behind the plugin, has developed dozens of useful plugins.
Beyond the developers’ strong reputation, this plugin offers several noteworthy features.
Custom Branding on Order Receipts
Like the previous suggestion, this plugin helps you showcase your brand name to customers. It is incredibly simple to print custom text to order receipts. From the WordPress admin dashboard, navigate to Webkul WC Addons in the left sidebar. Next, click on Order Receipt Thermal Printing and select Custom Text from the menu.
To further personalize your receipts, go to the Configuration section in the same menu and easily add your company logo.
Automatic Receipt Printing
Automatic order receipt printing is effortless with this WooCommerce plugin. Simply select the order statuses that should trigger auto-printing from a convenient drop-down list.
For example, you can choose to auto-print receipts for completed and failed orders. With just two clicks, you can also enable auto-printing for cancelled orders. These options cover most of the essential printing needs for running a business.
Compatible with Any Thermal Printer
Webkul offers thermal printer software compatible with all major operating systems, including Windows OS, Mac OS, and Linux. This flexibility allows you to use any operating system and any thermal printer with this powerful plugin.
Print Multiple Order Receipts from Multiple Thermal Printers
This plugin allows admins to print multiple order receipts from multiple thermal printers. While this feature may not be essential for startups or small businesses, it can save valuable time for mid-sized operations. Depending on your needs, you can choose to print receipts automatically or select them manually.
Compatible with Multi Vendor Marketplace for WooCommerce
Running a multi-vendor marketplace is a complex operation, and having a reliable tool that works with all types of thermal printers, includes dedicated thermal printer software, and supports automatic order receipt printing is essential.
In this context, this plugin is the ideal choice, as it’s fully compatible with the Multi Vendor Marketplace for WooCommerce.
A Free Demo for Everyone
A free demo is essential for any store admin considering this plugin for automatic printing. Investing blindly—especially for small businesses—doesn’t make sense.
Fortunately, the developers have addressed this need by offering a comprehensive demo for three user types: admin, seller, and customer. This allows you to not only explore the plugin’s features but also get familiar with the seller and customer dashboards.
Printus
While thousands of businesses trust the previous two plugins, Printus is a hidden gem in the WordPress plugin repository. Though it has fewer users, it’s worth considering due to its features—and it’s completely free.
Larger businesses might overlook this plugin, but for solopreneurs and small businesses, it can be a cost-effective solution.
Printus supports manual order receipt printing, but its real strength lies in the automatic management of WooCommerce order receipts and compatibility with all types of printers.
Other valuable features of Printus include:
Wide range of printable documents – Print order receipts, order details, order statuses, invoices, shipping labels, and delivery notes.
No hardware dependencies – Works with any printer or operating system, allowing you to use your existing equipment without issues.
Automatic printing triggers – Set up automatic printing based on events like checkout or payment completion.
Wrapping Up
While printing order receipts may not seem like a strategic business aspect, having a complete and efficient sales system is. As a result, integrating WooCommerce order printing with thermal printers becomes a crucial component of your workflow.
The plugins mentioned above are tried-and-tested solutions that help thousands of businesses print order receipts automatically or manually. Be sure to carefully evaluate and test them before deploying them in a live environment. There is no single “best” solution—each plugin is designed to meet different business needs.