Nova Poshta — delivery and branches

The Nova Poshta API integration adds region, city and branch selection to checkout, with the same type-ahead behaviour customers know from the carrier itself. The engineering difference from typical integrations: checkout reads your store's own database rather than calling the Nova Poshta API on every keystroke: the key is spent on syncing, not on every key press.

That is not optimisation for its own sake. When the carrier API is unavailable — and it is, sometimes — a typical store shows the customer an empty branch list and loses the order. Here the customer picks a branch and checks out as usual, because the data is already local.

What the free version does

• The full directory: regions, cities, branches and parcel lockers, searchable at checkout.
• A daily background refresh. A cron job pulls regions and cities in full, and branches for the "warm" cities customers actually pick. A new city is warmed by the first checkout request that needs it.
• Retired branches are switched off rather than lingering in the list forever.
• Sender details: city, branch and phone, ready for waybills.
• Toggles: allow parcel lockers, show active branches only.
• The API key is encrypted and never returned to the HTML.

What Pro adds

Nova Poshta Pro covers two warehouse operations:

• Batch label printing straight from the order list, without opening each order.
• Dimensional rating rather than weight alone — for bulky, light goods the difference in shipping cost is substantial.

Pro code is physically absent from the free build. It is delivered as a separate signed archive after purchase, rather than sitting on your server disabled by a licence check.

What it does not do yet

Honestly: generating a waybill from an order and tracking its status are the next stage. Both need product dimensions in the catalogue, and we chose not to ship them half-done. If waybills are critical to you today, factor that in before buying.

Other carriers live in the shipping section: Ukrposhta and Meest, both free. All three coexist — the customer picks a carrier at checkout. The module ships inside the free Community build; no separate installation needed.