Applications of Postal API

The United States Postal Service has a wealth of information on every address in the country. They recognize that this data is worth something to businesses and have made it available in a variety of ways. They have a web interface that can validate an address one-at-a-time, for example, but they also offer a series of APIs that do the same thing in bulk and are more powerful. 

These include the Address Validation/Standardization API, which verifies that an address is real and mailable and returns it in a USPS-standard format, and the ZIP Code Lookup API, which provides the city, state, and the ZIP+4 code for an address. These APIs are easy to integrate with websites, databases, and CRMs and can improve the accuracy of address data by removing duplicates and verifying that addresses are complete.

Some postal APIs are free, but others charge a fee for use. Some are bundled with a full mailing software package that requires a subscription, but others can be purchased separately. Often, the fees cover updates to the data that the APIs provide and other administrative costs.

A few of the more popular postal APIs include Melissa, Loqate, and UPS Worldship. These can be integrated into websites, applications, or databases with a few lines of code and can return results in a fraction of a second. They can even generate bar codes for shipping labels, which save time and money in e-commerce operations by streamlining the label generation process and improving shipping efficiency.