Account types

Standard accounts

A standard account is what every Postcoder account starts as. You get one API key and you can use identifiers to segment usage across your own website or app - for example, to see how many requests come from your sign-up form versus your checkout page.

Segmenting usage with identifiers

An identifier is a label you add to your Postcoder requests to mark where they came from. You don't need to set anything up in advance - just add an identifier parameter to a request and Postcoder creates it automatically:

View the request counts for each identifier on the Identifier usage page.

SAME accounts

If you provide a solution that's used by other organisations - for example, software you license to multiple businesses - you need to tell Postcoder which organisation each request is for. We call this a SAME account: a single account with multiple end users (your customers).

This matters because Postcoder reports usage by organisation to Royal Mail and our other data suppliers, to make sure the correct licence fees are paid by us on your behalf.

You can set up your identifiers and organisation details at any time - you don't need to wait for us. Here's how:

1. Give each organisation its own identifier

Use a different identifier for each organisation in your requests:

The identifier is created automatically the first time you use it in a request, with no name or address attached yet.

2. Add each organisation's name and address

Postcoder needs the name and registered address of the organisation associated with each identifier. Add these on the Identifiers page, one at a time.

If you have a large number of organisations to add - tens, hundreds or thousands - you can bulk upload a CSV file with all of their details instead. Existing identifiers are updated and new ones are created, so you can re-upload the same file as your list of organisations grows or changes.

3. Upgrade to a SAME account

Contact us to let us know you're working with multiple organisations, and we'll enable SAME reporting on your account so usage is correctly licensed per organisation.

All requests across a SAME account consume credits from the same credit pack or monthly plan, regardless of which identifier they use.

Partner accounts

If you'd rather give each organisation its own client account and API key, you can upgrade to a partner account. Credits are flexible across a partner account - some or all client accounts can draw from a shared credit pack or monthly plan, while others can have their own, in whatever mix suits how you bill or manage them.

Contact us to upgrade to a partner account for free.

Which account type is right for me?