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Update 1404 8 May 2026

Address Lookup Following some further developments and thanks to Graham at NNR for some advice, we now have some improved options to offer! There are two options for everyone, which apply to both address lookup in HOPS and in the retail systems: Option 1 HOPS has managed to become a 're-seller' of the address lookup service, which means we have been able to obtain much better volume rates. We will be able to re-sell this to railways at 3p per address (an improvement on the previously-advertised 5p). This is ready to go almost straight away, so please let us know if you would like to join this. I have updated this page so that you can see the estimated costs for your railway based on previous volumes: https://www.hops.org.uk/address_lookup_preview.php Option 2 Ideal Postcodes, the company that provides the address data, also has rates for charities with a turnover of less than £10m: * Up to 100 addresses = free * Up to 2000 addresses = £9/month * Up to 25000 addresses = £49/month. https://ideal-postcodes.co.uk/sector/charities We have heroically arranged it so that railways can set up their own account with Ideal Postcodes and obtain the charity rate directly with them. You will then provide us with your api key and HOPS will integrate with your account. You will settle your bill (if any) directly with Ideal Postcodes, and HOPS will charge railways £5 a month for the integration (same prices as it used to be). There is a 10% discount from Ideal Postcodes for "annual billing" - I'm not sure if this is in rear or in advance, they also have some concept of credits which expire after a year, so I'm not sure the annual option is necessarily better. But it might be. Railways that aren't charities are welcome to sign up directly with Ideal Postcodes if you want to, but of course you won't get the charity rate and probably won't get a rate as good as we can offer as a re-seller. If you wish to do this please sign up with Ideal Postcodes via their Charity sign-up form (link above). They will send you some other forms and terms to agree to, and you will also need to follow their instructions to sign up for a Royal Mail licence. We have just been through it all to set it up as a test and we were guided through it by a real person - it is advisable to tell them that you will be using a third-party developed service so you won't need all the technical assistance. Let us know when you're signed up an have an API key and we will put it in HOPS. You can also use this same account to integrate in other systems that you have if you wish, it won't affect the HOPS integration (it is advisable to use separate API keys for each integration). --- If anyone planning on Option 2 wants to use Option 1 in the short term before moving to Option 2 when that's set up that is fine to do. Please let me know. I have made you a lovely chart which shows the best (cheapest) option for different volumes of addresses. The tipping point is 467 addresses. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=3092328450962876 This doesn't consider the 10% for annual billing advantage, or the potential disadvantage of unused credits, so I think on balance it's honest. All the above relates to address search. Phone and email validator is available as well, but we'll negotiate about that later. Please let us know if you have any queries, if you wish to use the HOPS-re-sold service, or when you have your own API key you wish to use. Thank you Danny Scroggins.