Eight services will put flowers at a door in the Republic of Ireland. They differ less in the bouquets than in what they charge to deliver, how late they take an order, and how much of that they will tell you before checkout.
Checked on
Three kinds of company, one search result
The eight services on this page look alike in a search result and behave nothing alike once you order. They fall into three groups, and the group matters more than the branding.
A relay network sells you a photograph and passes the order to a member florist near the delivery address. That florist buys the stems, makes the arrangement up and drives it round. You are buying reach: a network can put flowers in a village in west Clare on a Tuesday afternoon because someone in that village is a member. What you give up is control of the result. The florist works to the value of the order and to their own taste, so the bouquet at the door is a version of the one on the screen rather than a copy of it. Interflora, Direct2Florist and eFlorist all work this way.
An online florist makes the arrangement itself and sends it out, so what arrives should match what you chose. The cost of that is geography. All of them run their own drivers around Dublin and the counties beside it, and hand everything further out to a courier for the next day. Flowers.ie, Bloom Magic, Flowers Direct and Flowers Made Easy sit here.
Letterbox flowers are a different product wearing the same word. The stems travel in bud, flat, through the post, and nobody has to be home. They need a day or two in water before they look like anything. Bloom & Wild built its business on this and it is the only one of the eight that does it.
The eight, side by side
Starting prices are the cheapest bouquet on each site before delivery. Cutoffs are the latest an order can go in for that day or the next. Ranked in the order argued for below.
Relay network
Interflora
Reach and a published charge. You pay for both.
Your order is passed to a local florist, who makes it up and delivers it. You are buying the network, not the bouquet in the photo.
From
Not published
No starting price on the site
Delivery
€9.70
Nominated day 9.70; same day 13.00; three hour express 20.00; AM or PM window 16.00; Sunday 15.00; click and collect free
Same day
15:00
Nationwide through local florists. Monday to Saturday; not Sundays or bank holidays
Next day
Not published
Available as nominated day delivery; no Republic of Ireland cutoff published
Delivers
7 days, the only service here with published Sunday delivery (15.00 charge, 9am to 2pm)
Figures read from each service's own delivery pages. "Not published" means the service does not state a figure, so you only see it at checkout.
When it has to arrive today
Most urgent flower orders in Ireland are sympathy orders. Someone rings, a removal is at six, and the flowers have to be at a funeral home in a town you have never driven to. That is the one errand where reach beats everything, and it rules out most of this list immediately.
The flat-fee online florists reach Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Meath and Louth on the day, and nowhere else. Outside that ring their same-day option quietly becomes a next-day one. eFlorist is Dublin only for same day, whatever the rest of the site suggests. Which leaves the two relay networks: both can find a florist in most Irish towns and get flowers there the same afternoon, and both take orders until early afternoon rather than late in it.
Order early on those. A relay cutoff is the time the network stops accepting, not the time the florist stops working, and an order placed twenty minutes before the line closes is the one most likely to be refused or bumped to tomorrow. If the arrangement is for a funeral, read what Irish sympathy etiquette actually expects first: "family flowers only" in a death notice is a real instruction, and a Mass card can be the better call.
When you already know the date
A birthday, an anniversary, a first day in a new job: you have known about it for a fortnight and the flowers only need to arrive on the right morning. This is the easy case and it is also where people overpay, because the urgency premium on this list is real. Express windows, guaranteed morning slots and Sunday delivery all carry their own charge, and none of them make the flowers better.
Book a next-day slot instead. All eight publish one, and where a service prints a standard charge at all, next day is what that charge buys. The gap between "tomorrow" and "within three hours" is frequently wider than the gap between two bouquets. For a planned gesture the letterbox option becomes worth a look too: it is the cheapest delivery of the eight, and the fact that the flowers arrive closed stops mattering when there is a week in hand. For the fixed dates that catch everyone out, theIrish Mother’s Day date is the one worth putting in a calendar, because it is not the date most reminder apps use.
Is a delivered bouquet worth it at all
Supermarket flowers cost a fraction of these prices and are often the same imported stems. The delivery is what you are buying. Sometimes that is worth paying for and sometimes it plainly is not.
Worth paying to have them delivered
You are not in the same county, and someone needs flowers today.
The address is a funeral home, a hospital ward or an office, where turning up yourself is awkward.
The card matters as much as the flowers and you want it written before it arrives.
You want a florist near the recipient who can be rung if something goes wrong.
Buy them yourself instead
You will see the person within a day or two anyway.
The budget is under about thirty euro, where the delivery charge is a third of what you spend.
You want a specific flower in season; a supermarket or a market stall will beat a photograph on a website.
It is a gesture between people who see each other constantly, where the flowers are the point and the ceremony is not.
What the delivery charge hides
Four of the eight print a flat euro charge on their delivery page and stand over it. Three publish no standard figure at all, because they work it out from the address, so you find out at checkout. One delivers free on weekdays. That spread is the single most useful thing on this page, and it is why the starting prices in the table above should never be read on their own.
A bouquet listed at under thirty euro from a service that hides its charge can land dearer than a forty euro bouquet with a flat fee printed on the site. Thefull delivery fee table sets every published charge and premium option side by side, with the date each one was read. If you are working to a ceiling, what fifty euro actually buys delivered does the arithmetic with the charge included.
Narrower questions
Same eight services, cut by where the flowers are going, how fast they have to get there, and what you are willing to spend.
It depends on the address and the day. For an order that has to arrive today outside Dublin, a relay network such as Interflora or Direct2Florist is the only realistic route, because both hand the order to a florist near the door. For a Dublin address, the flat-fee online florists take orders later in the day and show you the charge before you commit.
What is a relay network and does it matter?
A relay network takes your order and passes it to a member florist near the delivery address, who makes the flowers up and delivers them. It matters because what arrives is that florist’s interpretation of the photograph you ordered from, in their wrapping, at their standard of work. The trade-off is reach: a relay network covers towns no single florist could serve.
Do any of these services deliver on a Sunday?
One relay network publishes a paid Sunday option that reaches the whole country. Three of the online florists deliver seven days a week in Dublin but stop at Saturday everywhere else. The rest run to Saturday at best, one of them closes on public holidays as well, and the letterbox service is weekdays with Saturday as a paid upgrade. The delivery days column on this page shows which is which.
Why do some delivery charges only appear at checkout?
Three of the eight work the charge out from the delivery address, so no figure appears on the delivery page at all. That is worth knowing before you compare bouquet prices: a cheap bouquet from a service that hides the charge can land higher than a dearer one with a flat fee printed on the site.
Is it cheaper to ring a local florist directly?
Often, yes. A florist in the town you are sending to sets their own delivery charge and keeps the whole order, so nothing is skimmed by a network. The catch is that you have to find them, ring during shop hours and describe what you want. The services here exist because that is more work than most people want at nine in the evening.
How often are the figures on this page checked?
Every fee, cutoff and starting price is read by hand off the service’s own delivery or FAQ page, and the date it was read is printed beside it. Where a service publishes nothing, the table says "Not published" rather than carrying a number borrowed from a competitor.
