How much does direct mail cost? A per-piece breakdown
The three bills inside every mailing
Every direct mail campaign is paid for in three parts. You pay the printer for the pieces, you pay to get the boxes to your door, and you pay USPS to deliver them.
Printers quote the first part loudly and the second quietly. Postage is a separate bill that goes straight to the post office, so it never appears on a print invoice at all.
Printing: the part that shrinks fastest
Printing is where order size changes everything. Our 6.5″ × 9″ postcard, the most common size for neighborhood mail, costs $379 for 2,500, $579 for 5,000 and $889 for 10,000.
Per card, that is about 15 cents, then 12 cents, then under 9 cents. The press does the same work to set up a short run and a long one, so the long run spreads that cost across more cards.
Smaller pieces cost less again. A 4″ × 6″ card is $179 for 2,500 and $429 for 10,000, which works out to roughly four cents a card at the top tier. Every size is on our price list with the cost per piece printed under each price.
Why our tiers print more than you pay for
Each of our tiers includes free pieces. At the first tier you are charged for 1,000 cards and receive 2,500, and the larger tiers ship double the paid quantity.
That matters for budgeting. Compare printers on the number of cards that arrive in the box, then divide the price by that number, because a low headline price for 1,000 cards is often the more expensive deal per piece.
Shipping the boxes to you
Shipping is easy to forget until checkout. We print at whichever of six U.S. hubs sits nearest your ZIP code and send the boxes UPS Ground at wholesale rates.
The exact figure depends on weight and distance, so the builder on every product page asks for your ZIP and shows it before you pay. You never need to guess it.
Postage: the bill you pay USPS
Postage depends on how you mail. Every Door Direct Mail, or EDDM, is the USPS service that delivers a piece to every address on the carrier routes you choose, and it needs a flat: longer than 10.5″ or taller than 6.125″.
Mailing to a list of names uses other USPS options with their own size rules and prices. We never quote postage, because USPS sets it and changes it, so check today's rate on usps.com and add it per piece.
A worked example for one neighborhood
Say you want to reach 4,000 homes with a coupon. You order 5,000 6.5″ × 9″ postcards for $579 and add our design for $89, a printing total of $668 before shipping.
Add shipping from the builder and postage for 4,000 homes at the current EDDM rate, and you have the full cost. Keep the extra 1,000 cards for counters, invoices and leave-behinds.
Our EDDM cost calculator does this sum for any number of homes and picks the cheapest tier that covers them.
What a town-wide campaign costs
Scale changes the math again. Covering a small town with 10,000 of the slim 4.25″ × 11″ cards costs $749 to print, about seven and a half cents a card.
The same 10,000 homes with the larger 6.5″ × 9″ card cost $889 to print. Whichever size you choose, postage for 10,000 homes will be the largest single line, so price it with USPS first and treat printing as the smaller decision.
The number that matters: cost per new customer
A mailing that costs less per piece is not automatically the better buy. Divide the full campaign cost by the profit one new customer brings you, and you get the number of customers the mailing needs to break even.
The break-even calculator runs that math in under a minute. If the answer is a handful of customers out of thousands of homes, the mailing is worth sending.
Four ways to spend less on the same mailing
Pick the tier that covers your homes with the fewest spare cards, since the second tier often costs far less per piece than the first. Choose a size that meets the USPS rule for your mailing method, so you never print a run you cannot send.
Supply your own print-ready file if you have one and skip the design fee. And call 512-573-1977 before you order, because Corey often prices phone orders below the website and checks your size against the postal rules while you wait.
Questions
What does it cost to print 5,000 postcards?
Our 6.5″ × 9″ postcard costs $579 for 5,000 before shipping, about 12 cents a card. A 4″ × 6″ card is $289 for 5,000.
Is postage included in your prices?
No. Postage is paid to USPS when you mail, at their current rate.
What is the cheapest way to mail every home in an area?
EDDM with the smallest qualifying flat, our 4.25″ × 11″ postcard, which costs $349 for 2,500.
