Intelliprint vs In-house printing

In-house printing alternative: send letters without the hardware

Printing and posting in-house looks free once you've bought the printer. It rarely is once you count the labour.

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In-house printing works well when volumes are low, irregular, and your team's time is otherwise idle — there's no software to learn and no per-item fee. For most other businesses, the maths doesn't hold up: a single 2nd Class stamp alone now costs more than Intelliprint's entire per-letter price, before adding paper, ink, an envelope, or the few minutes of staff time each letter actually takes. Intelliprint replaces the whole process — upload a document or trigger a send from your API, and printing, enveloping, and postage are handled from our UK facility the same day.

Choose Intelliprint when

You want a flat, predictable per-letter cost that already includes labour, materials, and postage
Your team's time is worth more spent elsewhere than folding and stamping envelopes
Your volumes fluctuate and you don't want printer or franking capacity sized for your busiest month
You send occasional or ad-hoc letters and don't want to keep a mail process staffed for them

Choose in-house printing when

Your volumes are low and irregular enough that a few minutes per letter genuinely doesn't add up to meaningful cost
You need same-minute physical control — handing a signed original directly to a courier rather than a production queue
You've already got spare printing capacity and staff time that would otherwise sit idle

Feature by feature

Intelliprint vs In-house printing

Cost per letter

Feature	Intelliprint	In-house printing
Price of a single 2nd Class letter	84p (excl. VAT) — printing, envelope, and postage includedOne flat per-item price covers everything except the minute it takes to upload and send.	91p for the stamp alone, before printing, envelope, or your own timeA 2nd Class stamp on its own now costs more than Intelliprint's entire per-letter price.Source

Price of a single 2nd Class letter

Intelliprint: 84p (excl. VAT) — printing, envelope, and postage includedOne flat per-item price covers everything except the minute it takes to upload and send.
In-house printing: 91p for the stamp alone, before printing, envelope, or your own timeA 2nd Class stamp on its own now costs more than Intelliprint's entire per-letter price.Source

Staff time

Feature	Intelliprint	In-house printing
Manual handling per letter	None — upload a PDF or trigger a send from your API or CRM	Typically 3–5 minutes per letter to retrieve, print, fold, insert, seal, and stampAt a typical £30/hour loaded staff cost, that's roughly £1.50–£2.50 of labour on top of materials and postage.Source

Manual handling per letter

Intelliprint: None — upload a PDF or trigger a send from your API or CRM
In-house printing: Typically 3–5 minutes per letter to retrieve, print, fold, insert, seal, and stampAt a typical £30/hour loaded staff cost, that's roughly £1.50–£2.50 of labour on top of materials and postage.Source

Consumables & hardware

Feature	Intelliprint	In-house printing
Printer, ink/toner, and envelope costs	None — included in the per-item price	5–10p per page in paper and ink, plus 3–8p per envelope, plus printer lease and maintenance overheadSource

Printer, ink/toner, and envelope costs

Intelliprint: None — included in the per-item price
In-house printing: 5–10p per page in paper and ink, plus 3–8p per envelope, plus printer lease and maintenance overheadSource

Personalisation

Feature	Intelliprint	In-house printing
Bulk personalisation for multi-recipient sends	Yes — {tokens} merged automatically at print time, one template for thousands of recipients	Possible with a Word or Excel mail merge, but printing, folding, and posting each one afterwards is still manualThe merge step usually isn't the bottleneck — producing and posting hundreds of physical letters afterwards is.Source

Bulk personalisation for multi-recipient sends

Intelliprint: Yes — {tokens} merged automatically at print time, one template for thousands of recipients
In-house printing: Possible with a Word or Excel mail merge, but printing, folding, and posting each one afterwards is still manualThe merge step usually isn't the bottleneck — producing and posting hundreds of physical letters afterwards is.Source

Scaling

Feature	Intelliprint	In-house printing
Cost and effort as volume grows	Linear and predictable — the same 84p rate at 1 letter or 10,000	Labour scales with volume; busier months cost proportionally more staff time, with no automatic discountSource

Cost and effort as volume grows

Intelliprint: Linear and predictable — the same 84p rate at 1 letter or 10,000
In-house printing: Labour scales with volume; busier months cost proportionally more staff time, with no automatic discountSource

Speed

Feature	Intelliprint	In-house printing
Turnaround from "ready to send" to posted	Same-day dispatch for items submitted before 3pm	Entirely dependent on your own staff availability and print queue that day

Turnaround from "ready to send" to posted

Intelliprint: Same-day dispatch for items submitted before 3pm
In-house printing: Entirely dependent on your own staff availability and print queue that day

Competitor information last fact-checked 9 July 2026.

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