How much does a printer truly cost your business?
You know that paper and ink cost your business money, but do you know how much? 90% of businesses don’t. When they find out, it can be... alarming.
Luckily, it’s easy to keep your printing simple, stress-free and cost-effective. We’ve helped over 485,000 individuals and businesses do it.
So, if you need to understand your business printing costs, and keep them down, you can find everything you need to know about printing for business here.
How much does it cost to run a printer?
Running a printer at home is quite simple: buy the printer, print, replace the cartridges and paper, and repeat. This cycle should last you about 3-5 years per printer, and the overall costs aren’t often more complicated than buying, replenishing, and repairing the machine.
When it comes to office printing, you can do this on a larger scale, which has its pros and cons. But this isn’t your only option – you might find your business printing costs go down by using dedicated business printing services.
So, let’s weigh up these options for cost and practicality:
Owning your own printer
Running your own office printer keeps you in control of your supply and your expenses.
Whilst you don’t have to pay a monthly fee to someone else to manage your printer (or print for you), you will have to pay to power it, resupply it and fix it.
We mentioned that the costs are quite simple to track, but they can get out of hand. If you consider that the initial purchase is only 10% of the true cost of a printer throughout its life cycle, then that £300 printer can start to look more like a £3,000 expense.
Managed Print Services
Managed Print Services (MPS) remove two of those problems from your list: maintenance and resupply. In most circumstances, managed print partners will provide a printer to your office, and they’ll handle replenishing and repairing it.
Of course, this comes at a price. It’s not just paper, cartridges, and repairs to pay for (which will almost certainly come with a markup): you’ll be invoiced for the services of an account manager and any callouts, as well.
That’s without mentioning minimum monthly print volumes in many contracts, which can force you to pay for more than you print.
Printer Leasing
Printer leasing can be a workable solution, particularly if you need to hire (and eventually purchase) a heavy-duty printer that you might not be able to buy outright.
These kinds of printers can have a very low cost per page and often operate under the same business model as managed print services (with all the same pros and cons). However, when the contract expires, and you have paid the full cost of the printer in a payment plan, you might find yourself stuck with a printer you might not find suitable later down the line.
Whether you own your own office printer or work with a business printing services partner, it can seem like you have to sacrifice cost, capacity, or convenience to make business printing work. That’s where this last option might work for you.
Printing-as-a-Service with Printt
Printing-as-a-Service with Printt is the simplest, most flexible option for businesses of all sizes.
Here’s why:
You don’t need to pay for a printer
You don’t need to pay to maintain or restock a printer
You don’t need to commit to a contract or minimum print volume
With a pay-as-you-go model, pricing is transparent – you can get a free instant quote here – and you only pay for what you print. It’s as simple as uploading your document(s) from your computer or your phone, choosing how you want to present them, and ordering.
With tracked next-day delivery to your workplace, or same-day click-and-collect at over 300 locations in the UK, you can avoid the hidden costs of running or leasing a printer without sacrificing the convenience of an onsite printer.
The dedicated Printt for Business portal handles everything your team needs without an account manager: from centralised billing that simplifies expenses to spending controls that keep projects within budget, all with no limits to the number of users.
Overall, there’s more than one way to keep business printing costs down, but if you want to keep printing as simple as possible, you can trust Printt to avoid both contracts and paper jams.
If you want to put it to the test for your business, here’s 30% off your first delivery order.