Printing Advice

[Smuck]

Hey Steve,

For the past 5-8 years we've used vistaprint.com and have been happy with them.

For an idea of their price range, we just purchased 5000 full color business cards for $110

Vistaprint will discount the cost if they can place their logo on the back side of the printing (that's if a blank side is available).

[Saodavi]

Hey Steve,

For the past 5-8 years we've used vistaprint.com and have been happy with them.

For an idea of their price range, we just purchased 5000 full color business cards for $110

Vistaprint will discount the cost if they can place their logo on the back side of the printing (that's if a blank side is available).

FYI, I've used Vistaprint too. Prices are cheap. Quality is so-so. They're not nearly as nice as OvernightPrints. Also, I noticed that their business cards aren't the "standard" size. They're a little small. This caused problems for us when you try to stick them on magnets, fridge calendars and other things that expect a standard sized card. Also, if you have a stack of various cards, the VistaPrint card will be a tad shorter (height) and can slip out. I presume this whole issue comes about with trying to get the most cards off of a pre-determined size of paper they have on their press.

Other than that, they seem alright. PSPrints is their main competitor if you care to look at them. They'll both mail you sample products and paper.

Overnight prints seemed to have the best quality of them all but their selection is pretty limited when it comes to paper stock. You can have any color you want as long as it's 14pt white. Also, they only print business card, letterheads, tri-folds, and postcards and that's about it.

PSPrint and VistaPrint have several different kinds of stock. They'll print door hangers, flyers, bumper stickers, pretty much anything you can think of.

The main drawback is that PSPrint and VistaPrint use a digital printing method as opposed to Overnight Prints which uses a 4-color offset press ... which is a lot more professional.

Like everything, there is some balance between the cost and the amount of work you have to put into it. There's also a balance between the quality and quantity that can be had for a given amount of money. You'll just need to work out a solution that works for you, your business and your budget.

All three of those are good solutions IMO.

[Smuck]

I agree with Saodavi. I should clarify that we use them for 'throw-away' printing. The kind of printing used for bulk distribution.

[ericbramlett]

For bulk stuff, I've used clubflyers.com - the quality is actually great, and the prices are awesome if you're doing big orders. We typically get 5000 2-sided full color card stock 5.5X8.5 cards for about $320.

[jlknauff]

And if I'm going to be printing on them the addresses, I'm assuming I should not u/v coat the backside, right?

You can print your addresses on UV coating provided ytou're using a laser, but you'll need to use a printer that feeds strait though (from the back) rather than the main tray because heavier stock will jam your printer when it goes through the printers rollers.

[Mooersrealty]

Farm it out to China or India for cheaper per unit cost!