What does it cost to print and mail 5,000 9x12 postcards?

About $2,500 all-in if you handle the mailing yourself — roughly $1,200 for printing and $1,300 for postage. That works out to about 50¢ per home reached.

Add full-service fulfillment, where someone else bundles, does the paperwork, and drops it at the post office, and you're looking at $2,900–$3,000.

Every number below comes from published rate cards and current USPS pricing. Sources are listed at the bottom.

The only three line items

Every drop is these three things, and confusion about fulfillment cost almost always comes from blurring them together.

1. Printing. Full color both sides, 14–16pt cardstock, UV gloss. Usually includes shipping to your door.

2. Postage. EDDM Retail, currently 26¢ per piece. This is a pass-through — nobody marks up USPS.

3. Fulfillment. Bundling by carrier route, facing slips, the postal paperwork, and the drop-off. Either your afternoon or someone's fee.

The full cost table

Printing from published EDDM rate cards, postage at the current 26¢ EDDM Retail rate:

9x12, quantity	Printing	Postage	All-in (you mail it)	Per home
1,000	$408	$260	$668	67¢
2,500	$759	$650	$1,409	56¢
5,000	$1,209	$1,300	$2,509	50¢
10,000	$2,299	$2,600	$4,899	49¢

The smaller 6x11 community card format runs meaningfully cheaper:

6x11, quantity	Printing	Postage	All-in (you mail it)	Per home
1,000	$261	$260	$521	52¢
2,500	$533	$650	$1,183	47¢
5,000	$736	$1,300	$2,036	41¢

Printing is where the two formats diverge — postage is identical per piece regardless of size, as long as the piece qualifies as a flat. Shop the print line; you can't shop postage.

Postage: use 26¢, not 22¢

USPS currently lists EDDM Retail at 26¢ per piece, with BMEU bulk as low as 25.9¢.

You will find 22¢ and 24.7¢ in circulation — on printer websites, in guides, in spreadsheets people have been reusing for two years. Those are old rates. On a 5,000-piece drop, using 22¢ instead of 26¢ understates your postage by $200.

Check usps.com before you budget. It's the one number in this business that changes without anyone telling you, and it's the one number you can't negotiate.

What full-service fulfillment is actually worth

Full-service pricing typically runs 30–35¢ per piece on top of printing, with postage included.

Since postage alone is 26¢, the service itself is costing you roughly 5–9¢ a piece. On a 5,000-piece drop that's about $390.

That's the real number, and it's fair. For $390 someone else bundles 5,000 postcards into route-sorted stacks, fills out the facing slips, completes the postal form, drives it to the correct post office, and sends you tracking. If you've never bundled a drop, the first one takes most of a day and there's a real chance of getting turned away at the counter and driving home with 5,000 postcards in your back seat.

Whether $390 is worth it depends entirely on where you are. On card one, when you're cash-tight and you haven't collected from all fourteen advertisers yet, doing it yourself is often the right call — and you learn how the system works, which makes you better at explaining it. By card four, when your time is going into selling instead of sorting, $390 to make the whole problem disappear is cheap.

What you should not do is decide without knowing the number.

Be careful with "it costs more to do it yourself"

You'll see full-service pricing justified on the grounds that DIY costs the same or more. Check the arithmetic yourself, because it usually rests on a printing figure well above what printing actually costs.

If a cost comparison tells you printing 5,000 9x12s runs $1,800–$2,400, hold it against the published rate cards linked at the bottom of this page. National EDDM printers list that job around $1,200. A gap that size is the whole difference between "full service is free" and "full service costs $390."

Do the three lines separately. Print, postage, fulfillment. It takes two minutes and it's the only way to know what you're buying.

How many advertisers cover the drop?

This is the number that actually matters.

At $2,509 all-in for a 5,000-piece 9x12, and a median ad spot price of $477 per mailing, you need six advertisers to cover the cost of the drop.

The median community card carries fourteen spots. So roughly the first six pay for the mailing and the remaining eight are margin. On a 6x11 at 2,500 pieces — $1,183 all-in — it's closer to three.

That's the real shape of the business, and it's why the smaller format is often the smarter first card: a lower bar to break even and a lower price point for advertisers who've never bought direct mail.

Common questions

Does printing get cheaper at volume? Yes, but less than you'd hope. Per-home cost on a 9x12 goes from 67¢ at 1,000 to 49¢ at 10,000 — most of the improvement happens by 5,000, because postage is a fixed 26¢ per piece and doesn't scale at all.

Is 16pt worth it over 14pt? For a shared card that has to survive a mailbox and look like a premium product to the businesses paying to be on it, yes. The difference is a few cents a piece.

Can I use a local printer? Sometimes, but most local shops aren't set up for EDDM flats and will quote well above national gang-run pricing. Get both quotes.

What's not in these numbers? Design, if you're not doing it yourself — though a 9x12 template with the specs already set makes that a DIY job. Banding, which some printers charge separately. And your own time, which on a self-fulfilled drop is real.

Sources: USPS Every Door Direct Mail for current postage · High Response Marketing published EDDM rate card · Summit Printing Pro EDDM price list · spot pricing from our benchmark of 76 live operator sites

Rates change. If you find one of these figures out of date, it's worth telling us — we'd rather correct it than have you budget off a stale number.

What It Actually Costs to Print and Mail a 9x12 Postcard (2026 Numbers)