Is Print On Demand a Good Value?

The high cost of using standard printing for small print runs has often prevented businesses from developing printed products that could improve their communication or marketing with their clients. The value of print on demand, however, makes such products much more economically feasible.

Digital print on demand, unlike standard printing, has no front-end costs. You pay only for the cost of printing your product, not for the time needed to set up a standard press. The lack of initial set-up also makes digital print on demand a faster process—your materials are ready to be printed the moment the printer receives your file. The lower cost and faster turnaround make limited runs far more affordable. If you are interested in printing a smaller run of documents—anything from 1 to 5,000 or more depending on the size, print on demand is an excellent alternative.

Digital print on demand also gives you control over all aspects of the print run, so that the look of the final product and the precise size of the print run are your decision. You can receive the exact number of prints you want without paying for anything you do not need. Digital print on demand also allows you to print as needed, rather than making you print a large number of materials at the outset and then find a place to store the products. As long as the printer has an electronic copy of your print, new runs of any size can be made on request. An electronic file is much simpler to store than thousands of printed documents or film, which means using digital print on demand could result in your business saving on storage costs.

Of course, none of these economies would matter much if the quality of print on demand were inferior to standard printing. The continuing improvement in digital printing technology, however, has closed the gap, meaning that prints created through print on demand have the same vividness and polished, professional look as products printed through traditional methods.