What goes into the cost of a postcard
A mailed postcard has three real costs: printing the card, the postage to send it, and the mailing work in between — addressing, sorting, and handing it to the USPS. Traditional quotes often break these out separately, sometimes adding setup fees, design fees, and list-processing charges on top, which makes it hard to know your true number until the invoice arrives.
Per-piece, all-in pricing
The simplest model rolls printing, postage, and mailing into a single per-piece price. You pick a size, and you know exactly what each card costs to send — no separate postage tier to decode, no setup fee to forget.
CardCadence uses this model: $0.75 per 4x6 card, $0.80 per 6x9, and $1.13 per 6x11, each including full-color printing, postage, and mailing. Multiply by how many you're sending and you have your campaign cost up front.
Watch for the hidden extras
When comparing quotes, look past the headline number for the things that quietly inflate it: setup or plate fees, minimum order quantities, design charges, address-processing fees, and monthly platform subscriptions. A low per-card rate isn't a deal if it comes with a $300 minimum and a monthly fee.
The cleanest way to compare is to compute your true cost per delivered card, all fees included, then compare that across vendors.
Putting it together
Say you want to mail 800 reactivation postcards at the 4x6 size. At $0.75 all-in, that's $600 — a number you know before you commit, with no subscription and no minimum to clear.
From there, the question that matters isn't just cost; it's return. Pair your known campaign cost with a measured response (which trackable QR codes make possible) and you can calculate a real cost per response and per new customer. Our cost calculator does that math for you in a few inputs.