Start the Presses!
With a little imagination, you can design your company's printed materials without ever leaving your desk. Many online sites offer print services, but how good are they? Inc.'s panel of entrepreneurs puts them to the test.
Best of the Web
With a little imagination, you can design your company's printed materials online. Our panel of entrepreneurs road-test the sites offering printing services
This may be the digital age, but hard-copy printing expenses still bite deeply into many companies' budgets. Even dot-coms spend lavishly on paper products -- everything from business cards to bumper stickers to bound copies of PowerPoint sales presentations. Lots of CEOs would love to curb those costs without compromising on quality. Not surprisingly, the Web has spawned a whole industry that's trying to do just that.
Inc. asked a panel of CEOs and entrepreneurs to evaluate online printing sites. To narrow the field, we focused on self-service printers -- sites where small-business customers can create their own documents and customized products -- rather than sites geared to the printing industry, such as those that auction off print jobs or match buyers and sellers.
We also excluded many sites specializing in one product, personal greeting-card sites, and a few just-launched, under-construction, or repeatedly inaccessible sites. Finally, we eliminated several sites that sell printing services but outsource the actual work to other companies. (At OfficeMax.com, for instance, print orders are fulfilled by iPrint.com; Sir Speedy sends orders to both NowDocs.com and iPrint.com.) For comparison purposes, though, we did include the site of office superstore Staples, which many small businesses already use.
Panelists -- all online-printing novices -- road-tested the sites by placing orders of less than $50 for custom products: letterhead stationery, business cards, bound reports. Their adventures in self-service Web printing varied widely. Their biggest single complaint: sites that committed the cardinal sin of wasting their time. "When I was ready to buy, the site had completely lost my order and told me my shopping cart was empty," one panelist groused. Others disliked having to register, download software, or hunt through page after page before placing orders. "The sites need a simple Buy It button," said one frustrated tester.
Several testers said they enjoyed self-service tools that let them experiment with fonts, layouts, colors, graphics, and paper types. Others said they'd rather leave those decisions to the pros at the corner copy shop. "Printing on the Net is hard because you can't quite get the look of the paper or color on your screen," one panelist said.
Nevertheless, most panelists were pleased, or at least satisfied, with how their orders turned out. However, one CEO -- who acknowledged that his business cards were done just as he'd designed them and of decent quality -- said he doesn't expect to transfer his company's printing business online. "It just isn't the same as being able to touch and feel the samples, select based on that experience, and then get questions answered, like, What color of ink do you think works best with this paper?" he said.
In general, testers said they were most likely to occasionally turn to E-printers for specific small, basic, or repeat jobs, such as reprinting business cards previously designed by a brick-and-mortar printer. One panelist said that although he wouldn't depend on an online printer for his needs at his fast-growing business, he'd consider it for "volunteer and entrepreneurial things we do at home." And while some took advantage of special promotions like low introductory prices or other special offers, others questioned the long-term cost benefits of doing all their printing online. "It's very convenient but about twice the cost of our negotiated printer rate, with turnaround time of 7 to 10 days instead of 2 days," one panelist said. Another concluded: "Nothing caused me to think that I could get the job done better, faster, or cheaper than the way I do it now."
www.imagex.com
What it offers: Business cards, labels, stationery, and promotional products.
What it's good for: Repeat jobs initially handled by other printers; no-frills printing.
Don't waste your time on: ImageX.com's other printing services, designed for big corporations, print buyers and vendors, and graphic designers.
What our panel had to say: Testers felt the small-business center offered a quick, inexpensive solution for basic jobs, but they said it lacked enough choices to customize products. (For instance, at press time customers could choose from only three fonts for business-card printing.)
www.inaquest.com
What it offers: Business cards, letterhead, and other standard products; forms; gifts and promotional products.
What it's good for: Customized marketing giveaways, like T-shirts and phone cards; graphic-design consultation.
Don't waste your time on: Trying to figure out the site's odd name, which panelists called meaningless, confusing, and hard to remember.
What our panel had to say: Some found inaQuest.com easy to use and appealing. "This site makes me want to buy something with a logo on it -- and I don't even need anything!" one panelist remarked. But another tester called the site "frustrating" and "a waste of time," with sluggish page loads that slowed down his system.
www.iprint.com
What it offers: Business cards, letterhead, other standard products, and promotional items. The site also handles fulfillment for other businesses, including OfficeMax, Sir Speedy, and Yahoo.
What it's good for: Broad selection of fonts, colors, layouts, and paper stock; standard-setting design templates.
Don't waste your time on: Looking for upscale promotional products; the site's limited selection includes low-ticket items like mouse pads, magnets, and pens.
What our panel had to say: Perhaps because four-year-old iPrint.com is the Web's best-known printing brand, testers held the site to particularly high standards. All praised the easy-to-use predesigned templates, but one panelist struggled with the custom layouts: "It took 10 minutes to get the hang of it -- and that's from someone who designs software for a living," he said. Another severely downgraded iPrint.com for crashing during checkout.
