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Snailmailr: Send Mail from the Web

Thursday Bram — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:00:31 +0000

Even though most of my work is done entirely online, occasionally there are times when I have to send a letter: invoices for clients who want print copies, official correspondence and even, sometimes, letters to people who I can’t get in touch with online. I don’t always want to drop everything and head off to the post office to send my mail, however, making Snailmailr a surprisingly useful tool.

For 99 cents, Snailmailr will print and send a letter anywhere — and that includes internationally. To start with, you just type in your return address, as well as the recipient’s address. Once you’ve got those all-important details entered in, Snailmailr will provide you with an editor not too dissimilar from that you might see in an email client. You can choose your font and text size, and italicize, underline, bold, highlight and position your text as well. You can even insert a photo if you wish.

If all you need to do is send a short note or an invoice, that may be all you need to do. If, however, you have a longer document that you need to send along with your document, Snailmailr is prepared. You can upload an attachment that will be printed in full color for no extra charge (up to two pages) and mailed with your letter. You can attach PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint slides, text files or RTF files. You can also choose to skip writing a note and make the attached file the entirety of your letter. Pages beyond the first two cost 25 cents per page, with an upper limit of 20 pages.

Once your letter is ready to go, you’ll be taken to a preview page which will show you what your letter will look like, as well as offer you a payment button to check out. Snailmailr uses Amazon Payments to help you pay for your mail. If you change your mind about sending a letter, you can cancel anytime, up until when the letter is actually printed, and receive a full refund. Snailmailr notes on its site that letters are printed on quality recycled paper. The company also offsets emissions with carbon credits.

There are some additional fees that may increase the cost of using Snailmailr. For instance, all mail sent through the site is stamped with the SnailMailr logo — if you’d rather leave that off, you can pay 10 cents per letter to do so.

At first glance, 99 cents may seem like a high price to pay for sending a letter, which normally costs about 44 cents. However, that 99 cents covers more than the cost of a stamp: It also covers full color printing, the cost of driving to the post office, and even the time necessary to get a letter in the mail. It may not necessarily be the best option for every piece of mail you send, but it’s more than reasonable if you only have one or two letters to get into the mail.

Have you tried using Snailmailr to send a letter? Let us know what you think of the service in the comments.

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Don't Blame the Web for Postal Service Woes

Jordan Golson — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:10:35 +0000

The United States Postal Service is in dire straights. The second-largest employer in the country (behind only Wal-Mart) is facing a massive fiscal crunch amid falling mail volumes and rising expenses. The GAO estimates total mail volume will fall to 175 billion pieces in 2009, a massive, unprecedented drop to levels not seen in more than 15 years. In a release today, the USPS blamed the drop on the “trend of letter mail and business transactions being replaced with electronic alternatives” and anticipated “continued downward pressure into coming years.” In other words, email is killing the USPS. But it’s not that simple.

Surely more business is being done online, but there is no correlation between Internet adoption rates and a drop in mail — both have been generally rising over the past 15 years, at least until mail service fell off a cliff over the past few months. It’s likely that the Internet is playing a role, but I don’t think all the blame can be placed on technology. A look at the history of total mail volumes shows that declines around recession years are not uncommon, with particularly large drops occurring in the 1930s.

Additionally, the service’s package delivery competitors, like FedEx and UPS, don’t show a comparable drop in revenue, though it’s not a great comparison as those company’s routes have traditionally been more profitable than the Postal Service’s — plus, as a publicly traded company, FedEx has more of an obligation to be profitable than the government-run USPS. Though, as one of the few legal monopolies, shouldn’t the post office, with no competitors in most of its market (federal law states the USPS is the only organization that can deliver “non-urgent” letters like First Class and bulk mail), be able to make a profit? So we leave it up to you, dear readers. Why is the Postal Service in such a state?

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Earth Class Mail Partners with Swiss Post for Web Mail Deal

Katie Fehrenbacher — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:06:05 +0000

The idea behind Earth Class Mail — to banish your paper mail to the web — could save some serious fuel given, as the Seattle-based startup says, postal services represent 1 percent of the U.S. fossil fuel consumption. And the idea seems to be gaining traction: This morning Earth Class Mail said it has signed up Switzerland’s mail operator Swiss Post as the first national mail provider that will offer the service for a fee to its customers. In addition, the company says it recently closed a bridge round of $5.1 million in financing and is in the process of raising a Series B round of between $15 and $30 million.

It’s not such a good time to raise funds — other green companies have delayed fundraising and planned possible cutbacks — but Earth Class Mail has already raised $21.4 million, backed by Ignition Partners and a band of 133 angel investors.

The company has developed a strategy of going after white-label deals with national postal services, enabling the operator to brand the service as its own, which as Earth Class Mail CEO Ron Wiener explains, get its digital mail service in front of millions of customers in one fell swoop of a deal. Wiener says that the company is working on a deal with a large U.S. operator — like a U.S. Postal Service or Fed Ex type, he says — and expects to ultimately gain more customers through those deals, and less through its direct-to-consumer brand.

It could be a good deal for the mail operator as well, and in the age of digital communication USPS is facing significant mail reduction and higher costs. Swiss Post already does some web management of mail for government and business customers and the mail operator will extend that service by using Earth Class Mail’s mail permission platform.

Earth Class Mail is also increasingly focusing on government and business customers through its planned national mail deals. While a few months ago small businesses and consumers made up the bulk of the company’s customers, by the second quarter of 2009 Wiener expects government and big enterprises to make up about 80 percent of the company’s business.

So how does it work for customers? Users open an account and get a new address for mail delivery — in the U.S., a post office box or street address operated by Earth Class Mail. (In the U.S., Earth Class Mail is certified by the USPS to receive your mail.) The startup then receives your mail, scans it and posts images online; users choose whether to open, scan, shred, recycle, reroute or archive the mail. The pricing options start at $10 per month and go as high as $60 per month for the “professional” plan.

The initial drawback I see is that the way the system is set up now, Earth Class Mail could be a temporary step in the value chain. It’s a hybrid of traditional mail and web-based mail (the New York Times’ David Pogue gives the service a mixed review). But Wiener tells us that ultimately the company is planning on adding services that could turn advertisements and transaction-based mail straight into digital form.

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