Buyer’s guide · Contractors

Direct mail for contractors: every postcard option compared (2026)

If you’ll print, bundle and drop off the cards yourself, USPS Every Door Direct Mail is the cheapest way to reach the homes around a job: 26¢ a card in postage, plus printing. If you want it done for you, ProspectsPLUS! publishes an all-in price from 200 cards, ServiceTitan mails at 79–89¢ a card if you already run on it, and Postalytics or Lob mail a list of specific homes. This guide compares all 12 on price per card, what that price includes, minimums, targeting and design help, using each company’s own pages.

By Eric Smith, founder of Outfitter AI and a former general contractor · Prices checked October 11, 2026

The short answer: what fits your shop

This page compares the companies and their prices. For the how-to (choosing routes, EDDM size rules, door hangers, card design, offers and tracking), see our postcards and door hangers how-to. Mail is one of many ways to spend a marketing dollar; every marketing option compared puts it next to ads, reviews and lead sites.

What to check before you order

Postcard prices are quoted so many ways that two “30-cent” offers can end up a dollar apart. Before you compare, pin down these seven things:

• Is postage in the price? Some prices are printing only and you pay the Post Office at the counter; others are all-in. A print-only price plus 26¢ of postage is the fair comparison to an all-in price.
• Every door or a list? Every Door Direct Mail goes to every address on the routes you pick, with no list to buy and the cheapest postage. Addressed mail goes only to the homes on a list, so you can leave out renters, apartments or past customers, but each card costs more to mail.
• The quantity the price is based on. “Starting from” usually means a big run. One printer’s headline EDDM price is based on 25,000 pieces [5]. Price the count you’ll actually mail.
• Minimums and route fees. Retail EDDM needs at least 200 pieces [1], and you mail whole routes. Some services add a fee per carrier route [2] or have a minimum order in dollars [6].
• Who does the Post Office part. Bundling, paperwork and the drop-off are either your job or theirs. If it’s yours, the cards have to go to the Post Office that serves those routes.
• Design. Free templates, a paid designer, or done for you. A card that looks like every other card in the mailbox is the expensive kind, whatever it costs.
• A way to track it. A phone number or code used only on that mailing tells you whether it paid. The postcards and door hangers how-to covers the setup.

All 12 compared

Prices are what each company lists on its own pages, checked October 11, 2026, before tax, shipping and add-ons. “Every door” means USPS Every Door Direct Mail: every address on the carrier routes you pick. “Not listed” means we couldn’t find it on the company’s own pages, not that it doesn’t exist. Several printers’ pages still quote older postage than the 26 cents USPS lists now, so confirm the total at checkout.

What 500 postcards around one job would cost

The classic contractor mailing: one card to the 500 or so homes around a job you just finished. Here it is priced on every option that publishes enough to work it out, using each company’s own numbers, checked October 11, 2026.

An example, not a quote: before tax, design fees and shipping. Every-door routes come whole, so your real count is whatever the routes hold. Click2Mail (prices based on 25,000 pieces), PostcardMania (all-in EDDM quoted on request), Vistaprint (price shown only in the order builder), Housecall Pro and the Jobber integration don’t publish enough to price 500 cards.

Two things stand out. At a few hundred cards, the low per-piece printing prices you see advertised don’t apply: minimum orders and route fees decide the bill. And doing EDDM yourself only stays the cheapest option if you have a printer who’ll print a small run without a minimum. At a few thousand cards, the math flips and the print-it-yourself route pulls well ahead. For how to decide what a mailing is worth to you, see how to set a contractor marketing budget.

Each option, in plain terms

Every Door Direct Mail: do it yourself or through a printer

The Post Office delivers your card to every address on the carrier routes you choose, at the lowest postage there is. You can do it all yourself, or pay a printer to print, bundle and mail it for you. Either way you can’t pick or skip single houses, and the card has to be a large “flat” size.

Addressed-mail services (you bring or buy a list)

Each card is printed with a name or address and mailed to a list: your customers, a list you buy, or a list the service builds. You choose exactly which homes get it. Postage is higher than EDDM’s 26 cents, and the all-in prices we found ran from about 62 cents to $1.37 a card depending on plan, size and volume.

Mail inside contractor software, and Outfitter

ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro sell postcards inside their job software, and Jobber connects to PostcardMania. These make sense if you already pay for that software, because they mail from your own customer and job data. Outfitter is listed here too: it designs and mails every-door postcards around the neighborhoods you pick.

Where postcard price lists mislead

Every price above came from the company’s own page, and several of those pages contradict themselves. Watch for these:

• Old postage on printers’ pages. USPS lists Retail EDDM at 26¢ a piece [1]. On the day we checked, printer and mailer pages still showed 16, 17.6, 19.1, 19.2 and 20 cents [5][7][8][2], and one estimated 65 cents [9]. Use the USPS figure in your math.
• “Starting from” at volumes you won’t mail. A 15¢ printing price based on 25,000 pieces [5] tells you little about 500. Ask for the price at your count.
• Printing-only prices that look all-in. If the page says postage is paid at the Post Office, add it yourself.
• Route fees and partial routes. EDDM goes to whole carrier routes, and the minimum is at least 200 pieces and one complete route [8]. A $25-a-route fee [2] matters more on a 500-card mailing than on 5,000.
• The software you’re also paying for. Mail inside job software only looks cheap if you were already paying for the software.
• Size. A 4x6 postcard can’t go out as Retail EDDM, even if a printer lists it next to EDDM products. The size rules are in our postcards and door hangers how-to.

How to test one mailing before you commit

1. Pick one finished job you’d like ten more of. The street around it is your test area.
2. Get two all-in prices for that exact area. One do-it-yourself (postage plus your local printer’s price for that count), one done for you. Ask each for the total with postage, route fees and design.
3. Give the card one job. One photo from that job, one offer with an end date, and a phone number used only on this mailing.
4. Mail once, then again three to four weeks later to the same homes, so you’re judging the mailing, not a single card.
5. Count for 60 days. Calls to the tracking number, estimates, booked jobs. Divide the total cost by booked jobs. If it beats your other channels, do it around your next good job; if not, change the offer or the area before you change the vendor. Call tracking for contractors walks through the phone number part.

Common questions

Sources and how we compared

We compared the postcard options a 1 to 25 person home-service company would realistically consider: doing USPS Every Door Direct Mail yourself, online printers and mailers, addressed-mail platforms, and the mail features inside contractor job software. Prices, minimums and features come from each company’s own pricing, product or help pages, opened October 11, 2026; we didn’t use third-party price lists. Where a company doesn’t publish something we say “not listed” or “not published”. We left out printers whose pages showed conflicting or no prices for EDDM (4over4, GotPrint), and we show Taradel’s addressed-mail prices because its EDDM price page didn’t open for us.

1. USPS: Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM)
2. ProspectsPLUS!: Pricing (EDDM Full Service and We Help/Do It Yourself) — vendor data
3. ProspectsPLUS!: EDDM — vendor data
4. Click2Mail: EDDM products — vendor data
5. Click2Mail: EDDM Mailer 6.25 x 11 — vendor data
6. PostcardMania: Postcard printing prices — vendor data
7. PostcardMania: Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) — vendor data
8. PostcardMania: Every Door Direct Mail FAQ — vendor data
9. Vistaprint: EDDM postcards — vendor data
10. Vistaprint: Postcard mailing services — vendor data
11. Taradel: Personalized mail pricing — vendor data
12. Taradel: Homepage (design offer and price calculator) — vendor data
13. Lob: Direct mail pricing — vendor data
14. Postalytics: Direct mail pricing — vendor data
15. ServiceTitan: Direct mail (Marketing Pro) — vendor data
16. ServiceTitan Help: Create Direct Mail campaigns — vendor data
17. Housecall Pro Help: Postcard campaigns, a complete guide — vendor data
18. Housecall Pro: How to use Housecall Pro postcards — vendor data; updated September 25, 2026
19. Housecall Pro: Pricing — vendor data
20. PCM Integrations (PostcardMania): Send postcards from Jobber — vendor data
21. Jobber product updates: PostcardMania integration — August 28, 2025
22. PCM Integrations: Pricing — vendor data
23. Outfitter AI: Marketing (direct mail)
24. Outfitter AI: Pricing

Last updated October 11, 2026. Prices change; if something here is out of date, call or text (507) 628-0400 and we’ll fix it.

Related: Postcards and door hangers: the how-to · Marketing for contractors: 26 options compared · Contractor marketing budget · Call tracking for contractors · Outfitter Marketing