DIY Envelopes vs Commercially Printed Envelopes

If you’ve ever planned an event or are going to in the future a question you’ve likely thought about is whether or not you should try and customize the envelopes yourself. And if you’re in a business needing to add branding and address information to the envelope you have a similar decision to make, should you label them yourself, print them on your own or have them done by a commercial printer?

Here we cover what you can expect when doing this on your own or if you chose to use a commercial print company to do this customization for you.

DIY Envelope Design, Templates & Printing

When it comes to DIY Envelope design and printing you’ll find a lot out there on crafting sites, DIY blogs and galleries like Pinterest. These sites make doing it on your own look very easy.

But is that really the case?

If you’ve ever done extensive DIY work in the past you’ll know the answer to that question.

Common Reasons to DIY

There are few reasons that people think about going the DIY route.

We’ve listed a few of the most common here.

• Reduce Costs
  By doing it yourself you are saving on the cost of labor.
• Can’t Find Designs You Like
  You may search for designs online to print on your envelopes only to see that there are limited options to choose from. So you end up creating your own design.
• Personalization
  Many people want their envelope to feel very personal. Making it look as if a lot of time went into crafting it just for them.

Commercial Envelope Printing

Commercial printing of envelopes is just as the name implies. A company is printing these envelopes on your behalf. When most people think about commercial printing they have the idea that only big businesses work with print companies like these. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here we’ll go over a few misconceptions about commercial printers as it relates to printing and more specifically envelope printing.

Myths About Commercial Printing of Envelopes

There are 3 main concerns that people have when thinking about commercially printing their envelopes. Below we detail the reality of what you can expect when working with a commercial print company

• Costs are Higher than DIY
  Not necessarily. With our  modern equipment your envelopes can be printed digitally at a very low cost. In most cases the price is nominally higher than the cost of the plain envelope you could buy yourself.
  Plus the more envelopes you get printed the lower the per envelope cost becomes.
  If you factor in the time you save then the cost is actually lower.
• Design Choices are Limited
  If you searched online for design templates you may have found nothing that you liked or fit your needs. But what most people don’t know is that print companies have access to tons of design options you never even see, plus they have the ability to work with you on creating something totally custom and unique for your envelope.
• Personalization Can’t be Achieved
  There are actually many options available for personalizing envelopes that commercial print companies can include in your project. Whether it is printed handwriting styles, paper choices, embossing, etc. using variable data all of this can be unique on every single envelope if you choose to do that.

Other Envelope Printing Considerations

Other factors to consider when getting your envelopes customized are the timing of the project and the opportunity to combine commercial and DIY.

If you have a tight time frame to get this done, commercial print companies are the best option because they are fast. Not only are they fast, their quality is consistent regardless of the time crunch. DIY projects under pressure can sometimes get sloppy.

And if you can’t imagine not doing something by hand to make it a DIY project there is always the option of getting the envelopes commercially printed and they can then be embellished by you afterwards.

So if you asked us which route you should go (unless you only need 5 envelopes) order your envelopes with us today – we can print in any color, 1- or 2-sides, with full bleeds and variable data personalization.  Ask us how today!  Oh, and did we mention, we can ship most envelope orders in 24-48 hours!

Contact Us Now for More Information

Phone: 724-837-0530