Huh, I thought Jon Wheatley (Founder of Dailybooth, YC) owned it (lob.com) for a long time (April 2012), it was listed on his website for a while and a landing page for something he was working on for well over a year. I assumed that they bought it from him (with YC "buddy" pricing).
Keep in mind this includes an 4 sheets of B&W, the envelope, packaging, and labor costs associated with stuffing it into an letter, addressing it, and then mailing it. So $0.45 for one sheet is not exactly correct.
Isn't the stuffing automated? Heck I've seen some awesome machinery that takes bulk mail (assorted sizes), OCRs the info, opens it, retrieves the letter (check in this case)and then scans that for processing (putting aside illegible / odd cases).
Although their pricing is a bit high I feel there is clear trend supporting higher price for convenience.
This is the same trail that Stripe blazed. For a little bit of work I could get my own merchant account setup with much lower processing rates but the ease of integration and time savings is worth the cost.
I don't see Lob being that useful for people already doing printing. But I do see it offering a simplicity that will enable a whole new set of business to use printing in creative ways (ours included). Again, somewhat similar to Stripe.
What's the use case for this? I guess it'd be more useful the deeper you get into their pricing structure such as with photos or business cards; but it doesn't seem like its priced all that competitively with established services.
If this were a price-attractive campaign mailing tool...well then we're in a whole different ballgame. I could see Scrooge McDuck vaults of money being made in disrupting the last true bastion of postal mailing services.
I signed up for this last weekend, and had great followups with Harry Zhang, one of the co-founders. Super impressed with the customer service / support.
Feedback on the website: There is currently no Terms of Service. There is a Privacy Policy posted, but the TOS is not there. Your PP says, "This Privacy Policy is governed by our Terms of Service", so I would post one immediately.
I wouldn't necessarily call is scary, they're a start-up and early stage at that, probably just an oversight. Plus, they mention in the TechCrunch article that right now it's literally just the 2 of them, I'm sure they'll get one up soon!
Good feedback on the pricing page. We're working on a revamp of it now.
We ship worldwide and takes us 2 days to process/print the order...then the only variable is shipping time based on the speed you want (so overnight to ground depending how fast you need it).
This looks like a good service. We currently use Pwinty (www.pwinty.com) which is operating in the same space. They are very good and we are very happy with the service. If you think Lob is a good fit for your app do take a look at Pwinty too, they have been running for about a year and have fulfilment centres in both the us and uk.
Pricing is much cheaper. Main downside is there is a rather sizable one-time setup fee. But for printing, you are going to need to work with support to ensure things are working well, so this support is what you are paying for.
This is a great idea. I have a tight relationship with the printer I use at http://www.cheergram.com and we are thinking of doing something similar.
I know several pro print labs and Lob's prices are a bit high. On the other hand, small run printing can be a pain. Most printers I know have minimum orders on photo prints and press products like cards have to be done in groups of 25 or 100. Also, most printers will ship to their client for free but charge a fee to drop-ship.
All-in-all, the pricing isn't terrible but you have to find some kind of specialty/niche to make it work. I don't think you could do much with just a basic "print this thing" service built on top of this.
for what it's worth I've tried this service about 3 weeks ago. I printed a sample postcard to test the quality. It was better than I expected, especially coming from a pdf. At the time there was no way to print a two sided job (it's probably supported now), but they accommodated my request and gave me a ton of paper options that weren't available through the api.
Long story short, awesome customer experience and quality result.
What I'd like to know is how the hell do you get a 1 letter domain, like x.com? They're the only company I've ever come across with one. You would think it would be worth it for some highly funded startup to pay the premium a 1 letter domain would command, because it certainly would be novel and attention getting to be something like z.com.
They are reserved by ICANN, however there are a few around. x.com is Paypal, q.com is owned by Centurylink and z.com is owned by Nissan (although doesn't resolve right now). You could theoretically purchase q, x or z.com from the current owners, otherwise it's impossible to register them. I guess theoretically a very well funded company could try and bribe ICANN to release one to them, but that seems exceptionally unlikely.
I used these guys for some fliers the other day and they were actually really beautiful. Very approachable and great customer service. I highly recommend them!
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 94.6 ms ] threadI assume one of the founders already owned it?
https://www.lob.com/pricing
$.45 for a black and white piece of paper is on the high end, especially considering they're acting as a middleman.
$.85 for a 4x6 photo?
Winkflash charges $.06, which makes Lob 14 times more expensive.
And for what? Because you have an API?
This is the same trail that Stripe blazed. For a little bit of work I could get my own merchant account setup with much lower processing rates but the ease of integration and time savings is worth the cost.
I don't see Lob being that useful for people already doing printing. But I do see it offering a simplicity that will enable a whole new set of business to use printing in creative ways (ours included). Again, somewhat similar to Stripe.
examples that I can think of:
Stripe
Lob
EligibleAPI
Factual
If this were a price-attractive campaign mailing tool...well then we're in a whole different ballgame. I could see Scrooge McDuck vaults of money being made in disrupting the last true bastion of postal mailing services.
I can't make sense of the pricing page, is the cost for shipping included in the "packaging"-price?
Do you ship worldwide?
How long does it take until my order is in my customers mailbox?
We ship worldwide and takes us 2 days to process/print the order...then the only variable is shipping time based on the speed you want (so overnight to ground depending how fast you need it).
and already thinking into something that could use lob's potential. :)
http://www.amazingmail.com/direct-mail-automation
Pricing is much cheaper. Main downside is there is a rather sizable one-time setup fee. But for printing, you are going to need to work with support to ensure things are working well, so this support is what you are paying for.
I know several pro print labs and Lob's prices are a bit high. On the other hand, small run printing can be a pain. Most printers I know have minimum orders on photo prints and press products like cards have to be done in groups of 25 or 100. Also, most printers will ship to their client for free but charge a fee to drop-ship.
All-in-all, the pricing isn't terrible but you have to find some kind of specialty/niche to make it work. I don't think you could do much with just a basic "print this thing" service built on top of this.
Here's one lab I know of that actually publishes their pricing: http://www.nationsphotolab.com/prints.aspx
Long story short, awesome customer experience and quality result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_doma...