If you run a home-service business, you have probably wondered what Every Door Direct Mail actually costs before you commit a dollar to it. EDDM is the USPS program that lets you mail a postcard to every address along a carrier route without buying a mailing list or printing individual names. The pitch is simple: blanket a neighborhood for cheap. The real Every Door Direct Mail cost, once you add up postage, design, and printing, is usually higher than the headline number people quote. Here is the honest breakdown.
The three costs inside every EDDM campaign
An EDDM mailing has three separate line items. Quote any one of them alone and you will underestimate the total.
1. USPS postage. EDDM Retail postage runs around 20 cents per piece as a ballpark. Rates change, so check the current USPS EDDM rate before you budget. Retail caps you at 5,000 pieces per ZIP code per day and requires no mailing permit, which is what makes it approachable for a small shop. There is also EDDM BMEU (bulk) for larger volumes, but that path needs a permit and more paperwork, so most local businesses stick with Retail.
2. Printing. A standard EDDM postcard is 9x12 inches, which is large enough to qualify for the flat per-piece postage and large enough that people actually notice it in the stack. Printing a 9x12 full-color card on decent stock typically lands somewhere around 12 to 25 cents per piece at quantity, depending on paper weight, coating, and how many you order. Smaller runs cost more per card.
3. Design. If you do not design it yourself, a designer will charge you anywhere from $100 to $400 for a postcard layout. A weak design wastes the postage behind it, so this is not the line to skip.
What the all-in number looks like going solo
Put the pieces together for a realistic small campaign. Say you mail a 9x12 card to 2,500 homes on your own:
- Postage: roughly 20 cents x 2,500 = about $500
- Printing: roughly 18 cents x 2,500 = about $450
- Design: about $250 one time
That is roughly $1,200 all in for a single drop to 2,500 homes, and you are the only business on the card. You also handle the route selection on the USPS tool, the print specs, the bundling rules, and the drop-off at the post office. None of that is hard, but it is your afternoon, and a mistake on the paperwork can hold up the whole mailing.
Now you can see why the "20 cents a piece" line is misleading. Postage is the cheapest part. Printing roughly matches it, and design and your own time sit on top.
Where a shared mailer changes the math
Here is the part most EDDM cost guides skip. You do not actually need the whole postcard. A homeowner glancing at a 9x12 card does not read it differently because your business is the only one on it. What you need is to be seen by the right households with a clear offer.
A shared mailer splits that same 9x12 card across several non-competing businesses. The postage and printing get divided, so your slice of the cost drops a lot. The catch in most shared mailers is that they cram a dozen competitors into one envelope. The fix is exclusivity: one business per category.
That is how the PostBoard shared card works in Westford and the surrounding Middlesex County towns like Chelmsford, Acton, Littleton, Groton, Carlisle, and Tyngsborough. One landscaper, one plumber, one cleaner per card. A single ad slot reaching 2,500 homes is $350, design included, with QR tracking so you can see scans instead of guessing. Compared to roughly $1,200 to do it solo, the shared route gets you in front of the same mailboxes for a fraction of the spend, and you skip the route selection and post office trip entirely. You can see the full breakdown on the pricing section of our homepage.
When EDDM is NOT worth it
Direct mail is not the right tool for everyone, and pretending otherwise wastes your money. Skip EDDM, shared or solo, if:
- Your service area is tiny or oddly shaped. EDDM targets whole carrier routes. If your customers are spread thin across many routes, you pay to reach a lot of people who will never call.
- You have no clear offer. "Call for a quote" does not move a homeowner. If you cannot put a specific dollar amount and a deadline on the card, fix the offer first.
- You cannot answer the phone. Mail creates a spike of calls in the first two weeks. If those go to voicemail, the spend is gone.
- You need leads this afternoon. Print and delivery take a couple of weeks. Mail is a steady-visibility play, not an emergency tap.
If none of those apply, the math is straightforward. A single job from a $350 shared slot usually covers the slot many times over. We will not promise a specific number of calls, because that depends on your offer, your reputation, and timing. What we will promise is that you see the scan data and know what happened.
The short version
Solo EDDM to 2,500 homes runs around $1,200 all in once you count postage near 20 cents a piece, printing, and design. A shared 9x12 card with one business per category gets you on the same doorsteps for a fraction of that, with the busywork handled. Verify current USPS rates before you budget either way. If you are also weighing how to follow up on those calls faster, our AI Blueprint walks through where automation actually helps a small home-service business.
Want to see if the shared card fits your numbers?
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