Are you a freelancer who ships boxes of printed collateral to clients? An indie e-commerce site owner? A designer or printer sending overnight proofs? If so, the latest US Postal Service pricing changes may have thrown you for a loop. Not only are prices higher for many services, but new size regulations are also in effect.

Many business owners use stamps.com to process and print postage, or services available on the usps.com website. The drawback is that these services are wholly or partially unavailable to Mac users. Why should Windows users get all the convenience of printing their own postage and having their packages picked up at their doors? Mac users, head straight to Endicia for Mac.

Endicia for Mac is software that allows you to print postage labels for all types of USPS mail: First Class packages, media mail, Priority envelopes, Express Mail, air mail, and lots more. And you can add extra services like Delivery Confirmation or return receipt. All you need to do is weigh and measure your package, enter in the specs, pop in an address, and Endicia will calculate the postage and deduct it from your prepaid postage account. You don’t have to figure out any of the pricing yourself!

Endicia for Mac’s interface is simple and connects with your Mac Address Book. I love that it lets me add a little icon to my labels—great for brand recognition!

When you’ve got your label and postage info all set, just print it out and arrange for pick-up of your package. You can arrange for pick-up from usps.com, or just drop your packages off at the Post Office on the date you specified on your label. No waiting in line!

If you’re a frequent user of Delivery Confirmation services, printing your labels at home with Endicia has another benefit: priority Mail Delivery Confirmation with Endicia is free, and First Class Delivery Confirmation is 18 cents (a fraction of the US Post Office price). You can also track your Delivery Confirmation packages with the click of a button in Endicia’s Mailing Log.

The Mailing Log records all of your transactions and tracks packages using Delivery Confirmation and other special services.

Needless to say, all this convenience comes at a price. Endicia for Mac is $15.95, deducted from your credit card monthly, plus however much you choose to spend on postage. Also consider that you will need to buy a postal scale (I got mine cheap at the Post Office), in addition to some self-stick label paper (I prefer how this looks over taping plain paper to a box).

So before you jump in, make sure that you’ll be saving some money, or take advantage of the free trial to see how you like it. If you send lots of Delivery Confirmation packages or if you use a ton of gas going back and forth to the Post Office, this may be just what you need.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 5:15 am and is filed under Design Careers, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.