Tips & Tricks: How to Send Snail Mail Without Printing a Thing

We’ll get into this more in a future post, but both Ari and I lead pretty much paperless lives with the exception of the bathroom and the kitchen. For the most part, email has replaced mail, but sometimes you absolutely have to send a letter.

I hate sending letters. I don’t have a printer. I often go to my stamp drawer and find there aren’t any left. I even can’t stand folding the paper to fit into an envelope. (I’m sure you mess up on the first time too.)

Thankfully, there is a better way.

The Trick

I don’t send mail much, but when I do, I use Postful. It’s simple:

1. Sign up.
2. Fund your account. (I put in $5 almost a year ago and still have $1.28 left.)
3. Send an email to quickletter@postful.com with the mailing address in the subject line and the letter attached as a PDF, Word Document or pretty much any other format. You can also just type the message directly into the body of the email if you’re not too concerned about formatting.
4. That’s it. You’re done.

Postful will subtract $0.99 + $0.25 for each page beyond the first from your account, print out your letter, fold it, put it in the envelope, lick the envelope, close it, stamp it, write the mailing address on it and drop it in the mailbox. (Seriously, that’s a lot of steps when you compare it to email.)

Every single time I send snail mail with Postful I smile. If it weren’t for Postful, I’d probably still have a printer at home.

Power Tip

If you find that you send a letter to a specific address regularly, you can set up a custom Postful email address just for that address.