Today, I am going to go over the numbers on how much a printer actually costs you to run over a 5-year period and how a Managed Print Services (MPS) program can save you a substantial amount of money.  In my example, I will be comparing a Brother HL-L6200DWT against a HP LaserJet E50145dn.  Both printers have 2 trays and wireless networking.

Recently, we had a customer inquiring about renting a printer for her notary business.  We provided a quote to rent a printer plus the cost per page cost for each page printed.  When she got the quote, she responded with "I print 10,000 pages a month and based on the cost per page, it is going to cost me $110/month plus the cost to rent the machine and that just seems too high".

That's when I decided to do a comparison between our printer, the HP LaserJet E50145dn, and the one that she was looking at purchasing, the Brother HL-L6200DWT.  To make things fair and comparable, I used all OEM Toner and Parts and based my numbers on printing 10,000 pages per month on both machines.   That's 600,000 pages over a 5 year period (10,000 pages a month times 60 months).

When you look at the cost of running a printer, you also need to factor in all of the other costs associated with keeping the printer running and not just the cost of the printer itself or the cost of toner cartridges.  There are things like fusers, drums, feed rollers, and maintenance kits that add to your overall cost of ownership.  These are the hidden costs that many customer do not realize when deciding which printer to go with.  They find out after running the printer for a few months and then are hit with a big and unexpected cost.  Typically, the less expensive the printer is, the more it costs to run.

Below is a breakout of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of both machines over a 5 year period.  There are some important factors that I would like to point out about this comparison:

• The Brother HP-L6200DWT is a home/home office printer where the HP LaserJet E50145 is a enterprise/business rated printer. 
• The Brother is only rated at 5,000 pages a month where the HP is rated at 15,000 pages a month.
• The HP is a more robust machine and will easily outlast the Brother.  You will have less jams and problems with the HP because of this.
• The toner cartridges for the Brother are half the size of the ones for the HP.  This means that you will be purchasing and changing toner cartridges twice as often.
• Things like fusers and drums are rated for a certain number of pages and must be replaced to maintain the best quality of print.  The HP does not use drums since the drum is built into the toner cartridge and is replaced each time you replace the toner cartridge.
• If the Brother breaks and is unrepairable or dies one day, the customer must purchase a new one.  In a Managed Print Services Program, we will replace the printer at no cost to the customer.
• Maintaining your own printer means you will have huge spikes in the costs on months where a drum, fuser, or maintenance kit needs to be replace.  Going with a Managed Print Services program covers all of these items keeping your monthly bill at a flat and consistent rate.
  
  Below is a cost comparison of the costs to run each printer over a 5 year period.  This is based on printing 10,000 pages per month or 600,000 pages over the 5 year period. 

As you can see, in the comparison above, the HP LaserJet E50145dn under our Managed Print Service Program saves you $2,400 or 24% over a 5-year period. 

Best of all, you will never have to worry about buying toner, drums, fusers, or maintenance kits again.  Our Managed Print Services Program includes all of that and we also automatically send you a new toner cartridge when the machine reports that you are getting low on toner.  You will never have to worry about your printer again.

There is something very important to point out here that is not factored in the comparison above.  That is toner coverage.  You might be surprised to find out that you are probably already paying 2 to 3 times your toner cost per page and don’t even know it.  Do you know what percentage of page coverage is used to calculate the published page yield of a toner cartridge – the answer is 5%.  

Have you ever wondered why you never get the number of pages that the toner cartridge says you should?    When you buy a toner cartridge and it says that the you will get 12,000 pages from it, this is  based on 5% toner coverage.   If you are using 10% coverage, you will get half the number pages out of the same toner cartridge.  A toner cartridge rated at a yield of 12,000 pages now becomes a 6,000 page yield toner cartridge.  Essentially doubling your toner cost per page.

Wondering what 5% toner coverage looks like? Imagine taking a black marker and coloring in the corner of a letter-size piece of paper representing what you believe to be just 5% of the total area. It isn’t much, is it?

On the low side, most businesses tend to print 10 – 15% coverage on black and white documents and 15 – 30% coverage when printing in color. Of course, printing just 10% coverage in black and white will double your toner costs and color becomes exponentially more expensive because you’re using toner from four different toner cartridges to produce colored text or an image.

Our Managed Print Services program offers a fixed cost per page. You pay the same cost per page no matter what coverage that you are using.  If you are buying your own toner cartridges, you are paying more per page anytime you go over 5% coverage.

The immediate financial benefits that a fixed cost-per-page model provides without asking end-users to change their printing behaviors are:

• Immediate Cost Savings
• Expense Control
• Budget Predictability

When you take into consideration all the costs of purchasing and maintaining your own printer and the savings you can get by going with a managed print services program, it is a no brainer.  Why put yourself through all the headaches of purchasing and maintaining a printer when we can handle it all for you.  When you use a Managed Printer Services program, you can now focus on running your business and not worry about running your printer.

If you would like complete details on how our Managed Print Services program works, check out our web page at https://totalprintusa.com/