Calc2Print vs Web2Print: why calculated beats price tables.
For twenty years print shops were sold “web-to-print”: a shop window with price tables behind it. Snake oil: the tables were wrong on the day they were typed, nobody kept them up to date, and the real quote still went through a mailbox. Literally every current solution still sells that out-of-date idea and calls it selling print. We do not look prices up. We calculate them.
Web2Print failed. Calc2Print is here.
Twenty years of web-to-print were twenty years of snake oil: price tables typed in by hand, quotes that still went through a mailbox, portals sold as “online ordering” that were never built for selling print, whatever the brochure promised. Literally every current solution still sells that same out-of-date idea. We are not web-to-print. We calculate your sheet, your press, your paper and your margin before the customer lifts a finger from the mouse.
- Price tables filled in by hand
- Quotes still handled by e-mail
- Days to change a paper price
- No idea which sheet the price is based on
- A PDF catalogue with a cart
- Every price calculated from your real costs
- Customers order themselves, 24/7
- Change one cost, every product follows
- The sheet, the katernen and the waste behind every price
- Orders flow to your MIS and your presses
What web-to-print promised, and what it delivered.
The promise was simple: put your products online and the orders come in. What arrived was a webshop with a cart and a grid of prices per quantity, a grid someone had to fill in by hand, for every product, every paper, every finishing, every quantity step. Hundreds of cells. Thousands. The day a paper price moved, the grid was wrong. The day a customer wanted something between two cells, the request went to a salesperson anyway.
That is why most print shops that bought web-to-print still quote by e-mail. The portal was a brochure, not a cashier.
| Aspect | Web2Print, price tables | Calc2Print, calculated |
|---|---|---|
| Where the price comes from | A table typed in per product, paper and quantity step | Your costs: paper, press, clicks or plates, finishing, waste, margin |
| A quantity between two steps | Not available, or rounded up to the next cell | Calculated exactly, any quantity, any size |
| A paper price changes | Someone re-types every cell that uses that paper | Change it once; every product follows at once |
| Several versions in one job | A surcharge per version, or “ask us” | Ganged on the sheet where cheaper, priced from the real plan |
| What the price is based on | Nobody knows | The sheet, the katernen, the plates and the waste, visible |
| The exceptions of your shop | In someone’s head | Rules that block, warn or reprice automatically |
| Prepress | Re-types the job | Gets the JDF 1.6 ticket with the imposition |
Calc2Print: the price is the production plan.
BuildYourPrint has no price table anywhere. When a customer changes anything, the engine lays the job out on the sheet, counts sheets, plates, clicks and waste, adds every finishing operation, packaging and delivery, applies your margin and your rules, and shows the price. In milliseconds. It is the same calculation your estimator would make, done every time, without the mailbox.
Because the price is a plan, it travels: the imposition viewer shows it, the work order prints it, the JDF 1.6 ticket carries it to your press.
Every line in the panel on the right is a result of the calculation, not a lookup.
The case no table can do: versions.
Three languages of the same flyer, 8,000 each. A table system charges three jobs or a “version surcharge”. The engine tries the combinations: the three versions on one form, two positions each, 4,000 sheets, 4 plates, and sees that this is cheaper than three separate runs. It assigns every version its positions, prices from that plan and shows the customer the saving. Automatically, for every sheet or plate, for as many versions as the job needs.
Three versions, one shared form: the cheapest outcome, found by the engine.
So we do not call it web-to-print.
Call it Calc2Print, the calculation comes first and the web is just where it happens. Some call it Web3Print: the third attempt, the one where the price is real. Whatever the name, the test is simple: ask your supplier where a price comes from. If the answer is a table, you know what you have.
If the answer is “from your sheet, your press, your paper and your margin, in milliseconds”, that is BuildYourPrint.
- No price tables, anywhere
- Every price traceable to the sheet
- Versions, rules, imposition and JDF 1.6 in the same engine
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