Lob vs Postalytics

Choose Lob if you are a developer team mailing from your own app. Choose Postalytics if you are a marketer who wants to run postal campaigns like an email program. Lob is bought on a free plan, then paid plans billed by the month or once, with higher plans quoted. Postalytics is bought on a free plan, then monthly paid plans.

A healthcare team mailing invoices or statements that carry health information needs a vendor that will sign a business associate agreement. Lob signs one for those mailings. It also prints and mails checks through its API, beside the postcards and letters that its network of commercial printers produces. The limit is that scheduled mailings and single sign-on sit on its highest plan.

Marketers who want to learn which mailer works can split a mailing between creative variants and compare the response. Postalytics runs that test inside a campaign. It also keeps opted-out people and existing customers off a mailing through suppression lists. The limit is reach, since it mails only within the United States and Canada.

Lob's users praise an API and documentation that are simple and quick to integrate, and mail automation that saves time and cuts errors. They complain that pricing runs high, especially at low volumes or for small experiments. Postalytics's reviewers like how easy it is to build and send a campaign, and the integration that triggers postcards from HubSpot workflows. They find the design editor clunky, with few templates, and the print quality of letters and postcards below expectations.

Lob describes a healthcare technology company that automates the creation and delivery of large volumes of monthly HIPAA-compliant invoices to insurers and patients. The company saw patient payments rise and received fewer customer service inquiries. Postalytics tells of a meal delivery and catering company that mailed postcards with food photography to people who did not respond to email. Personalized URLs tracked the response, and the campaign earned a positive return within the first month.