If your business needs to do more than print the occasional contract or internal document, your needs might be beyond what an ordinary office printer can provide, and you could be entering the world of the production printer and its high-volume capabilities.

But going that route is a serious investment, and the wrong choice can mean overpaying for features you don’t need or, worse, underinvesting in a machine that can’t keep up with your workload. So before you buy or sign anything, here’s what you need to know and how to determine if a particular printer is right for you.

Production Printer vs. Office Printer: Know the Basics

At first glance, a production printer and a high-end office printer can look remarkably similar. From an end-goal standpoint, both produce printed documents and can work through Wi-Fi to serve an entire office or business. But once you go under the lid, the differences start mounting up.

An office printer is specifically designed for routine, moderate-volume printing throughout the day. It can power through a long presentation or work correspondence, usually at a few dozen pages per minute. It emphasizes cost-effectives, compactness, and ease of use. The lower-end devices are typically expected to print 5,000 pages per month, while the high-quality ones can handle close to 100,000 pages in that same period.

But what an office printer doesn’t really do is for high-volume or continuous printing. Its coils are not designed to withstand high heat and throughput, which leads to them breaking down much quicker. But that’s easy for a production printer. Since it can print up to 150 pages per minute and run for days on end, it’s purpose-built to have duty cycles of millions of pages per month. A production printer is also compatible with a far wider range of media types, paper weights, and advanced finishing options. It’s an essential machine for print shops, marketing departments, or any in-house teams where printing is a core business function.

Of course, there’s a tradeoff here in terms of cost and size. Office copiers might cost you around $15,000 at the top end and still be able to fit on or near a desk. However, production printers can range from $50,000 to well over $500,000 in price and the larger ones take up serious office real estate (in truth, they’re designed to be on a dedicated warehouse-like printing floor rather than in an office). But once you get to a high enough volume, production printers actually have a lower cost per page. The break-even point is roughly 80,000–120,000 pages per month, a mark that most office printers will struggle to meet (which is where you’re typically deciding on whether printing is something you really need or can offload).

How to Determine a Production Printer for Your Purposes

If you do need to print at high volume, chances are you’re already considering different production printer models or trying to avoid high-end “regular” printers which would only fall short of the task. To narrow your options, create a checklist based on the answers to the following questions.

What’s Your Actual Print Volume?

Compile at least three months of print data and calculate the average monthly page count. You can break this down further by calculating the cost of printing in black and white vs. color, the expense of single-sided vs. duplex printing, or by looking at peak periods when a traditional printer is failing to catch up while working non-stop. This tells you the capacity and duty cycle you need, and protects you from paying for a machine that’s either overkill or, more expensively, not enough.

What Quality Do You Actually Need?

If you’re printing marketing materials, client-facing brochures, or anything where you might need to put branding or color imagery, you’ll likely need a machine with advanced color management and spectrophotometer-level calibration. But if the bulk of your output is internal manuals or transactional documents, you can use a simple black and white printer but which has much higher printing speeds as a result (since not needing to use multiple printer heads for colors can be a real advantage).

What Finishing Options Do Your Jobs Require?

This is where many buyers underestimate the specs they need. If you’re producing booklets, catalogs, or anything bound, you’ll want saddle-stitching, perfect binding, or whatever assembly process your workflow demands. While they might sound costly, having them built into the printer significantly cuts down on the total printing time by automating the process right at the printer.

Note that finishing accessories can also significantly add to the total price, so map out the budget and possible options to check which models support your wishes.

What’s Your Budget?

The sticker price is just the start. You’ll need to factor in toner and supplies, energy consumption, service contracts, and any software licensing. A product manual can show you specific numbers in terms of paper usage, compatible cartridges or consumables, and energy requirements, and you’re a few searches away from finding their costs.

After that, you might need to throw financing into the mix (as a single $50,000 bulk purchase might be out of your capabilities if you’re starting), and suddenly, a printer that seems perfect might be overkill. It’s something that 82% of companies do, according to the Equipment Leasing & Finance Association (ELFA). On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to penny-pinch, either, as a machine with a lower cost-per-page can easily outperform a cheaper model over its lifetime.

How Easy Is It to Use and Maintain?

A production printer is only useful if your team can actually operate it. Evaluate the user interface, the complexity of routine maintenance tasks, and how often the device will need a technician on-site. The less downtime, the better.

Other Factors to Consider: Buying vs. Leasing

Beyond zeroing in on the right machine, you might also need to determine how to acquire it. Here, you have two options.

Buying outright means no ongoing financing fees, full ownership from day one, and the machine becomes a depreciable asset on your balance sheet. Of course, if you can absorb the initial cost and already have experience with production printers, this might be a non-issue.

Leasing, on the other hand, keeps initial costs down and makes it easier to upgrade as technology advances. Production printer leases can last up to 60 months, with longer contracts offering lower monthly payments but higher total costs to account for ongoing support and maintenance.

Lease payments are also typically treated as operating expenses, which can be a meaningful tax advantage depending on your accounting structure. The tradeoff is that leasing costs more over the full term, and you’re committed to the contract regardless of whether your needs change.

However, neither option is quite good for “testing out” a particular printer. Even at short-term contracts, a lease starts with a large monthly payment to account for the bulk of the device’s market price.

Finding the Right Production Printing Partner

Whether you’re running a busy in-house print operation or managing a growing commercial print shop, getting the right production printer can make or break your pipeline. But if you want more help, a managed print provider can jump in with their expertise to help you avoid common pitfalls.

If you’re based in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, or eastern Pennsylvania, KDI Office Technology can help you work through exactly this process. From assessing your current print environment to matching you with the right equipment and support agreement, we’re here to make sure the machine you invest in actually works for your business.

So contact KDI today and see how we can help you upscale your printing and unlock the full potential of your company.