The hidden expense of home printing: Ink

If buying a printer feels like the big expense, wait until you look at the cost of ink over the lifetime of the printer.

Printer manufacturers have perfected the razor-and-blade model: cheap hardware, expensive refills. And by “expensive,” we mean ink that costs more per ounce than luxury perfume or fine whiskey.

A standard black cartridge often runs $30–$40 , and many color cartridges land in the $60–$80 range. That’s before you consider that most cartridges print only a few hundred pages under ideal conditions... conditions most people don’t actually have.

Because here’s the real problem:

Ink dries out.

In the fine print, most print cartridge manufacturers (the same companies that manufacture the printers themselves, conveniently), advise you to print AT LEAST once per month using every cartridge to avoid ink drying out. If you live in a dry climate it should be even more frequent.

Long gaps between print jobs lead to:

• dried cartridges that stop working
• clogged printheads (which waste even more ink during cleaning cycles)
• the dreaded “low ink” warnings despite barely printing anything

And when it finally fails on the one day you need something printed urgently? You’re stuck doing a last-minute ink run that costs more than the document you’re trying to print (and in some cases, even more than you paid for the printer itself).

For occasional printers, ink is less of a supply and more of a subscription — one you’re paying for even when you’re not printing.

The result:

Most households spend more on ink they never use than on printing they actually do.

What about those "ink on demand" refill services that ship you cartridges? They may save you the headache of the 11th hour panic when you run out or it dries up, but the costs are still there.

Upload your document to Have It Printed and we’ll print it, mail it, and track it for you.

No cartridges. No clogs. No emergency ink runs.