Costs
How much do handwritten letters cost?
Most suppliers in this category will not publish a price. Here is ours, how it is constructed, and the parts of a campaign budget that catch people out.
Short answer: a handwritten letter in Australia typically costs between $2.94 and $5.01 a piece before postage, depending almost entirely on volume. A 120-word letter with a handwritten envelope works out at about $3.33 at 1,000 pieces. Postage adds roughly $1.70 to $3.50 a piece on top, depending on how it is lodged.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
What you actually pay for
Five components, and only one of them is the writing.
- Setup. A one-off $165.00 covering handwriting style setup, data preparation, layout and a written proof. Waived from 5,000 pieces. At 100 pieces this is $1.65 a piece; at 2,000 it is $0.08.
- The writing. A base rate of $1.24 a piece plus roughly a cent a word, reduced by a volume tier.
- The envelope. $0.92 a piece to address it by hand. Optional, and the line most worth keeping.
- Stationery. Zero if you supply it. Otherwise a print cost that depends entirely on what you want.
- Postage. The one that surprises people — see below.
Worked examples
A 120-word letter with a handwritten envelope, including GST, before postage.
| Quantity | Per piece | Campaign total | Volume tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $5.01 | $551 | Standard rate |
| 250 | $3.94 | $1,084 | 250+ pieces |
| 500 | $3.55 | $1,954 | 500+ pieces |
| 1,000 | $3.33 | $3,659 | 1,000+ pieces |
| 2,500 | $3.13 | $8,607 | 2,500+ pieces |
| 5,000 | $3.00 | $16,515 | 5,000+ pieces |
| 10,000 | $2.94 | $32,361 | 10,000+ pieces |
| 25,000 | $2.87 | $78,892 | 25,000+ pieces |
Indicative only, including GST, 120 words per piece, with a handwritten envelope, excluding postage. Full pricing and calculator.
Postage is frequently the biggest line
At 5,000 pieces the writing might be $14,700 and the postage more than that again. The Australia Post Basic Postage Rate is currently $1.70 and rises to $1.85 on 1 September 2026 (Australia Post), and bulk lodgement options can bring the effective rate down substantially.
Anyone quoting a single all-in per-piece figure before seeing your finished piece is estimating, whether they say so or not. A full breakdown of Australian postage options.
The three costs people forget
- Data cleaning. If your list is a decade of exports stapled together, someone has to fix it. We do that as part of setup, but a genuinely bad file adds time.
- Returns. Some percentage will come back undelivered, and you have paid to write and post every one. A list with 8% bad addresses on a 5,000-piece campaign is 400 wasted pieces.
- Answering the phone. A campaign that works produces inbound calls. Landing 10,000 letters in one week without the capacity to respond is a more expensive mistake than the postage.
Working out whether it is worth it
Cost per piece is only half the question. Take your all-in cost per piece, multiply by a thousand, and divide by the contribution margin of one conversion. That gives you the conversions per thousand you need to break even.
For a real estate agency, one listing per thousand letters is a very comfortable margin. For a retailer with fifteen dollars of contribution per order, you would need something implausible. Do that arithmetic before anything else.
The calculator gives you the cost side for any combination, without an email address.
Cost questions
What does one handwritten letter cost?
At 1,000 pieces with a 120-word message and a handwritten envelope, about $3.33 a piece including GST and before postage. At 100 pieces the same letter is around $5.01 because setup is spread over fewer pieces; at 10,000 it falls to about $2.94.
Why does the price per piece change so much with quantity?
Two reasons. Campaign setup is a fixed $165.00 spread across the run, so it dominates at low volumes and disappears at high ones — it is waived entirely from 5,000 pieces. On top of that, volume discount tiers reduce the writing cost as the run grows.
Does the length of the letter change the price much?
Yes, roughly a cent a word. Going from 100 to 200 words adds about $0.98 per piece — on a 5,000-piece campaign that is a meaningful sum, which is a good reason to cut the copy rather than pad it.
Is postage included?
No, and be suspicious of anyone who includes it in a headline price. Postage depends on the finished weight and format, and on which Australia Post bulk lodgement options your campaign qualifies for. It is quoted separately once the piece is defined.
Keep reading
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Tell us about your campaign
Send us the shape of it — how many, how long, envelopes or not, when you need it — and we will come back with an exact quote.