These are the questions our support and sales inboxes actually receive, answered directly. If yours is not here, email support@postally.ca.
Pricing is flat per piece — the same rate whether you send one postcard or ten thousand. A 4x6 postcard to a Canadian address is $2.12 (print, handling and postage included), $2.87 to the USA and $5.11 internationally. Larger sizes cost more. Canadian sales tax is added per piece based on each recipient’s destination province; mail to addresses outside Canada is zero-rated. Current rates for every size and destination are on the pricing page.
No. Pricing is flat — the per-piece rate does not change with quantity. The one price step is mail class, not volume: 125 or more promotional pieces in a single mailing qualify for Canada Post Personalized Mail, which is roughly 40% cheaper per piece than Lettermail. There are no tiers above that.
The lowest rate you may have seen is Personalized Mail, Canada Post’s promotional mail class. We require 125 pieces in a single mailing to use it. Below that — and for any non-promotional mail such as invoices, notices or personal correspondence — the piece goes as Lettermail, which is $2.12 for a 4x6 within Canada. For example, 10 postcards to Alberta is 10 x $2.12 = $21.20, plus 5% GST = $22.26. The 125-piece floor is our own operating minimum, set above Canada Post’s published minimum to give us a safety buffer.
No minimum order, no small-order fee, no monthly fee and no contract. One postcard is a valid order. API accounts pre-load credits (minimum top-up $20) and each send draws the balance down; dashboard users can pay per order by card. Test mode is free.
Postcards, in four sizes: 4x6, 5x7, 6x9 and 6x11. They do not have to be marketing — Lettermail carries any content, including transactional notices, appointment reminders and personal correspondence, at any quantity. Only the discounted Personalized Mail class is restricted to promotional content at 125+ pieces. Letters, self-mailers and cheques are not available yet.
No. We do not offer Registered Mail, signature on delivery or proof of delivery, and we do not return a Canada Post tracking number. Lettermail and Personalized Mail carry no per-piece carrier tracking. If you need legally provable delivery — serving notices to tenants, for example — Postally is not the right tool and we would rather say so plainly.
Only up to the point we hand it to Canada Post. You get webhook and API status through production — created, printing, printed, dispatched and inducted — and induction is the last step we can confirm. Because Lettermail carries no per-piece tracking, we cannot tell you when a specific postcard was delivered. If you need a read on response rather than delivery, the QR code add-on gives you a real scan signal with geographic analytics.
Canada, the United States and international destinations. Everything is printed in Canada and inducted with Canada Post — including US-bound mail, which travels as Letter-post and is handed to USPS for final delivery. Nothing is printed or posted outside Canada. Note that Canada Post requires a Canadian return address when a return address is used, and does not return undeliverable mail to addresses outside Canada.
Yes, and it is a supported pattern rather than an edge case — several customers run exactly this in production. There is no minimum order and no volume commitment, so a single postcard is a valid send. Each piece can carry completely unique front and back artwork: create a template from your own print-ready PDFs with POST /v1/templates/create (pass published: true to create and publish in one call), then reference that template_id on the send. To mail many unique pieces at once, POST /v1/postcards/batch accepts up to 500 items and each item carries its own template_id, so 500 completely different postcards go out in a single request.
Yes. Supply a front and a back PDF by URL when you create a template and we print your artwork as-is, adding only the postal elements. For 4x6 the file should be 6.25 x 4.25 inches (450 x 306 pt, trim plus 0.125" bleed per side), one page per file. We compose the recipient address, return address and postage indicia onto the front, so leave that area clear — GET /v1/specs returns the exact geometry for every size and both address layouts. There is no way to attach a PDF directly to a send: artwork always goes through a template first.
Yes, and it costs nothing. Send with test mode on: the piece is composed and rendered exactly as it would print — your artwork with the address block, return address and postage indicia applied — but nothing is charged and nothing is mailed. Fetch the result and open the PDF. Poll for the PDF rather than for a status change: a test piece deliberately stays at status "created" because it never enters the print queue.
Pieces submitted during the day are batched and sent to our print partner at 2am Vancouver time. You can cancel a piece up until 23:59:59 Vancouver time on the day you submitted it; after the batch runs it is committed to production.
Pieces approved during the day go to our print partner in the nightly batch at 2am Pacific. Their production turnaround is currently 1–3 business days from that handoff, after which the pieces enter the mailstream. Canada Post delivery time is on top of that and varies by destination and mail class. We do not quote a delivery date: Lettermail carries no per-piece tracking and no delivery guarantee, so any number we gave you would be an estimate we could not stand behind. If you want a read on when a piece landed, the QR code add-on gives you a real scan signal.
Postcards print on 100lb stock, digitally, with a choice of glossy or matte finish. There is no UV coating. You choose the finish per piece and postcards default to glossy. If your product depends on a UV-coated or specialty stock, we are not currently a fit — we would rather tell you that before you integrate than after.
No — we do not send sample packs. The way to judge our print quality is to place a small real order and receive it yourself, which costs no more than any other send because there is no minimum. Address a few postcards to your own address through the dashboard campaign manager or the API and you will get exactly what your customers would get: same stock, same press, same mail path. That is a better test than a sample pack anyway, because it exercises your artwork rather than ours.
Not currently. Every piece follows the same schedule: the nightly 2am Pacific batch, then 1–3 business days of production, then Canada Post. There is no premium tier that shortens it today. If that changes we will say so.
Yes. There is a two-page design guide PDF for every size — 4x6, 5x7, 6x9 and 6x11 — in both address layouts, showing trim, bleed, the safe zone, the address box, the 22x40mm postage indicia clear zone and the 20x10mm return address zone. Download them from the help page in your dashboard, or directly at https://api.postally.ca/v1/docs/download/postcard-design-guide-4x6 (swap the size for other formats, and add -classic for the divided-back layout). GET /v1/specs returns the same geometry as numbers if you would rather drive your renderer from data.
Three ways. Use the REST API directly — every operation is available and the full reference is published. Use Zapier or Make.com if you would rather not write code: there are five triggers and five actions. Or use the dashboard and skip integration entirely. For the API, sign up, create a key in Settings, and build against test mode for free until you are ready to add credits.
Probably nothing — test mode is working as designed and the signal you are watching for does not exist. A test piece never enters the print queue, so it deliberately stays at status "created" and never advances to printing or dispatched. Webhooks do not fire for test pieces either. What test mode does give you is the fully composed postcard: fetch the mailpiece and open its PDF to see exactly what would print. Nothing is charged and nothing is mailed. When you are ready for real mail, create a key with environment "Live" in Settings, then add credits.
Yes. Webhooks are HMAC-signed and cover the production lifecycle of a mailpiece plus QR-code scans. Delivery is queued and drained every 10 minutes, and a failing endpoint is retried up to five times over about 15 hours before the delivery is abandoned, so treat webhooks as a notification you react to and polling as the signal you depend on. The signature algorithm and a working verification example are in the API reference.
You do not need an API key to sign in. The dashboard uses your email address and password; API keys are only for programmatic access and are created from Settings once you are signed in. If you are being asked for a key at the login screen, you are on the API documentation rather than the dashboard sign-in page.
Yes, from account settings. The change is confirmed by email and your previous address is notified, so it can be recovered if the request was not you.
Yes. The dashboard follows your operating system’s light or dark setting, and you can override it from the theme control in the dashboard.
