FloristWare Hardware: Printers - Letter-Sized

If you are going to use FloristWare you will absolutely need a standard Letter-Size printer. This will be used to print reports, worksheets, reports, receipts, invoices, statements and more.

We strongly encourage you to avoid inkjets and go with a laser printer for several reasons. The first is that lasers are much faster. And, while more expensive to buy, they cost much less to run. Since you will be doing a lot of printing a laser will pay for itself very quickly. Another big problem with inkjets is that the ink runs if it gets wet - something that happens very often in flower shops! Laser printers avoid this problem entirely.

If you ever plan on using FloristWare on more than one machine you should go with a true network printer. This means that instead of connecting the printer to your computer you will connect it to your hub or switch and access it over your network.

Since you are going to be doing a lot of printing on your letter-sized printer you should get a good one. Generally speaking the less a printer costs to buy the more it will cost to run. Plan on spending a few hundred dollars to get something decent.

Some people ask about color laser printers. FloristWare can automatically print your logo in the top left corner of receipts, invoices, statements etc., and having a color printer would allow you to print your logo in color. This is the only place where FloristWare will allow you to take advantage of color printing - everything else will be grayscale. Since color printers are generally much more expensive to buy and operate than black & white printers you need to think hard about whether a color logo is worth the extra money. If however you plan on doing a lot of color printing from other applications a color laser may make sense.

We generally suggest our users buy Brother printers because they are affordable and have proven to be reliable and easy to use.

The one complaint we hear from busy shops is that the consumables (toner and drums) are very expensive.

This depends on where you shop. If you buy from Brother or get official Brother replacements you will pay a lot - far more than you have to.

We suggest buying inexpensive replacements from other sources. You will save a lot of money - we're talking about saving 50% to 70%, sometimes even more.

For example - you can get a toner cartridge that is good for 7,000 pages for $26.90 (shipping included). A drum (good for 25,000 pages) can be found for $38.50 (including shipping).

The best source we have found in terms of both price and service is Cartridge-Expert on eBay. Please give them a try.

Our current favorite for shops that want one printer with two paper sources (allowing it to print both regular letter-sized jobs and Delivery Slips/Enclosure cards) is the Brother HL-5370DW . It has all of the features that we need and there are lots of FloristWare shops using it so we know it works.

It's also very inexpensive. The list price is just $249.95 but you can find it for less than that if you look hard enough.