Compared at the front desk · PrintNode
Early access · by invitation
You don't need a printing SaaS between your app and your printers.
Bellhop is a PrintNode alternative that removes the cloud middleman: your server talks directly to the agent at the desk, and PrintNode's cloud, client, and per-print metering never enter the path. PrintNode is the established name in cloud printing, and it works. This page is what the difference is worth, and it comes down to one drawing.
One of these requires the printing company to be involved in every job.
What the extra stop costs
Five consequences of the route
Where a job travels
PrintNodeFrom your server to their cloud, to their client, to the printer.
BellhopFrom your server to the agent. There is no third party to visit.
What is metered
PrintNodePrints per year, by tier, with an overage rate past the quota.
BellhopNothing. Plans count agents; pages are yours, in any quantity.
Who must be up at 2am
PrintNodeTheir cloud sits in the path of every job, so: them, always.
BellhopYou and the desk. Once an agent is paired, bellhop.dev can be unreachable and printing continues: the long-lived credential is verified offline.
Who handles the bytes
PrintNodeJobs sent as base64 pass through their servers. They promise not to keep them after printing, and we believe them; the point is that you are trusting a promise.
BellhopOur servers never carry a job at all. That is architecture, not policy, and you can verify it rather than trust it.
What runs at the desk
PrintNodeTheir client, signed into their cloud with their account.
BellhopAn agent paired to your app, holding a connection your own server answers.
The registrar, not the relay
How it can possibly be cheaper
bellhop.dev is a registrar. Your server calls it to mint an Ed25519 credential; the agent verifies that credential offline, against public keys baked into its build; and then nobody needs us until renewal, which is infrequent. We never see a print job, a scale reading, or a single message between you and the desk.
This is the entire economics of the comparison. When every job passes through your infrastructure, volume is something you have to process, observe, and account for, and a meter follows naturally. Bellhop never carries the job, so there is nothing for us to meter. Registering an agent is the only thing that costs us anything, and it is the only thing we count.
No middleman
Three desks, 5,000 labels a month
The volume doubles
Published prices; one PrintNode computer taken as one Bellhop agent. The doubled figure is Essential plus its $1.80 per 1,000 prints past the 60,000-a-year quota. Want scales, several printers to a desk, and someone to answer when you write? Fleet is $87 a year. Price your own fleet.
Moving house
The shape of your integration survives
You already hold an identifier for each place and call an API with bytes to print. That shape carries straight over; mostly the words change. The Node and Rails libraries do the protocol, and instead of polling their cloud for job states, acknowledgments arrive at your server as they happen.
The two run side by side without complaint, so a fleet moves one desk at a time: install the agent beside their client, pair it with a link, point that desk's jobs at Bellhop, and retire the client once the desk goes quiet. If some desks need something we do not do yet, leave them where they are. Bellhop does not ask for the whole fleet on day one.
Take the shorter route.
Bellhop is in early access. Ask for an invitation and try the route with one desk; the free plan carries a hundred.