Inflation has been taking a huge chunk out of everyone’s wallet, so its only natural that it is among everyone’s most important concerns today. Prices are increasing everywhere, from food to travel to web services and just about everything else. Well, as President of the company, I’m pleased to report that InstantCard has been doing its part in holding down inflation, because we have not increased our prices since January 2019. That’s right, as you will see on our price list, the base cost of a photo ID card is still $7.80, the same as it was 5 and a half years ago! And even then, we only raised our price from $7.25 to $7.80, or 7.5%!
In that same timeframe, the Consumer Price Index has risen by 25%, or over 4% per year. And the price of most everything in the ID card business has risen substantially: ID card printers, badging accessories, printing supplies, etc. To make matters worse, the cost of shipping rose even more due to the disruptive supply chain issues we all faced, where the expenses, and delays, associated with global commerce went through the roof.
On January 1, 2019 the cost of a standard first class postage stamp was $0.50, whereas today it is $0.73, an increase of 46%. While we did pass this increase on to our clients, we do not add any additional shipping or handling charge, so this limited the price rise to our clients. This is further indication of how our customers have benefited from InstantCard’s ability to hold the line on price rises in its core service, online ID card production.
But through it all, InstantCard has not succumbed to the temptation of raising prices even though this could have been perfectly justified. Just like every small business, we have seen the cost of many of the online services we ourselves use double in price over that period, and all businesses have certainly noted that purchasing ID card equipment and supplies has gotten much, much more expensive. But we have continued to invest heavily in our advanced systems and equipment to improve our efficiency. And our size in the industry gives us the purchasing volume to negotiate advantageous tariffs from our main suppliers. This strategy has therefore allowed us to not pass on the added costs we face to our customers.
As a result, an ID card from InstantCard is, today, more cost-effective than ever, compared with in-house printing. And as an added benefit, our costs are even lower than ever, compared to our competitors, because all the other online badging services have been forced to raise their prices over the years. All of our clients benefit financially from the decision they made to outsource ID card printing with each order they place. Every time a business considers purchasing equipment to make their badges in-house, the cost of outsourcing looks even more attractive because the costs of in-house production has risen with the inflation rate.
If you want to verify your own savings, you can use our advanced cost calculator here, which will quantity your savings in the make-vs.-buy decision. You can leave the default values for each variable, or you can plug in your own numbers to be sure that the calculations are an accurate reflection of your unique operating environment.
Through it all we have kept our prices stable, yet continued to offer more and better services to our customers. Our online platform offers many new features released over the past 5 years, which benefit every customer day in and day out. And our famous same-day guarantee, still unique in our industry, has continued to be respected 99.9% of the time.
If you think its time to reduce your ID card budget, whether it is switching from a different outsourced provider, or finally moving away from in-house printing, don’t hesitate to give InstantCard a call on (888)980-6179! Our team is standing by to explain to you the benefits, and the savings, available through our platform!
