Online printing for small businesses is a service that turns a design made in a web browser into printed products, such as visiting cards, flyers, banners, stickers and packaging, and delivers them. The customer orders a few hundred pieces, not many thousands, and still pays a low price.
Why is that hard? A traditional printing press needs a set-up for every job. Plates are made, inks are mixed, and the press prints many sheets before the colours come out right. For an order of 1,00,000 flyers, that set-up cost is spread across every flyer. For 250 visiting cards, the set-up would cost more than the cards themselves.
Online printers solve this by combining orders. Their software places many customers' designs side by side on one large printing sheet. This is called gang-run printing, or ganging. A sheet may carry the cards of 20 different customers. The press prints thousands of such sheets in one run. A cutting machine then cuts each sheet into cards, and each customer's cards are sorted, packed and shipped. Making many different, personal products on one mass-production line like this is called mass customisation.
Consider a yoga studio in Dehradun that needs 250 visiting cards and 500 flyers for its opening month. The owner opens the printer's website, picks a card template and adds the studio's name, logo and phone number. Before printing, the software checks the file. It warns that the logo will look blurred at print size, and that the phone number sits too close to the edge, where the cutter may trim it. The owner uploads a sharper logo and moves the number. The software then converts the colours from screen colours to the four printing inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black, called CMYK. That night, her cards are printed on a sheet with the cards of 19 other customers. Four days later, an express courier delivers the box to the studio.
The design itself may come from the printer's own template editor or from graphic design software. Some online printers also make products one at a time, such as a single mug or T-shirt. That is print on demand. It uses different machines, and each item is printed alone, without ganging.
Online printing is a factory business as much as a software business. The large online printers run their own printing plants. Their software decides which jobs go on which sheet and which press, and when each order must ship. Printing plants in general plan this work with print MIS software. In India, the same need comes from small shops, clinics, start-ups and wedding planners, who all want small print runs, quickly and cheaply.