Questions people ask before they send.

You can, and if your time is free it costs less. USPS charges the same fees whoever hands the letter over; paperplane does not replace the post office, it replaces the trip. The mailing record comes from USPS, not from us. $12.99 covers the printing, the envelope, PS Form 3800, a USPS address check before you pay and a handoff the next business day. For a letter you already know how to send, the counter is a fine choice.

Some are. Label services cost less if you own a printer and will mail the envelope yourself. paperplane is for when you want it done: no account, no printer, the exact pages previewed free, your address checked with USPS before you pay, and one all-in price. The certified mail services comparison has the table.

If we cannot mail the letter, the hold on your card is released and you are not charged. If a letter fails after your card is charged, you are refunded automatically and in full.

Certified Mail gives you a USPS tracking number and a mailing receipt — proof that something was sent, on a specific date. It does not by itself prove what was inside the envelope, and the optional electronic Return Receipt adds a signed delivery record, not a guarantee that mailing satisfies your specific legal notice requirement. Court and statutory service rules vary by state and by matter — see our guide on proof of service before relying on any mailed notice for something with a deadline attached.

Every order runs through an automated content screen before anything is printed. In production, screening runs on a real model and fails closed: if no screening provider is configured, orders hold rather than silently skip the check — there is no silent bypass path. Lawful content (demand letters, firm legal language, blunt personal letters) is explicitly allowed; what gets refused is threats, harassment, and impersonation. Screening verdicts (categories, not the letter text itself) are retained for audit and legal compliance.

Our payment processor does, and only briefly. Cards are authorized, not charged: your card is authorized when you place an order, but the charge is only captured after the letter is actually screened and queued for print — if screening refuses an order, the authorization is simply released, nothing is captured. We never hold a stored balance or wallet on your behalf outside of purchased mailing credits, which are visible in your account.

Your uploaded document is stored encrypted and deleted 30 days after delivery — we don't keep a permanent copy. Addresses stay in the order record, and the automated screening verdict (categories, not your letter text) is retained for audit and legal compliance. Payment details are never seen or stored by us at all; our payment processor handles that entirely. Full detail on /privacy.

It's real: the send pipeline, pricing, screening, and tracking are live code, not mockups — try it end-to-end for free at /demo with sandbox mode, which runs the actual pipeline (address checks, content screening, simulated printing) without mailing anything or charging a card.

You get a clear reason and your payment authorization is released — nothing is charged. Refusal categories are things like threats, harassment, and impersonation, not disagreement with the content or tone of a lawful letter. If you think a refusal was a mistake, contact support; screening decisions are logged, not black-boxed.

Not in one step. The MCP and REST send tools require a confirmation_token minted by a prior, separate quote call, bound to the exact recipient, content, class, and price — an agent cannot invent a send from nothing. A live send still returns a paperplane payment link for a human to approve before any card is charged; sandbox mode skips payment entirely and mails nothing, which is the safe way to let an agent explore.

Lob and PostGrid are mail-rail infrastructure — APIs a service like ours could route print jobs through, not consumer-facing products a person picks between. We are not competing with them; a version of paperplane could run on top of one of them. Our comparisons (/compare) are against other consumer-facing letter-mailing services — Mailform, Click2Mail — for that reason.