COMPARISON
PostKnock vs Thanks.io
Let's start with the part most comparison pages bury: on their paid plans, Thanks.io is cheaper per postcard than we are. Their Business plan takes a 4×6 to $0.77 and Professional to $0.64, against our $0.91 on Pro. If per-piece price is the only thing you're optimising, that is the honest answer and you should go and read their pricing page. What they don't do is the second half of the job: nothing on Thanks.io tells your front desk who to ring on Tuesday.
| Feature | PostKnock | Thanks.io |
|---|---|---|
| Per-piece 4×6, no monthly fee | $1.04 (Free plan) | $1.18 (Pay as you go) |
| Per-piece 4×6, cheapest plan rate | $0.91 (Pro, $99/mo) | $0.64 (Professional, $199/mo) |
| Per-piece 6×9, no monthly fee | $1.07 (Free plan) | $1.65 (Pay as you go) |
| Per-piece 6×9, cheapest plan rate | $0.94 (Pro, $99/mo) | $0.71 (Professional, $199/mo) |
| Phone follow-up calls | ✓ Built-in per wave, script + daily queue | ✗ |
| Call scripts per wave | ✓ | ✗ |
| Daily call queue timed to delivery | ✓ | ✗ |
| Multi-wave sequences | ✓ Unlimited waves, non-responders advance automatically | Scheduled and triggered campaigns |
| Ready-made playbooks (sequence + timing + call script) | ✓ 156 across 52 verticals | Templates, no call scripts |
| Design Studio: shuffle to a finished card | ✓ 4 style shells × 6 layouts, unlimited reshuffles | Editor + AI Studio |
| Handwritten-style mail | ✗ | ✓ Their original product |
| Free plan | ✓ No monthly fee, no expiry, full Design Studio | ✓ Pay as you go, no monthly fee |
| Minimum order | None | None |
| Print proof before sending | ✓ Real print files, 4-point sign-off, blocks launch until approved | ✓ Preview |
Thanks.io figures read from thanks.io/pricing and their plan-comparison help page on 18 August 2026 and can change — confirm on their site. Their monthly fees are pure subscription: their own documentation states "There are no unlimited-send tiers. Every piece has a per-piece cost regardless of plan." PostKnock figures are our own published prices. All rates include printing and postage.
No monthly fee, no minimum, no time limit, and no card at signup. You fund a wallet before anything mails.
Where PostKnock goes further
Where they win, plainly. Once you're paying a monthly fee, Thanks.io is cheaper per card at every size. Business at $49/mo prices a 4×6 at $0.77 against our $0.91, and Professional at $199/mo takes it to $0.64. If you're mailing steadily and don't want the calling workflow, they will cost you less. We would rather you read that here than discover it after signing up.
Where we win, also plainly. With no subscription at all, we're cheaper: $1.04 against their $1.18 on a 4×6, and $1.07 against $1.65 on a 6×9 — 58 cents a card. For a business testing direct mail for the first time, or mailing a couple of hundred pieces a season, the free plan is the cheaper way in by a wide margin.
The calls are the actual difference. Thanks.io has no call queue, no call scripts and no way to tell your front desk who to ring today. For a dentist or an HVAC contractor the appointment gets booked on a phone call, not a QR scan. PostKnock times a call list to when each card lands, hands over a script for that wave, and tracks the outcome against the contact. That is the reason to pay us more per card, and if it isn't worth it to you, their price wins.
A sequence, not a send. Thanks.io campaigns are sends you schedule or trigger. A PostKnock campaign is a sequence: each wave carries its own message, design and call script, contacts who don't respond advance to the next wave on their own, and mail volume is paced to the calling capacity you set so the queue never outruns the people working it.
Who is Thanks.io best for?
Thanks.io fits a business that wants low-cost mail at volume and already has its follow-up handled — an agency mailing on behalf of clients, an ecommerce brand running retention drops, or anyone whose conversion happens online rather than on the phone. Their handwritten-style product is genuinely distinctive, and their API and integrations are mature. If your metric is cost per piece, they're hard to beat.
Who is PostKnock best for?
PostKnock fits a local service business whose revenue arrives through the phone. The postcard's job is to make the callback welcome; the callback books the appointment. If nobody in your office is going to work a call list, most of what you'd pay us for goes unused — and Thanks.io is the better-value choice. If someone will, the extra per card buys the half of the campaign they don't sell.
Pricing comparison
Thanks.io publishes three tiers: Pay as you go at $0/mo ($1.18 / $1.65 / $1.87 for 4×6 / 6×9 / 6×11), Business at $49/mo ($0.77 / $0.91 / $1.01) and Professional at $199/mo ($0.64 / $0.71 / $0.76). The fees buy a rate, not an allowance. PostKnock is Free at $0/mo ($1.04 / $1.07 / $1.29) and Pro at $99/mo ($0.91 / $0.94 / $1.26), with follow-up calling included in Pro.
At 1,500 4×6 cards in a month: Thanks.io Professional is $199 + $960 = $1,159 and Business is $49 + $1,155 = $1,204, against PostKnock Pro at $99 + $1,365 = $1,464. They're cheaper by roughly $260–$305 for that month, and you'd be doing the follow-up yourself. Below about 180 cards a month the comparison flips: our free plan at $1.04 beats their $1.18 pay-as-you-go with no fee on either side.
Switching from Thanks.io
Moving from Thanks.io to PostKnock takes about 5 minutes:
- Export your contact list from Thanks.io as a CSV
- Sign up for PostKnock (free, no credit card required)
- Import the CSV: PostKnock auto-maps name, address and phone columns
- Pick a playbook for your industry, or design from scratch
- Approve the print proof and launch your first multi-wave campaign
A worked example: dental recall
Plug your own numbers in. A practice with 500 lapsed patients running a 3-wave reactivation on PostKnock Pro:
- 500 patients × 3 waves = 1,500 postcards at the 4×6 Pro rate of $0.91 = $1,365, plus $99 for the month
- Phone follow-up calls after each wave, included in Pro
- Assume a 5% reactivation rate → 25 patients return
- Assume each returning patient is worth $1,200/year in production
- 25 × $1,200 = $30,000
The two assumptions above are ours, not measured results: response rate and customer value vary a lot by business, list quality and offer. Swap in your own figures before budgeting off this.
Frequently Asked Questions
On their paid plans, yes. Thanks.io Business at $49/mo prices a 4×6 at $0.77 and Professional at $199/mo at $0.64, against PostKnock Pro's $0.91. With no monthly fee the comparison reverses: our free plan is $1.04 a card against their $1.18 pay-as-you-go, and $1.07 against $1.65 on a 6×9. The trade is that PostKnock includes the follow-up call queue and Thanks.io has no calling feature.
No. Thanks.io is a mail platform — postcards, handwritten-style cards and letters — with no call queue, call scripts or calling workflow documented. PostKnock builds a call into each wave, with a script for that wave and a daily queue timed to when the cards land.
If nobody in your office will work a call list, pick Thanks.io — you'd be paying us for a feature you won't use, and they're cheaper per card. If someone will make the calls, PostKnock's extra cost per card buys the sequence, the scripts and the queue that turn a delivered postcard into a booked appointment. Both have a free way in, so you can test either without a subscription.