Managing printing is a challenge for the most adept system admins and IT teams. According to Gartner, printing can be responsible for 50% of support calls and can lead to lengthy fix times and support tickets ranging from paper jams, lack of ink/toner, and users being unable to reach printers.

While this is a real challenge for small to medium-sized organizations through to large enterprises, take a moment for our K-12 school system admins who look after all the technology and printing needs for our K-12 schools and school districts. They’re superheroes (seriously). Some of the largest school districts have 80,000+ students with age ranges between 5 and 18 years old.

Continue reading to see how directprint.io helps to make the lives of system admins easier with our top 5 reasons why directprint.io is the best print management solution for Education K-12.

1. We know Google Workspace better than any other Print Management Solution

TLDR; We’re Chrome Enterprise Recommended, a Google technology partner and we’re first on the list of Google Cloud Print migration partners. We sync with your Google Workspace to understand your OU structure providing huge flexibility on printer deployment methods.

• • directprint.io has always been a Google Workspace and a Chromebook first print management solution, we specialize in print management for Chromebooks and are the most integrated Google Workspace print management solution out there.

• • We synchronize with your Google Workspace directory structure every 24 hours ensuring that we always have your latest changes (you can always sync on demand too). By having the full directory structure we can provide huge flexibility on printer deployment methods.

• • We also offer 7 different deployment options for printer allocation. Whether you want to allocate printers to users, devices, groups, prioritize group allocation over OU allocation. You name your allocation method, we’ve got you covered.

Oh, and did we mention that we’re Chrome Enterprise Recommended and a Google Technology Partner? Also, we’re first on the list of Google Cloud Print migration partners.

2. We can help you track, trace, and control printing

TLDR; Apply print policies to OUs, groups, users, or printers. Policies can limit the number of pages printed in 24 hours, force mono, force duplex, etc. Remove print privileges from users who misuse their print capabilities.

Controlling print activity in a school setting is difficult. Kids love Harry Potter and we regularly hear stories of children trying to print their favorite fiction .pdf books or similar resulting in high printing costs, jammed printers, and low toner levels.

Take a proactive approach to print activity by;

• • Controlling who is allowed to print

• • Setting the maximum number of pages users can print in a 24hr period

• • Forcing or delegate options such as duplex and mono vs color and other advanced finishing options

• • Enabling secure pin release

Need to be reactive as well? No problem, use our custom reporting functions to;

• • Identify printer misuse and resolve it by removing an individual’s print privileges.

• • Set budget alarms and warnings

• • Track down issues by using our error logs and remedy the issue with guidance from our suggested fixes.

3. Unmanaged Chromebooks, Windows or macOS devices, or transient users that need quick access to printers? 

TLDR; Users can assign printers to themselves through the use of our QuickCode feature. When building your printer map/network in directprint.io everything you add is assigned a 4 digit QuickCode. QuickCodes allow users to allocate printers to themselves by entering the QuickCode into the directprint.io client application.

For example, If your Superintendent is visiting schools across the district and they need quick access to printers, then they can quickly enter a 4 digit QuickCode and have access to an individual printer, a room’s worth of printers, properties worth of printers, etc.

Furthermore, our new Dynamic QuickCode feature allows administrators to have greater control over the distribution of and validity periods for QuickCodes.

4. We’re a SaaS-based Print Management Company

We’re a SaaS-based Print Management Company, but what does that mean?

TLDR; We’ve got great support with a preference over face-to-face rather than ping pong support tickets. We’re a serverless print management company. You have no on-premise print servers to manage and no manufacturer printer drivers to install. Best of all, we’re cost-effective too.

• • You have no print servers to install, manage and maintain. directprint.io is a serverless print management solution with a balanced mix of cloud administration and direct IP printing (we support remote printing too).

• • We don’t have ‘boots on the ground’ support engineers when things go wrong, but we do have a great support team

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• • If you need a setup session to get things going, a technical support call to work through an issue, or want to work it out for yourself, we’ve got you covered.

• • Our preference is talking face to face over video calls, doing screen shares, and just getting things fixed without support ticket ping pong.

5. We’re cost-effective and believe that we won’t be beaten on price.

Last but not least, directprint.io is cost-effective. We understand that managing school budgets is a challenge and printing is one of those things that can easily get out of hand in terms of costs.

With a combination of removing costly on-premise print servers, implementing control methods to reduce printing, and use of reporting to track print activity, directprint.io can help you substantially reduce printing costs.

We offer this all for either a fixed annual fee or monthly subscriptions and believe we won’t be beaten on price.

We’re super flexible on payment methods, if you need to pay by check, that’s fine with us. Quote, purchase order, and invoice? That’s also fine with us. Perhaps, you just want to enter your credit card details and use our service on a monthly subscription basis, also fine with us.

Get started today with a 30-day free trial of directprint.io to see if you can print smarter, save time and reduce printing costs for your K-12 school or school district. All our great features are included and all setup support is provided free of charge.