Excess printing incurs huge costs on educational/academic institutions in both hidden and explicit ways. Are you
looking for ways to cut back? Over 20,000 K-12 schools, colleges and universities worldwide use PaperCut NG to
control costs.
The education IT environment is unique. User turnover is high and networks are dynamic. From its first
release ten years ago, PaperCut has always been designed by education network administrators specifically
for the education environment.
Take the tour to discover how PaperCut NG can help you cut back on print costs.
Key features for education at a glance:
- Control student print quota, or charge for printing.
- Track and budget staff printing by faculty or department.
- Simple installation - starts working immediately.
- Directory integration with automatic user account creation.
- Simple web-based administration for office staff.
- Automatic scheduling of credit/quotas.
- Solutions for managing wireless laptop printing.
- Runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Novell, making PaperCut the most flexible and integrated management solution available.
- Take the tour, and Download PaperCut NG.
We love PaperCut. It is a truly operating system agnostic solution that has allowed us to address almost any level of complexity in terms of tracking and allocating printer usage. PaperCut makes it very easy for us to bill students through the university accounting system so we can use the money to buy new printers on a regular basis allowing students have access to reliable printing.
We have deployments that can manage the intricacies of graphic design output to plotters, computers labs accessible to tens of thousands of students requiring per page billing and small department print quotas with secretaries generating their own ad hoc reports.
The internal reporting system and automation tools provided have saved our sys admins countless hours in generating data for administrators. It is rare to find a product so well thought out and beneficial to users in every role.
Why is PaperCut the ideal solution for education?
History
PaperCut was developed 10 years ago in conjunction with network technicians and staff from a number of education establishments. Many of the current team have backgrounds in education sites and know the challenges involved in managing students (and staff)! We now also target the business market, however education remains our primary focus.
Design
Our education customers play a big part in current development. All new features are defined, prioritized and ranked by all customers via a voting process. Some recent features we have developed specifically for education include Web Print, a printing solution for student owned laptops and faculty/department level charging.
Functionality
PaperCut includes a wealth of functionality for tracking and controlling printing. Many sites start with simple goals and will leverage the more advanced features as time goes on. Some features regularly used by education sites include:
- Advanced scripting: Free printing during class time.
- Advanced scripting: Teacher approval of color jobs.
- Advanced scripting: Enforce duplex printing.
- Top-up cards: a simple, cost effective, voucher based student payment system
- Automatic Active Directory synchronization: make use of existing year level and department groups/OUs.
- Customizable web interface: easily integrate with existing college intranet site.
Stability
PaperCut has been in production use on networks with many thousands of users for over 10 years. It has proven scalability and stability. Clustering support has taken this one level further. The largest PaperCut NG site (Miami Dade College, FL, USA) has over 350,000+ users in their network!
Cost
Infrastructure applications can be costly. PaperCut's price and licensing model is structured so that our printer counter system is available to all organizations. We are an engineering driven organization, and have low marketing overheads. We have and will always sell directly to academic sites via our website, so you avoid the margins associated with retail, marketing and reseller chains.
Per-user licensing ensures multiple server networks are not penalized for their existing structure. There are no mandatory yearly contracts or fees.
By reducing paper and toner usage, PaperCut NG usually pays for itself in a few months. See how much you can save with our online Return on Investment (ROI) calculator.
Simplicity
We try to make PaperCut's printer control features simple to use, yet provide the power needed for flexible administration. PaperCut is renowned for its straightforward installation and easy-to-use interface. Some highlights include:
- self applying security permissions upon install
- no backend databases to configure
- automatic detection of new printers, set up based on a template
- zero install deployment for optional client software
As software developers we're big believers in the idea that simplicity and power are not mutually exclusive. PaperCut provides for the simplicity of a straightforward printer log as well as retaining a set of features that will satisfy even the most technical system administrator.
User Base
Join the tens of thousands of schools, colleges and universities world-wide using PaperCut. See what others have to say on our testimonials page.
Other Resources:
Case Study: Colchester Royal Grammar School
An implementation case study covering PaperCut setup in K-12 Schools & Colleges.
Case Study: State University of New York, Geneseo
An implementation case study covering PaperCut setup in higher education.
Fact Sheet: PaperCut NG Overview
An overview of PaperCut's core features and technical specification.
Fact Sheet: PaperCut Solutions for Education
Common questions about implementing print management in an academic environment.