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November 2004
By: Jacob Horn
Over the last few years since I started my home-based business, I have resorted
to snail mail as a professional alternative of email. I used to address my letters by hand, a
pretty strenuous process. It seemed as though it drew customers away from my business, due to
its lack of a professional touch. I began to use Microsoft Word to solve this problem and while
it worked great for occasional prints, after I started printing many letters at once, it became
somewhat of a hassle. After searching all over the internet, I finally stumbled onto BeLight's
great looking and well performing software by the name of Mail Factory.
Product
Mail Factory
Price
$29.95 Download, $39.95 CD
Company
BeLight Software
I didn't think much of this app when I first found it, but that changed quickly.
The program is packed full of great goodies including a three step easy-to-use assistant, 40 free
built-in envelope templates as well as 500 free clip-art images. Simply put, Mail Factory is a
full-featured application.
It feels as if BeLight crammed as many features as they could fit into a single
package. Built into the application is support for tons of envelope and label makers such as
Avery, DYMO, APLI, A-One, and Siegel. It also automatically imports addresses from Address Book,
Entourage, Now Contact, and Eudora. Sound impressive? Well, I thought so when I started using this
program. I felt equally impressed by the ease of use and stability of Mail Factory.
BeLight really focused on the small things and that’s what makes this
application great. One über cool feature is that when you add a zip code, Mail Factory
will add a nice bar code to the bottom of your envelope, which helps USPS process your letter
faster. I can see myself using this feature for business in the future. This is the Microsoft
Word of the letter/label printing world, and it deserves to be noticed.
Mail Factory's sleek interface compares to that of Apple apps in ease of use.
The tools are placed and designed to make envelopes easy to create and print. BeLight Software
includes many easy ways to modify envelopes and has a nice drag and drop interface like
Apple’s. All you do is complete 3 easy steps and you're done. I can't say enough about
this program!
Jam-packed with many useful features, including over 100 handling signs for
envelopes and packages ("Fragile", "Airmail", etc), a feature that I
found useful in Mail Factory was the integrated Google image search, making it easy to integrate
images that are not in the built in library. This makes customizing envelopes and labels easy and
fun. Not everything is great about Mail Factory; as with most applications it does have some flaws.
Some templates seem to have put together in ten minutes, especially the text ones,
but the good news is that the majority of templates are image based. The text templates are fine
for people who design their own work, but for novices this is something of a downer. A few useful
features that I found that Mail Factory lacked were features such as, paying for postage through
the program, more international letter templates and the inclusion of more interesting templates.
Most of the templates appear to be merely low quality clipart. Also lacking, editing tools, only
limited changes to envelopes and letters are possible.
With all this in mind, Mail Factory is an excellent application. It could benefit
from a few minor improvements, but where it’s heading is excellent. There is no doubt that
this will soon be the application that all other letter and label programs are compared to.
More Info: BeLight Software - Mail Factory
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