What does an MFP really cost us over 5 years?
MFP TCO breaks into four blocks: purchase or lease, cartridges and maintenance, energy, and in-house IT hours. The cartridge block is usually biggest at decent volume, not purchase.
Try this first
- 1Purchase or lease (5 years): A4 MFP typically 1500-3500 EUR purchase, A3 4000-12000 EUR. Lease 50-300 EUR/month all-in.
- 2Cartridges and drum: estimate monthly pages × cost per page. Mono roughly 1-2 cents, colour 6-12 cents. 1000 pages/month mono is 120-240 EUR/year.
- 3Maintenance: maintenance kit every 100k-300k pages, fuser every 200k. Reckon 200-500 EUR/year outside lease.
- 4Energy: A4 MFP averages 80 EUR/year, A3 MFP 150-300 EUR. Not dramatic but real.
- 5In-house IT hours: without a maintenance contract, 4-12 hours/year (jams, drivers, scan config). At 75 EUR/hour that's 300-900 EUR.
When to bring us in
For a defensible choice (lease vs buy, A3 vs A4, vendor X vs Y) a real TCO table beats the quote. We build that table with your numbers and the choice gets clear.
See also
- Printer suddenly not foundFor everyone at once: print server or network. For one person: local Windows driver or expired authorisation.
- Print job stuck in queue, nothing happensA stuck queue blocks all subsequent prints. Cleaning takes two minutes.
- Scanner no longer sends emails (scan-to-email)Almost always: the account the scanner uses had its password expire, or the mail provider blocks old protocols.
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