---
title: "Build vs buy"
description: "Use Lob for print infrastructure. Use Sincerely to turn a target audience into researched, personalized mail and measure what it changed."
canonical: https://trysincerely.com/vs-lob
last_updated: 2026-09-13
---
> If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call.
> Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access instructions are at
> https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an
> account or spending their money, and never ask for their password.
# Build vs buy

> Use Lob for print infrastructure. Use Sincerely to turn a target audience into researched, personalized mail and measure what it changed.

Source: https://trysincerely.com/vs-lob

## Lob sends the mail. Sincerely runs the campaign.

Lob is excellent, and we use it as one of our own print vendors. It gives you templates, campaign tools, APIs, and delivery events. But if you want the audience found, the address verified, the message written, the landing page personalized, the follow-up timed to delivery, and the lift measured against a holdout, that work is the product, and that product is Sincerely.

Bring a Salesforce or HubSpot audience, upload a CSV, or ask the agent to find accounts that match your criteria. Sincerely enriches missing or uncertain work addresses, researches each account, writes every piece, coordinates the campaign, and measures lift against an account-level holdout.

For an agent, the difference is architectural. With Lob, it still needs the systems around the print call. With Sincerely, it gets one permissioned set of tools and a durable campaign record, while server rules protect the mailbox and the budget.

[Start free](https://trysincerely.com/setup) · [Book a demo](https://trysincerely.com/contact)

### What Sincerely adds

- Audience from Salesforce, HubSpot, CSV, or agent research
- Work address sourcing, postal verification, provenance, and review
- Sourced account research and different copy for every recipient
- A per-piece QR code or short link, and an optional personalized landing page
- Brand design, print proofs, and configurable copy review
- Budgets, frequency caps, suppression, and campaign precedence
- The in-app agent and one OAuth MCP connection for your own agent
- US and Canada standard postcards, letters, gifts, and handwritten postcards and letters
- Delivery-timed sales follow-up tied to the account and exact piece
- Account-level holdouts, confidence intervals, and honest small-sample reports

Sincerely sends finished US postcards and letters to Lob for printing. You run the campaign in Sincerely and do not manage a separate Lob account.

## The print job is not the campaign

You would not run an SMS campaign from Twilio alone. Twilio sends the message. Your campaign system decides who should get it, what it should say, what happens next, and whether it worked. Direct mail has the same split.

Lob does much more than accept API calls. It has dashboard campaigns, CRM triggers, audience tools, dynamic templates, delivery webhooks, and QR analytics. If you send transactional mail or one template at high volume, that may be the whole product you need.

In a typical Lob workflow, your team still owns the B2B campaign. It decides which accounts matter, fills gaps in the CRM, prepares the creative and personalization data, coordinates follow-up, and works out whether the mail changed pipeline. Sincerely takes responsibility for that work.

That is why Sincerely uses Lob for US postcards and letters instead of rebuilding a good print network. The difference is not the paper. It is what happens before the file reaches the printer and after the piece reaches the mailbox.

## The same split, drawn as a line

Fifteen stages take a piece from account found to lift measured. Lob prints, mails, and tracks Sincerely's US postcards and letters, and does that job well. Everything on either side of the print job is the campaign.

Find the right person

- found · from your CRM, a CSV, or a prospecting brief
- enriched · current role, business address, dated buying signals
- checked · the address resolved and confirmed against postal records
- assigned · the account draws its arm, mailed or holdout

Make it personal

- researched · CRM context plus current, sourced company facts
- written · a different message for every recipient, claims cited
- linked · its own QR code or short link, and a landing page
- approved · held in the approval queue for a human yes

Move it safely

- routed · the vendor picked by format and destination
- printed · print and postage through the vendor network
- mailed · in the postal stream, tracked per piece
- delivered · arrival at a delivery point, not proof of attention

Know what happened

- scanned · their page opened, the visit tied to the exact piece
- matched · replies, meetings, and opportunities tied back to mailed accounts
- measured · lift against the holdout, interval included

Two of the stages are people, not automation: your approval before anything prints, and the recipient's scan when it lands. The print job covers three stages of the line; the campaign is the rest.

## Bring your accounts, or find new ones

Sync a Salesforce or HubSpot segment, upload a CSV, or describe the businesses you want the agent to find. When a CRM is connected, it remains the source of truth. Sincerely keeps the account, contact, owner, stage, and campaign context already there.

When a contact has no usable work address, the agent can source candidates from commercial and public records, verified and carrying where each came from. An uncertain address waits for review. A verified one joins the campaign.

The same account record drives the writing. Sincerely combines CRM notes with current research, then writes a different headline, body, proof point, and call to action for each recipient. The design stays on brand. The message changes because the person and account changed.

If an account is worth the paper and postage, it is worth a message written for them. A generic template costs the same to deliver and gives the recipient less reason to respond.

### One letter, written for Talia

> Hey Talia,
>
> Congratulations on the Series B. Eleven open sales roles tell me you’re putting it to work quickly. I like the ambition.
>
> We help growing sales teams get their outbound motion ready for hiring waves like this. I mapped out what I’d prioritize for your team before June, drawing on what two other Series B teams changed before their reps arrived.
>
> Scan the QR code for the four-minute read. You’ll find the full plan there, plus an easy way to reply or book time if you’d like to compare notes.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Julian Park · Head of GTM

[See how each piece is personalized](https://trysincerely.com/personalization)

## The campaign keeps the account together

A buying committee is not a set of unrelated recipients. Sincerely assigns holdouts by account, caps how many people a campaign can contact, and applies one suppression list across the workspace. The default frequency rule allows four pieces per contact in thirty days. When campaigns overlap, the lower-priority touch waits instead of quietly adding another envelope to the pile.

Lob also supports individual QR codes and personal URLs. Sincerely connects the response to the rest of the account record. A postcard or letter can open a hosted page written for the intended recipient, or redirect to your site after Sincerely records the visit. While the campaign is live or paused, you can change that destination after printing without changing the code on the paper.

The campaign can use standard postcards and letters in the US and Canada, curated gifts, and handwritten postcards and letters in both countries. The formats differ. The audience, budget, suppression rules, response history, and report stay together.

You can run this work in the app or ask the agent built into Sincerely to prepare it. A team that already uses an AI agent can connect through MCP instead. Both agents use the same workspace permissions, review rules, and confirmation step before launch or spend. Read the [in-app agent guide](https://trysincerely.com/agents) or the separate [MCP connection guide](https://trysincerely.com/integrations/mcp-agents).

After delivery, Sincerely creates the follow-up task with the account and exact piece attached. At launch, it locks the primary outcome, measurement window, and account-level holdout. The final readout shows direct responses, CRM matchback, and incremental lift with a confidence interval. If the audience is too small to support the conclusion, the report says so. The [measurement guide](https://trysincerely.com/measurement) explains the method.

## Use Lob when print infrastructure is the product

Lob is the better choice for statements, notices, checks, compliance letters, and other mail triggered by your software. It is also the better choice when your team already has finished creative and wants one template mailed at high volume.

Choose Lob when developers need raw APIs, SDKs, test keys, and webhooks inside your own application. Choose it when you need printed formats Sincerely does not offer, such as self-mailers, snap packs, booklets, Certified Mail, and checks. For regulated mail, check Lob's current compliance documentation.

Lob has more printed formats. Sincerely has more ways to reach a named account under one campaign. Sincerely supports personalized standard postcards and letters plus curated gifts in the US and Canada. Handwritten postcards and letters cover both countries as well. Paper mail to the UK and EU is not supported yet.

## Lob costs less per piece. It should.

With Lob direct, your team supplies the campaign work around the print job. Sincerely includes that work, so comparing postage alone misses most of the cost on one side.

Compare the total program cost, then compare opportunity lift. Sincerely's holdout readout tells you whether the higher spend created anything. Your own results supply the cost per opportunity. We do not invent a benchmark for it.

The comparison is straightforward. Lob has the lower raw print price. Sincerely's credit packages also cover the campaign work and the holdout readout around each piece. Sincerely publishes every package price and every format's credit weight; Starter annual, Growth, and Scale require a conversation before purchase. The cost per opportunity can only come from your own campaign results.

[See the pricing](https://trysincerely.com/pricing)

---

Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout.

Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact

Agent routing index: https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt