Cloud print solutions

[toffee]

Morning! has anyone had experience with PCut Hive / Printix / Canon Uniflow? We're looking to enable staff to roam to different schools (different domains), also would be nice to shut down a print server or too if they allow.

 

Thanks

[DWilson1997]

Morning! has anyone had experience with PCut Hive / Printix / Canon Uniflow? We're looking to enable staff to roam to different schools (different domains), also would be nice to shut down a print server or too if they allow.

 

Thanks

 

We used Papercut MF with print deploy and then PapercutMF & Printix for the past year. It worked well (Printix is great) However we have now moved to Uniflow Online as it was much cheaper than Printix+Papercut.

 

Papercut definitely has more features but we didn't use most of them. With Uniflow, Staff and students can now send to 1 print queue and collect at any sites printer, basic reporting etc but functional.

[ITJAY2023]

PapercutMF for servers & PaperCut Hive for cloud solution (Intune / Google Workspace)

[EssentialRug]

We use Canon UniFlow Online with Microsoft Intune and it's been brilliant.

[XiJ]

We’re in the process of implementing a trust wide PaperCut Hive deployment. It’s working great so far and staff like it too. They like the scan to google feature and print to any school printer options.

[StephenPink]

Piggy backing on this - in a similar situation. Currently use PaperCut MF on-prem, have got one Canon with Uniflow Online (seems to work well) however the Canon copiers are more expensive than others.

 

Be interested to hear how the PaperCut Hive + Intune is working these days; and if any of them can work with both existing on-prem AND the "new" intune devices at the same time...

 

Cheers

[XiJ]

As a Papercut Hive user (still learning) I’d say you’d be able to have a ‘hybrid’ system. We use Xerox machines and in Hive you add and Publish a printer. Ensure you have the correct driver on a print queue and you’re all good.

 

For machines where we can’t embed the papercut software, printers where the incumbent copier company wants £1200 to update the locked down firmware in two mfds 😡, or for printers we don’t want using a license we just deploy via intune as local printers. I’d say you’d be able to do that as server-based printers too.

[Edu-IT]

Anyone willing to give me an idea on Hive costs?

[supportman]

There were not great reports about Papercut hive a few years back, has it improved?

[Mr_Jiminy]

We had great success with Vision Print (formerly Printer Logic). The support was excellent and the set-up very straight forward. That said, we also tested and liked Printix.

I think the Vision Print pricing better suited the organisation print model, I don't have my notes but from recolection it was costed on print queues.

[TronXP]

With Hive, can you do complicated print jobs, like folding and stapling? I was sure that was a limitation last time I looked.

[paulkerton]

We're using DirectPrint, which has been quite successful overall.

[Edu-IT]

I've had the pricing for Hive and it's disappointing that they only offer Commercial pricing for this, and the Education discount seems to have gone.

 

It means the pricing per device is in the region of 4x more expensive than the local MF pricing.

 

@PaperCutterBrenda Just a bit of feedback.

[Edu-IT]

We used Papercut MF with print deploy and then PapercutMF & Printix for the past year. It worked well (Printix is great) However we have now moved to Uniflow Online as it was much cheaper than Printix+Papercut.

 

Papercut definitely has more features but we didn't use most of them. With Uniflow, Staff and students can now send to 1 print queue and collect at any sites printer, basic reporting etc but functional.

Does Uniflow work with just Canon, or any brand? Would you mind PM'ing an idea on cost and who you purchased via?

[supportman]

I've had the pricing for Hive and it's disappointing that they only offer Commercial pricing for this, and the Education discount seems to have gone.

 

It means the pricing per device is in the region of 4x more expensive than the local MF pricing.

 

@PaperCutterBrenda Just a bit of feedback.

 

Yeh we discounted it because of this. I have no idea why companies think its OK to quadruple the price to simply move a server to the cloud.

 

Has anyone used Kyocera Cloud print and scan?

 

https://www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk/en/products/software/kyocera-cloud-print-and-scan.html

[sraper]

Would be good to know the current status of "cloud" printing.

 

We had one school go with Papercut Hive about 18 months ago and they had to ditch it with 3 months as it couldnt seem to handle "shared" devices. So computers that were logged into by multiple staff were exceedingly unreliable.

 

We have another school using Canon UniFlow (Cloud) and we hate it again the issue is with

1. users moving to another PCs
   
2. PCs used by multiple users
   

both of these seem to mean that the user has to "sign in" again and then wait for the email - which often never arrives!

 

Needs to work well in primary schools with the above caveat of "mobile users" contsantly swapping PCs - so dont want something that triggers the re-authentication process too often

 

For example we have one school that is using PaperCut MF with 4 devices (3 Sharp and 1 Riso from memory) and they are planning on going fully cloud based (Micorosft 365/Intune/Entra) over the summer what is the most reliable and cost effective solution

[snagrat]

We use UniFLOW online and have no issues with switching devices.

 

We also use Printix which works well as fully cloud

[sraper]

We use UniFLOW online and have no issues with switching devices.

 

Odd we have issues maybe 2 or 3 times or week or even more where a user is not receiving the registration email. Even though they had been signed into same computer the day before and it had printed

[snagrat]

Odd we have issues maybe 2 or 3 times or week or even more where a user is not receiving the registration email. Even though they had been signed into same computer the day before and it had printed

 

What email are you referring to? Our users only get one email when they are first provisioned, containing their PIN.

 

From then on, all logins happen via SSO

[sraper]

From what i hear from the staff on the IT technician who supports the school. It basically staff member is using a computer ok. They go and use another computer and then come back to the first one. They try to print but nothing comes out. they click on the the Uniflow icon and choose "re-register" which says it will send them an email - the email never arrives

 

I maybe misunderstanding what I am being told by co-workers and on site staff

[sraper]

Okay I believe in out sceranrio we have

• AD joined pc's
  
• User signs in to PC using ther AD username and password
  
• UniFlow is confgured on MS 365!
  
• School uses LGfL Staff Mail (so Exchange Server)!
  

Member of staff goes to a computer signs in, nothing prints so they do whatever is that they are supposed to do to sign in to Secure Print.

It claims to have sent them an email. The email NEVER arrives so they cant sign in.

 

What we usaully end up having to do is

Remove and re-install the "app"

on ther account in Unflow remove the entry for that PC

it then works

 

We get 3 or 5 of these a day

 

Monday after the 1/2 term most have recieved 20 of these from a 3 form entry primary school - so bascially one request for every teacher!!!

 

P.S. we did not set this up and we specifically said not to go this route as the school DONT use 365 - not for authentication or emails - it was the "canon" who insisted

[supportman]

On 07/02/2025 at 15:29, supportman said:

 

Yeh we discounted it because of this. I have no idea why companies think its OK to quadruple the price to simply move a server to the cloud.

 

Has anyone used Kyocera Cloud print and scan?

 

https://www.kyoceradocumentsolutions.co.uk/en/products/software/kyocera-cloud-print-and-scan.html

 

So we went ahead at our renewal to go full cloud with the Kyocera solution as we have all printers and copiers with them already.

 

I'm actually reasonably impressed with their cloud service. We had a few teething issues with needing a new app to support multi user logins to the cloud service but other than that its actually worked quite well. Seems to work with pin code or paxton card on the devices and signup can be synced with the users office 365 account so no extra passwords needed. Touch wood its been a success.

 

So nice to turn off the old legacy papercut server... Another one down!! now onto cloud cashless catering

Edited September 17, 2025 by supportman