PaperCut Hive vs Papercut MF

[garethEds]

Evening all - can anyone tell me if PaperCut Hive has caught up with PaperCut MF yet? Restrictions on the Hwb network here in Wales mean we will not be able to have our own print server as they want one per LEA. We are not part of the LEA's printing SLA and have our own printer server.

 

Wondering if PaperCut Hive would be a way around this.

 

Cheers

 

Gareth

[Sylv3r]

It depends what features you need.

 

PaperCut hive isn't perfect for reporting and accounting / departments yet.

 

Our primaries who use it don't necessarily use the above features so they can get by, the secondaries I wouldn't be moving just yet.

[garethEds]

Evening all - I was told today that PaperCut Hive has had a big improvement/update that makes it more suitable for secondary schools. Can anyone confirm this for me?

 

Are there any secondary schools out there using it? If so - I'd love a chat.

 

Thanks

[Sylv3r]

16 minutes ago, garethedmondson said:

Evening all - I was told today that PaperCut Hive has had a big improvement/update that makes it more suitable for secondary schools. Can anyone confirm this for me?

 

Are there any secondary schools out there using it? If so - I'd love a chat.

 

Thanks

It depends what your after - if you have staff that teach in multiple departments then it won't work if you wanted to bill by department rather than user.

[garethEds]

Ahh right - well that's a big red cross. 
 

What about everything else

1 hour ago, Sylv3r said:

It depends what your after - if you have staff that teach in multiple departments then it won't work if you wanted to bill by department rather than user.

 

[Sylv3r]

2 hours ago, garethedmondson said:

Ahh right - well that's a big red cross. 
 

What about everything else

 

Everything else is pretty much in place - once they sort the Groups then we may give it a go in a secondary (up to around 17 primaries at the minute). Groups are due Q1 of 2026 I believe.

[jmak]

Chromebooks and Linux are still a struggle. The only option is their browser extension which converts the document to a PDF before printing.

[Edu-IT]

Still not happy with Hive in terms of how you have to manually link each user to the install, before they can print.

[jmak]

12 hours ago, Edu-IT said:

Still not happy with Hive in terms of how you have to manually link each user to the install, before they can print.

We have our domain whitelisted in Hive, users SSO to the client, receive a code by email and then the first time they print they can tap their card (any NFC card works), enter their code and that's it.

 

Nothing manual from IT support.

[CHiLL]

Sorry to bump this, but I didn't think it was worth creating a new thread. I am currently toying with the idea of Hive. The school I am now in change of has Papercut MF but the previous MSP performed a cloud migration and server upgrade, including migrating Papercut MF themselves, instead of paying for our managed print provider to do it properly. 

 

After speaking with our managed print provider, it will be a chargeable job for them to repair the install of Papercut, but are suggesting that we consider moving to Hive instead of sticking with MF. We are 1x primary school, spread across two physical sites, which are connected via a site-to-site VPN with full/unrestricted networking between both sites. Our users are created on the on-site AD via Locker but synced to Entra. All devices are cloud/Intune joined, therefore they are not connected to the on-site AD server and therefore cannot receive Group Policies. Printers are currently deployed via the Papercut Print Deploy Client and Mobility Print. The key factors that we want from Papercut are: Users can sign into a device via a MiFARE reader, ability to scan to email, a follow-me queue to release from anywhere. Users currently charged per user, not via groups. I can't currently think of any other requirements off the top of my head.

 

Is that something I can achieve with Hive?

[jmak]

The only thing from your list that I'm aware had a limitation is charging. Accounting per user is fully integrated, but unless there's been a recent change, there's no option for a payment gateway to take card payments to buy credit. That wasn't an issue for us as internal accounting is important but we don't (yet!) charge employees to print. 

 

You will need to deploy the client, but we added the application to Intune.

[CHiLL]

Given we're a small primary and we are only user charging at the moment anyway, I don't think that would be an issue.

[Sylv3r]

The key factors that we want from Papercut are: Users can sign into a device via a MiFARE reader, ability to scan to email, a follow-me queue to release from anywhere. Users currently charged per user, not via groups. I can't currently think of any other requirements off the top of my head.

 

All of that is currently available and working well within PaperCut Hive.

[JDawgg]

Hey all, 

Thought I'd kick up this thread as I've got a decision to make on Hive vs MF. 

 

Use case - MAT of 6 schools - 2 upper and 4 primary. 

 

Primary schools will be used for basic authentication and print reports etc.

Not wanting to do anything fancy with it. Does Hive have the possibility to introduce account charging / accounting? To users and/or groups?

 

Upper schools I might want delegated print access on a few users but again not looking to change much from the current setup which is basic. 

 

I think with Hive I've been told it is possible to have cross-site printing? Which would be better for us to not have janky intune/GPO policies. Is it possible to have all sites on one hive tenancy?

 

Has anyone moved to Hive and noticed severe limitations? 

 

Thanks!

[Sylv3r]

In short - Hive doesn't currently do account charging / accounting but yes you can have cross-site printing. We've essentially created one Hive print queue but many printers in around 18 sites - so anybody can send to print and release where they choose.

[JDawgg]

6 minutes ago, Sylv3r said:

In short - Hive doesn't currently do account charging / accounting but yes you can have cross-site printing. We've essentially created one Hive print queue but many printers in around 18 sites - so anybody can send to print and release where they choose.

Great idea on having the one virtual queue, I think I'll take that onboard. 

[jmak]

Plenty of built in usage reports and you can set and manage print quotas in Hive. No option for a payment gateway, but charging departments shouldn't be a problem. 

[StephenPink]

20 hours ago, Sylv3r said:

In short - Hive doesn't currently do account charging / accounting but yes you can have cross-site printing. We've essentially created one Hive print queue but many printers in around 18 sites - so anybody can send to print and release where they choose.

 

17 hours ago, jmak said:

Plenty of built in usage reports and you can set and manage print quotas in Hive. No option for a payment gateway, but charging departments shouldn't be a problem. 

Are you guys able to elaborate on the account charging/accounting/quotas? As I keep hearing conflicting things and am about to pull the trigger on one or the other. 

We currently only require a very basic account charging/quota setup - students start with X amount fo credit, and when it runs out they can't print anymore without topping up. (the top up side is managed separately, manually taking payment and updating balance via PaperCut admin)

Will this work in Hive?

Cheers

[Sylv3r]

55 minutes ago, StephenPink said:

 

Are you guys able to elaborate on the account charging/accounting/quotas? As I keep hearing conflicting things and am about to pull the trigger on one or the other. 

We currently only require a very basic account charging/quota setup - students start with X amount fo credit, and when it runs out they can't print anymore without topping up. (the top up side is managed separately, manually taking payment and updating balance via PaperCut admin)

Will this work in Hive?

Cheers

Yes, based on your scenario that should work - the accountcy is working as a user level i.e. Primary Teachers and Children in both secondaries and primaries should be fine they can be given a quota and once they hit that, they can't print anymore or you can just have a soft quota where it still reports on the print usage but never stops and they just go into a negative balance - the limitation we have at the minute that we have with PaperCut MF is if a member of staff teaches in more than one department with MF, they choose which department to bill at the point of printing then the finance team recharge the department for their printing. It's the only real thing that's holding us back rolling out to secondaries - we have had several calls with PaperCut and it is on their roadmap and I think is due at some point in the first 2 quarters of 2026.