MatterSnail documentation

Getting started

Sign up with your email address; no credit card is needed to create an account. You get your own team and are asked to name it before you start. From your team's dashboard you can begin a mailing, review recent activity, and follow delivery updates.

Before your team can submit its first mailing, two things need to be on file:

• A return address, saved to your team's return address book and printed on every envelope you send.
• A payment method, required on every plan, including Free, because each mailing is billed per use.

Creating and sending a mailing

A mailing starts as a draft. Give it a title, upload the documents to send, add one or more recipients, and choose the mail service and add-ons for each recipient. Every recipient receives the same set of documents. A live receipt shows the exact cost of the mailing as you build it, so there are no surprises at submission.

Same-day USPS drop-off and the daily cutoff

Submit a mailing before 12:50 p.m. Pacific on a business day and it is printed, stuffed, and handed to the USPS that same day. Mailings submitted after the cutoff, or on weekends and USPS federal holidays, go out on the next business day. The app always shows the exact upcoming cutoff, in your own time zone, and notes when a federal holiday moves it.

Changing your mind: cancel, reopen, delete

• Drafts can be edited freely or deleted at any time.
• A submitted mailing can be canceled up until the next processing cutoff after submission. After that it is with the USPS and can no longer be recalled.
• A canceled mailing can be reopened as a draft, keeping its documents and recipients, so you can adjust and resubmit.

Mail services

Choose a service per recipient, so a single mailing can go First-Class to one party and Certified to another:

Certified Mail options include First-Class postage. Services with a signature requirement come with an electronic return receipt: USPS collects the recipient's signature and you receive the record electronically, with no green card to file.

Printing and add-ons

Printing

Each mailing prints single-sided or double-sided, your choice. The first four sheets per recipient are included in the base service charge; longer parcels are billed a small per-sheet printing fee. First-Class pieces that reach 17 or more sheets ship in a flat mailer (with a postage surcharge), and Priority Mail parcels are priced by size tier as page counts grow.

Proof of Service

Turn on Proof of Service and a proof page is automatically inserted as the first page of every recipient's envelope. It is your evidence, alongside the Certificate of Acceptance, that the documents were mailed to the address on file.

Document separators

Optionally insert a title page before each document in the envelope, so multi-document mailings arrive clearly organized and each document starts on a fresh sheet.

Return envelopes

Enclose a self-addressed envelope for any recipient, unstamped or prepaid with a one-, two-, or three-ounce stamp, so signed papers can come straight back to you.

Documents

Upload PDF documents to a mailing: up to 20 documents and 2,000 total pages per mailing, with each file up to 100 MB. Drag to reorder documents into the order they should appear in the envelope, and download any document back out while the mailing is open.

If your team uses Clio, you can also import documents directly from a Clio matter; see Clio integration.

For your privacy, uploaded documents are stored only long enough to produce the mailing: they are permanently deleted 14 days after upload. Keep your originals; MatterSnail is not a document archive.

Recipients and address books

Add as many recipients to a mailing as you need. Each recipient gets their own mail service, add-ons, and delivery tracking.

• The destination address book remembers the people and firms your team mails, and suggests them as you type so frequent recipients take seconds to add.
• The return address book holds your firm's return addresses. Every mailing carries one, and you can keep several, for example one per office.
• With Clio connected, recipients can be pulled straight from your Clio contacts, with the address filled in for you.

Delivery tracking

Every recipient is tracked individually from drop-off to delivery. The delivery updates feed shows your team's latest USPS events in one place, and each mailing's page shows the current status of every recipient (in route, delivered, or returned to sender) as reported by the USPS.

• Tracking numbers for Certified and Priority Mail link directly to usps.com, so you can follow a piece to the door.
• A Certificate of Acceptance is available to download for every certified letter, as proof that the USPS accepted the piece.
• Signature services include the electronic return receipt once the USPS collects the recipient's signature.
• If the USPS fails to collect a signature on a certified return-receipt mailing, the incurred postage is credited back to your account.

How MatterSnail uses AI

MatterSnail uses AI to write short, plain-language delivery summaries for your mailings: an overview of each mailing's current delivery status, generated from its tracking events. Summaries update automatically as new delivery information comes in.

Information shared with the AI provider

Only delivery details: recipient names and locations, USPS tracking statuses, the mail service used, the mailing's title, and the relevant dates. These are the facts the summary is written from.

Information not shared

The documents you upload or mail are not sent to the AI provider and are not read. The AI receives only the delivery details listed above and has no access to the contents of your files.

Accuracy

AI-generated summaries may contain errors and should not be relied on as an authoritative record. Verify important information against the underlying delivery records shown alongside them.

Turning AI off

AI summaries are controlled per team. A team owner or admin can turn them off under Team settings. Turning the feature off stops all AI usage for that team and removes previously generated summaries.

Clio integration

Connect your Clio account under Settings → Clio and MatterSnail can pull from your practice directly:

• Contacts. Address a recipient from any Clio contact, with their address mapped into the form automatically.
• Matters and documents. Browse a matter's documents and import them into a mailing without downloading and re-uploading.

The connection is per user and can be disconnected at any time from the same settings page.

Teams, roles, and users

Every account has at least one team: the workspace that holds your mailings, address books, and billing. On the Free plan a team is just you. Upgrading to Premium lets you invite your whole firm, with unlimited users and no per-user charge, so adding or removing someone does not change your bill. You can create additional teams from Settings → Teams and switch between them from the team switcher.

Roles

• Owner. Full control: team settings, membership, invitations, billing, deleting the team, and transferring ownership. The owner cannot be removed from the team.
• Admin. Can update the team, manage invitations, and manage billing. Admins cannot change others' roles, remove members, delete the team, or transfer ownership.
• Member. Regular access to the team's mailings and address books without admin or owner actions.

Invitations are sent by email with a role of admin or member. The owner role is set by ownership and transfer, not by the member form.

Transferring ownership

Only the current owner can transfer ownership to another member of the same team. The former owner becomes an admin; the chosen member becomes the new owner.

Deleting a team

The owner can delete a team from its settings. If a team you were using is deleted, and it was your current team, you are moved to another of your teams automatically.

Billing and pricing

MatterSnail has two plans, Free and Premium, and both pay per use for the mail they send. Free has no monthly fee and is for one person; Premium adds a monthly fee, unlimited users, and the lowest per-letter service charge. Current plan prices are listed on the pricing page.

What a mailing costs

Each recipient of a mailing is billed a per-piece service charge (covering printing, stuffing, and hand-off to the USPS, with the first four sheets included) plus the exact cost of postage for the chosen service, plus any add-ons you select: Certified Mail, an electronic return receipt, extra printed sheets, document separators, or an enclosed return envelope. The live receipt itemizes all of this before you submit, and a final receipt is saved with every submitted mailing.

Spending limits

To protect you from mistakes, new teams start with a modest ceiling on accumulated usage charges. If your firm sends more, you can request a higher limit right from the app and we'll review it quickly.

Your account

Manage your profile, appearance (light, dark, or system), and Clio connection under Settings. Dates and cutoffs are shown in your preferred US time zone.

You can delete your account from the profile settings page. If you own a team that still has other members, deletion is blocked until you transfer ownership or remove the other members.