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. You are asked for it the first time you submit, so you can build and price a draft without one.

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 12:00 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 its cancellation deadline, 30 minutes after the processing cutoff that follows submission. The exact deadline is shown on the mailing. 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 a signed attestation of the date your documents were mailed. The USPS doesn't scan plain First-Class Mail when it accepts it, so on those pieces the Proof of Service is your record of the mailing date.

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

A mailing carries up to 100 recipients, and each recipient gets their own mail service, add-ons, and delivery tracking. Paste a longer list and it is split into mailings of 100 for you, each a copy of the first with its documents, return address and settings, and each submitted on its own.

• Import a whole list at once. Copy a recipient list straight out of Excel, or choose a CSV file, or have AI read a PDF such as a creditor matrix, preview the parsed lines, and add them in one action. A header row is recognized, duplicates are skipped, and every line is checked before anything is added. A list longer than the mailing has room for is dealt into new drafts named after it, “Creditor matrix (2 of 3)” and so on, and the preview says exactly what will be made. One import takes up to 1,000 recipients.
• Groups save a list for reuse: the community an HOA notices every quarter, a creditor matrix, an estate's interested persons. A group holds up to 100 recipients, the same as a mailing. Build one by pasting or adding recipients, review and manage it in the address book, then apply it to any draft mailing or start a new mailing from it. The USPS service is chosen each time the group is used, and the mailing takes its own copy of the list, so editing a group later never changes a mailing it was already added to.
• 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. It shows the date the USPS accepted the piece and the post office that accepted it, and you can check that date against its tracking number.
• 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 certified 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, updated as new delivery information comes in. And, when you choose to upload one, it reads a recipient list out of a PDF, such as a creditor matrix from PACER, into addresses you review before adding them to a mailing or a saved group.

Information shared with the AI provider

For summaries, only delivery details: recipient names and locations, USPS tracking statuses, the mail service used, the mailing's title, and the relevant dates. For a recipient list, the list file you upload, sent once to read it into addresses. MatterSnail does not keep the file afterward.

Information not shared

The documents you upload to be printed and mailed are not sent to the AI provider and are not read. The AI has no access to the contents of those files.

What the AI provider keeps

The AI provider keeps what it receives, and what it sends back, for up to 30 days, and may access it during that time for safety and security purposes. It keeps it longer only if it is flagged as misuse under the provider's usage policy, or where the law requires. Its commercial terms do not allow it to train its models on your data.

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. Addresses read from a PDF may be wrong or missing: every one is checked against the PDF's own text where it has one, any that cannot be matched are pointed out, and all of them land in the paste box for you to compare with the document before anything is added.

Turning AI off

AI features are controlled per team. A team owner or admin can turn them off under Team settings. Turning them off stops all AI usage for that team and removes the summaries MatterSnail has stored. It does not shorten what the AI provider has already kept.

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.

Smokeball integration

Connect your Smokeball account under Settings → Smokeball and MatterSnail can work from your matters directly:

• Contacts. Address a recipient from any Smokeball contact, with their address mapped into the form automatically.
• Everyone on a matter. Import every party on a matter in one step, each one labeled with their role. Anyone Smokeball holds no mailable address for is listed as well, so you can see who was left out rather than discover it later.
• Documents. Pick a matter and add any PDF on it to a mailing, either from the Smokeball Documents page in the sidebar or from inside the mailing itself. Smokeball files live on a matter, so you choose the matter first.
• Expenses and memos. A mailing can post its final cost to the matter as an expense, and file a memo recording that it was mailed. An activity code is optional. You choose the matter in the Smokeball section of the mailing at any point before you submit. Nothing is sent to Smokeball while the mailing can still be canceled, so a canceled mailing never reaches your matter.

The connection is per user: everyone who wants to use it connects their own Smokeball account. Smokeball grants access for 180 days at a time and using it does not extend that, so the settings page names the date your access runs out and reminds you as it gets close. Connecting again starts a new 180 days.

If your firm wants the expense and the memo on every mailing, an owner or administrator can turn that on in team settings, and whoever submits can still change either option on any mailing. Disconnecting from the settings page deletes the access we hold and we stop using your Smokeball account. Smokeball offers no way for us to hand the permission back, so it stays listed in Smokeball until it expires, and anything already posted to your matters stays there.

Connecting your AI assistant

MatterSnail publishes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so you can prepare mail from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any other MCP client. Add this URL as a remote MCP server:

https://mattersnail.com/mcp

It cannot send mail

The connection is draft-only. An assistant can start a mailing, add recipients one at a time or from a saved recipient group, create a group and add members to it, choose the return address, and tell you what a mailing would cost. Renaming or deleting a group, and correcting or removing its members, stay in the web app. It cannot upload documents, submit a mailing, cancel one, or spend a cent. Every tool hands back a link to the mailing in MatterSnail, where you attach the documents, review the recipients and the price, and press Submit yourself. Nothing is printed, mailed, or charged until you do.

Signing in

Your client registers itself and sends you to a MatterSnail consent screen, which you reach signed in as yourself, with the same login as the web app. The screen names the client asking and what it wants; approving it issues an access token that expires daily and is renewed for up to 30 days of continued use. The assistant sees exactly the workspaces you are a member of, and nothing outside them.

What the assistant can read

Connecting sends the following to your AI provider whenever a tool is used. This is the complete list:

• Mailings. Title, status, dates, recipient and document counts, page and sheet counts, printing options, and the checklist of what a draft still needs.
• Addresses. Recipient and return addresses on a mailing, your saved return addresses, your recipient groups and their members, and recipients you have mailed before, when searched.
• Delivery. Per recipient statuses, USPS tracking numbers and scan events, and expected delivery dates.
• Prices. The itemised cost of a mailing and your current per-item rates.
• AI summaries. The stored delivery summary of a mailing, only if your team has AI features turned on.

What the assistant never sees

The documents you upload or mail are never sent: not their contents, not the files themselves. Neither is a mailing's description, the private note you write about why a mailing was sent; it stays inside MatterSnail. Billing details, payment methods, invoices, and your firm's internal comments on a mailing are also out of reach.

Addresses are not verified

An address an assistant supplies is printed exactly as given; MatterSnail does not check it against USPS records. Read the recipients back before you submit.

Disconnecting

Remove the server in your AI client, and the token stops being used; unused tokens expire on their own. Contact hello@mattersnail.com to have access revoked immediately.

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 and per-piece 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 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.