Good question! The straight answer is, there is NO difference! NONE whatsover. THEY DO THE SAME THING!Seriously. It's all down to personal choice. In the case of metered postage and permit imprints, you get an advance deposit account from the USPS. Each time you print them on a mailpiece, the postage is deducted from this account.

However, this method requires you to process every item separately which is highly inefficient. No discount is saved as the prices are the same as stamps. Franking

They can design their imprints following the USPS examples and guidelines. However, hand-drawn and hand-written permit imprints are not allowed. Postage meters are machines that can print postage on your mailpieces. You can buy or lease them from authorized providers and print your own postage from anywhere in the US. Freepost is seen as LESS formal[yet exhibits the same features of a Business Reply licence number and 1st or 2nd class indicia, and are delivered in the same time] and more consumer-focused. They are much more expensive to buy. If you only send a few items per year, then stamping is perfect for your business, but for businesses sending much larger volumes every day it can become costly. It can even be a waste of time when applying each stamp. Pre-Paid Envelopes

The staff at the counter will ask you to put your card into the card reader and enter your PIN to confirm your account details.

Postage paid envelopes (PPI) / Pre paid envelopes

Royal Mail sell pre-paid envelopes that do not require a stamp. This should save businesses time and money when sending business mail. Pre-paid envelopes does not give a postage discount but it does remove the time of applying stamps. The final method of sending business mail is franking. A franking machine allows you to print a franking impression and this is the stamp alternative. You print the postage yourself and the key difference here is that the franking machine does everything for you. Little human interaction is even needed. Precanceled stamps are available in small denominations. You get to select from coils of 500, 3,000, and 10,000.