Rushly vs. Mailing It Yourself: Cost and Speed

When it's time to send your missionary a package at the Provo MTC, you've got two real options: mail it yourself through the post office, or use a same-day service like Rushly. Both get a package there — they just get there very differently. Here's an honest comparison so you can pick what fits.

Speed

This is the biggest difference, and it's not close. Mailing it yourself takes several days or more, depending on where you're shipping from. Rushly delivers to the MTC the same business day, Monday through Friday — you order in the morning, drop before the cutoff, and it's there that afternoon.

If you have plenty of lead time, mail speed may be fine. If a birthday is tomorrow, your missionary leaves soon, or you only just thought of it today, same-day is the clear winner.

Effort and the box

Mailing it yourself involves more steps than people remember until they're standing in line:

• Finding or buying a box the right size

• Packing it so nothing shifts or breaks

• Labeling it with the full, correct MTC address and mailbox number

• Getting to the post office before it closes and waiting in line

With Rushly, you order online, pick a size, and drop your package at a partner bakery location along the Wasatch Front — no post office trip and no shipping label to wrestle with. For a lot of families the box is the most annoying part of the whole process, and the bag option removes even that step.

Timing risk

This is the one that catches families off guard. Missionaries are only at the MTC for a limited time — typically around three weeks for English speakers and longer for language learners — and your package needs to arrive before they leave for the field.

Mailing carries real risk here: a multi-day transit window plus possible holiday delays can push a package past the departure date, and then it has to be forwarded or it misses them entirely. Holiday seasons make this worse exactly when you most want something to arrive on time. Rushly lands the same business day, so there's no multi-day window to plan around. For more on lining up the windows, see when your package will reach the MTC.

Cost

Cost is the one place mailing can look cheaper at a glance, but it's worth seeing the whole picture. Mailing has the postage cost plus hidden costs: a box and packing materials, your time, the drive to the post office, and the risk that a delayed package misses your missionary and the money is essentially wasted. Rushly is a flat, upfront cost for a same-day local delivery, with no box to buy, no post office trip, and no timing gamble.

The honest framing: mailing can be cheaper in pure postage, while Rushly trades a flat fee for speed, certainty, and far less effort. Which one wins depends on what you value most in the moment.

Letters and distance

If all you want to send is a letter, the math gets simpler — Rushly delivers letters for free and same-day, which is hard to beat. For a closer look at that trade-off, see mailing vs. drop-off for the MTC.

Where you live matters too. The farther you are from Provo, the slower and riskier mailing gets. Rushly's delivery to the MTC stays local to Utah and same-day no matter where the order came from, because the drop-off and delivery happen on the ground in Utah. For families across the country, that's often the deciding factor — see how to send same-day when you live far from Provo.

So which should you choose?

Choose mailing it yourself if you have plenty of lead time, don't mind the box-pack-label-post-office routine, and you're optimizing purely for the lowest postage cost. Choose Rushly if you want it there today, you'd rather skip the post office and the box, or you're worried about the departure window.

For most families, the deciding factor is time. The MTC weeks go fast, and the chance to brighten a specific day — a birthday, a hard week, the last few days before they fly out — is fleeting. Whichever way you go, the goal is the same: something from home, in your missionary's hands, before they leave the MTC.