HP ePrint Is Gone: The Replacement With No Computer

Your printer used to have an email address. You sent a PDF to it from your phone, walked over, and picked up the paper. No app, no driver, no computer anywhere in the story.

Then one day it stopped working, and nobody told you why.

Here's what happened, and how to get the exact same habit back without buying a PC to babysit a printer.

Table of Contents

• What actually happened to HP ePrint
• Why HP Smart is not the replacement
• The replacement: an address, plus a device you already own
• The catch: something still has to be awake
• What it costs
• When you want the other product instead
• Getting the old habit back

What actually happened to HP ePrint

Two separate things, which is why the timeline confuses people.

HP stopped shipping ePrint on new printers around late 2020. Then, in January 2023, HP shut down the @hpeprint.com service itself. Every address that had been handed out went dead at once.

Your printer may still show its old ePrint address in the settings menu. That's a leftover. There is no service behind it anymore, so mail sent there goes nowhere and you get no error worth reading.

Why HP Smart is not the replacement

HP points ex-ePrint users at Print Anywhere in the HP Smart app. It prints, so it looks like an answer.

It isn't, for two reasons:

• There is no address. You open the app and pick a file. A supplier, a delivery platform, or an automated order email cannot trigger a print. That was the whole point of ePrint.
• HP printers only. If your next printer is a Brother or an Epson, you start over.

Anything that replaces ePrint has to accept mail from someone who isn't you. Otherwise it's just a print dialog with extra steps.

The replacement: an address, plus a device you already own

The shape that actually works in 2026 is the same shape ePrint had, with the smart part moved off the printer.

1. You get a private print address, something like print-xxxx@in.itjustprints.app.
2. You forward mail to it. A Gmail filter, an Outlook rule, or your store's order-notification setting all do this in about a minute.
3. A phone or tablet next to the printer runs the app and sends each job over AirPrint or Wi-Fi.

Mail lands, paper comes out. Nobody opens the message, nobody taps Print.

Two things this buys you that ePrint never did. Any printer works, not one brand's list. And the address belongs to a service you're paying for rather than a free feature a printer company can retire on a Tuesday.

ItJustPrints is live on the App Store and Google Play. An old iPad or Android tablet in a drawer is a perfectly good print station.

The catch: something still has to be awake

Be suspicious of anyone selling this as magic, including us.

ePrint's trick was that the printer itself was online and listening. Consumer printers don't do that anymore. So something has to sit near the printer, awake, ready to print: with us that's a phone or tablet, plugged in, running the app.

On an iPad that means screen on, Auto-Lock set to Never, ideally pinned with Guided Access. Android is easier, the screen can sleep and printing keeps going. We wrote the whole limitation up in can an iPad auto-print emails, including the parts Apple genuinely blocks.

No computer. Not no device. That's the honest version.

What it costs

$99 a month per print station, or $999 a year, with a 14-day free trial. Billing runs through the App Store or Google Play.

That's more than a printer app and less than the hour a week someone spends forwarding order emails to a person who prints them. If you're printing two things a day, it isn't worth it. If a counter is printing every order that comes in, the math is not close.

When you want the other product instead

We make two of these, and they suit different rooms.

If there's already a computer near the printer and it stays on, AutoPrintEmail is cheaper ($14.99/month, or a one-time license) and processes everything on that machine. Your email content never routes through anyone's cloud, which matters if you're printing patient forms, legal documents, or anything you'd rather keep entirely in the building. (One caveat: its Office-to-PDF converter does send Word and Excel attachments off the machine for conversion unless you switch it off.)

ItJustPrints is the opposite trade: no computer required, but the mail you forward is received and rendered in our cloud before it reaches the station. Pick on that, not on price. The side-by-side comparison lays out the rest.

Getting the old habit back

Fifteen minutes, once:

1. Install the app on a spare phone or tablet and pick your printer.
2. Copy the print address.
3. Point your supplier, your store, or a mail rule at it.
4. Plug the device in, leave it awake, forget about it.

The thing you lost in 2023 wasn't a printer feature. It was a habit: send it, and it prints. That part is easy to get back. Start a station and hand out the new address.