Informed Delivery and letter tracking, compared

What does Informed Delivery show?

As letters run through USPS's sorting machines, the machines photograph the side with the address. Informed Delivery sends the person at that address a morning email, the Daily Digest, with grayscale pictures of the letter size mail arriving soon, and the same pictures sit on a dashboard and in the Informed Delivery app. USPS adds color images for some catalogs and magazines, and the service also shows the status of packages coming and going.

USPS only has pictures of letter size mail that went through its automated equipment, so a large envelope or a letter sorted by hand may not appear. USPS also notes that mail may not arrive on the same day as its notification, so a picture means a letter is on its way rather than in the mailbox. Since April 2025, most users can turn on a Mail Delivery Notification email that tells them when their letters and large envelopes have been delivered, although USPS said then that the option wasn't yet offered for PO Boxes and some ZIP codes.

Informed Delivery is free. It works for residential, business and PO Box addresses in eligible ZIP codes, which covers most of them, and USPS verifies your identity before it shows you anything.

Who can see Informed Delivery, and who can't?

Only the person who signed up at the receiving address sees the pictures. If you mail a letter, you see nothing about it in your own Informed Delivery, because your account only covers mail coming to you. The person you wrote to sees a picture of your envelope if they use Informed Delivery.

Informed Delivery is useful when you are waiting for a check or a bill to arrive. To know where a letter you sent is, the letter itself needs a USPS barcode that a tracking service follows for you.

What is Informed Greetings?

Informed Greetings is a USPS service for greeting cards. You pick artwork and write a digital message, the platform gives your card a barcode label, and the message appears in the recipient's Informed Delivery email when the physical card reaches them. In its November 2025 rule on postmarks, USPS said Informed Greetings was built for digital greetings that travel with physical mail, and that it has no intention of expanding it into an all purpose mail tracking system. For letters that aren't greeting cards, and for anyone who wants to follow a letter themselves, a tracking service fills that gap.

What does a tracked letter show?

A tracked letter carries a USPS Intelligent Mail barcode above the address with a serial number unique to it. Each USPS plant that sorts the letter records a scan of that barcode, and PigeonTrail turns those scans into a timeline and a map. You see the first plant scan, the scans along the way, the arrival at the plant near the destination and, at the end, the day USPS marks the letter delivered, which USPS estimates from the carrier's route because nobody scans a letter at the mailbox.

The person you mailed it to sees the same trip on the letter's own tracking page, with the day USPS expects it to arrive. When you add their email, PigeonTrail sends them the link at the first USPS scan, and if you're on Pro your buyers hear from your shop's name when the letter is mailed, when it is almost there and when USPS marks it delivered. Our guide to what each USPS scan means covers each event.

How do Informed Delivery and letter tracking compare?

Informed Delivery shows the person receiving mail a picture of what is coming to their address, while letter tracking shows the sender and the buyer each USPS scan of one letter on its way.

Informed Delivery is free. PigeonTrail costs the stamp you already buy, the barcode is free for your first 100 letters a month, and Pro costs $12.99 a month for 500 letters, as our pricing table shows. Informed Delivery details come from USPS's Informed Delivery page and its April 2025 announcement, and Informed Greetings details from USPS's own pages.

Can I use Informed Delivery and letter tracking together?

Yes, and they come from the same USPS sorting machines. A letter you track with PigeonTrail still gets photographed for the recipient's Informed Delivery, barcode and all, so a recipient who uses both sees a picture of the envelope in the morning and can follow its scans on the tracking page. As the sender, you get the scans and the expected day either way, whether or not the recipient has ever heard of Informed Delivery.