Sunsetting the print server: why 2026 is the 12 months to lastly go serverless
Before I begin, let’s be clear. On-prem print servers aren’t bad, as such. And retiring your old print servers shouldn’t really be the core value proposition of cloud-based printing. The real value is simplifying your infrastructure and reducing the burden on IT.
If you can somehow do that with on-prem servers, then physical infrastructure isn’t a problem at all.
Product Marketing Manager at PaperCut.
But for many organizations, cloud is going to be the way forward. And that’s what I’m increasingly seeing; businesses wanting to end time-consuming manual configs, reduce ticket volumes, and swap static queue systems for something more flexible and dynamic.
So should you wave goodbye to your print servers in 2026?
You’ve probably got at least one print server still clinging to life somewhere in your infrastructure. It might be humming away quietly in a corner rack, occasionally throwing up a print queue error or driver mismatch.
But for the most part, it’s just there. Reliable enough to avoid scrutiny, but also invisible enough to escape transformation. Until now.
As we look ahead to 2026 and beyond, and with server lifecycles, operating system support deadlines, and ongoing cost pressures beginning to hit home, the humble print server is finally being forced into the spotlight. And for many organizations, it’s becoming clear that now’s the time to retire it. For good.
The hidden cost of business as usual
Legacy print servers have always carried costs, it’s just that most of them get buried in the IT budget under ‘maintenance’ or ‘support’. But when you add them all up, those numbers tell a very different story.
Manual queue management
Each time a user can’t find the right printer, IT has to step in to manually install or fix a queue. We see it all the time. Multiply that by dozens of devices, hundreds of users and multiple sites, and it’s a constant, low-level drain on resources.
Driver chaos
Mixed operating systems, different printer models, and countless driver versions mean ongoing testing, patching and compatibility management. The more diverse your environment, the more time this consumes.
Support tickets
How many “I hit print, nothing came out” tickets hit your helpdesk every month? Each one of these takes minutes or hours of expert human attention, which is time that could be spent on more strategic work.
Security vulnerabilities
Legacy servers, especially the neglected ones, are often a security nightmare. Old server software, outdated drivers and unmanaged network shares can expose organizations to unnecessary risk.
According to Quocirca, 49% of IT teams cite managing print queues and drivers as a top pain point. That’s nearly half of all organizations admitting print is still more painful than it needs to be.
Downtime
When print servers go down, the impact is immediate and visible. Work stalls, productivity dips, and IT scrambles to restore access. In environments where every minute counts (hospitals, logistics hubs, customer service centers and so on) even brief outages can have significant consequences.
And those are just the tangible costs, the ones we can actually see. The less obvious (yet equally important) costs are those you incur from not modernizing.
The cost of standing still
Every year that organizations put off modernizing their print infrastructure, they lose the benefits of cloud efficiency, scalability and flexibility. It’s hard to put a figure on these opportunity costs, and they often go unnoticed, but they can also have real strategic impact.
Faster time to market
Cloud-native services scale instantly. That’s part of their charm. If you open a new site, onboard remote workers, or roll out a new workflow, your print environment can be ready in minutes instead of days.
This agility means organizations can respond to market shifts faster, launching new customer experiences or operational capabilities without waiting on hardware procurement or network reconfiguration.
Increased productivity
When employees can securely print from any device, anywhere, without IT intervention, what you’re really doing is removing friction so users can focus on what’s important. Print becomes invisible and effortless, which is exactly as it should be.
Elasticity of demand
Cloud-based print management flexes and bends with your needs. As your organization evolves, even moving to hybrid work, you only pay for what you use. Not what you maintain.
The fact is that legacy print servers don’t tend to scale gracefully. They’re notorious for manual provisioning, site-specific configurations and relentless ongoing patching. That makes them not just a technical burden, but also a kind of strategic anchor.
They’re the invisible things holding your IT roadmap back from full cloud transformation.
What going serverless really means
When I talk about ‘going serverless’ in print, I don’t mean losing control or compromising on functionality. Quite the opposite, actually. Going serverless means decoupling print management from physical hardware, and instead running it as a secure, cloud-based service.
This means you can manage print queues, drivers and deployment rules from one dashboard, from anywhere, while users print securely from any device. There’s no server to maintain, no VPN complexity, and no need for per-site management.
Then there are features that fully automate queue setup. These tools automatically push the right printers to the right users based on their context, like who they are, the device they are using, or the network they are connected to.
This network-aware deployment is ideal for multi-site environments, letting you ditch clunky scripts and manual installations for good. It’s a simple way to reduce print-related tickets, even in mixed OS environments, and it even fills the shortcomings in common Modern Device Management (MDM) tools.
A chance to reclaim wasted spend
Every IT leader I speak to wants essentially the same thing: fewer moving parts, less firefighting, and more innovation. Retiring print servers is one of those rare opportunities where you can achieve all three at the same time.
With one migration, you eliminate an entire layer of maintenance and risk, while improving user experience and aligning print with your overall cloud strategy.
So, as you look at your IT roadmap for the next 12 to 18 months, ask yourself: does it make sense to invest in another round of server hardware and OS licensing? Or is it finally time to move print to the cloud, along with everything else?
We’ve featured the best small business printer.
This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro