HP on Thursday launched a printer subscription service that lets subscribers lease a new printer, print a specific number of pages and get ink from the company when they need it — for a fixed monthly price.

Customers can choose between three new printers: the HP Envy, which costs $6.99 per month to lease, the HP Envy Inspire, which costs $8.99 per month, and the HP OfficeJet Pro, which it costs $12.99 per month with no upfront cost. By comparison, HP OfficeJet Pro line retail for $200 to $300 and replacement ink cartridges from HP are $27 each.

Connected: How to electronically sign PDF documents without printing

The printer subscription service is also consistent with HP's previous statements about the conduct of its business. Last month, HP CEO Enrique Lores DECLARING that making print a subscription was the company's “long-term goal.”

“We lose money on hardware, we make money on supplies,” Lores told CNBC.

Lores stated that HP's long-term goal was to reduce the number of “unprofitable” customers, or people who bought printers but didn't spend money on supplies like ink cartridges.

“Every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us,” Lores told the media. “If that customer doesn't print enough, or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment.”

HP has been sued more than once to block users who own their own printers from printing with non-HP ink cartridges. The company entered into a $1.5 million class-action settlement in 2019 on this issue, with the most recent lawsuit presented this year.

HP is not the first to experiment with subscription services. Epson launched it ReadyPrint subscription service in 2020 which also offers a printer rental and automatic ink cartridge replacements, but some users had problems with the service in the year 2022 which left them unable to print.

^{Enrique Lores, president and chief executive officer of HP Inc. Photo: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Connected: Gen Z workers say Boomer employees are 'shaming' them: 'It makes me feel stupid'

This isn't HP's first subscription service either: HP Instant Ink the plan automatically delivers ink to subscribers' doors when HP detects they're being discounted by $0.99 to $25.99 per month.

“We see a 20 percent increase in the value of that customer because you're locking that person in, committing to a long-term relationship,” Marie Myers, HP's chief financial officer. said at a UBS Global Tech conference in December.

Subscribers to HP's new service can choose to print anywhere from 20 pages per month for $6.99 to 700 pages per month for $36. As with the Instant Ink plan, HP will detect when ink is running low and automatically issue replacement cartridges at no additional cost. If the printer freezes or encounters a problem, subscribers have access to live support 24/7. After two years, HP offers an option to upgrade to a new printer or continue with the old one.