Seeed were kind enough to offer me a coupon towards their Seeed-Fusion PCB service . I had a design ready which I had recently converted from Eagle to KiCad so it seemed like an excellent opportunity to try them out.
I am a maker, building things in my spare time, so I tend to make small boards in low quantities. The SeeedFusion pricing structure is optimized for larger boards at larger volumes. However, they usually have a offer in place to encourage prototypers and makers to use their service for smaller volumes. When I ordered the offer was $9.90 for 10 boards up to 100mm by 100mm, at the time of writing the price has been reduced to $4.90.
This is an excellent deal if you want ten 100mm by 100mm boards, but it isn’t great if you just want a few small boards. 100mm by 100mm is larger than a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino. The board I had in mind was 0.8″ by 0.5″ (20.32mm x 12.7mm). The result of the special offer is that introduces a discontinuity in the pricing structure. I made the chart below to illustrate how the pricing in US dollars per square inch changes with board size and quantity by plugging different parameters into the order form.