Litho Printing or traditional printing (CMYK) is done by creating four chromatin plates which are produced from your artwork. This is costly and increases the setup time of printing your job. While the setup charge is higher, the cost per printed unit is lower. This means that Litho printing only becomes more competitive on higher quantity jobs. For best value print the cut off point between digital and litho print is usually around 1000 A4 prints.
The key benefits of litho print are that you can have higher quantity runs, at a much lower cost, and your finished materials are more photographic like compared with that of a conventional digital printer. Litho Printers can also print on better stocks of paper or card, giving you a much higher quality finish than you would get from digital printing.