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Holiday Card Sites & Apps That Mail Cards for You

by Suzanne Kantra on December 12, 2019

The season for mailing annual holiday cards is fast approaching. Of course, you want to send friends and family a unique and memorable holiday card, but finding the right one, adding a handwritten note, addressing it, stamping it and getting it to the post office may take more time than you have this busy season. 

Fortunately, you can go online for a new way to mail out custom holiday cards.

Shutterfly

Shutterfly

Shutterfly is our favorite holiday card mailing service. You may know Shutterfly for its custom photo gifts, but the company also prints custom cards for every occasion. You'll find lots of design options, including postcard-style cards and folded cards in a range of styles (approximately 700 holiday and 700 Christmas themed cards to choose from). Upload family photos (from Google Photos, Facebook, Instagram, your phone or computer) and customize the text for a greeting card that's your unique creation. You can even make your card really fancy by selecting foil cards, glitter cards and even the option to have your personalized text raised and illuminated with gold foil. 

You can choose for Shutterfly to mail your cards directly to your recipients. You'll have no envelopes to address or stamps to lick. If you import your holiday card list from a CSV file (a save option for  Excel and Google Docs and an export option for Google Contacts and Outlook), you won't even have to type in mailing addresses to get your cards to their destination. Note that mailing is NOT an option if you choose the cheaper  Photo Paper "Type" of paper when you're designing your cards -- even though it says "stamp and mail for me" under the "Mail Options."

Pricing varies depending on the card you select, the design elements you want and how many cards you're buying. Card designs start at $0.79 per card (if you buy hundreds of cards), but expect to spend closer to $1.50 to $3.00 per card plus an extra $0.99 to send them domestically. That's more expensive than store-bought greeting cards, but it saves you the trouble of running to the post office.

Shutterfly also has free apps for iOS and Android where you can also design your card easily with the photos you've taken with your phone. And, Shutterfly is offering free unlimited 4 x 6-inch prints and a free photo book per month, but only through the app. 

Shutterfly Promotion good through 12/12/2019: ups to 50% on cards (so cards starting at $0.58), free shipping on orders over $49 with code SHIP49

Ink Cards

Sincerely Ink

Sincerely's Ink Cards is only app (free on App Store and Google Play), no website. It lets you customize cards with images straight from your phone and have them mailed directly to recipients. Sincerely Ink offers fewer card options (248 holiday-theme designs) than other services, and it limits you to creating cards on your smartphone. But the pricing — starting at $2 per 5 x 7 postcard or $3 for sending internationally — can't be beat. Addressing cards is as easy as selecting them in your phone's address book. If you choose a regular card ($4 per card), you can choose to add a gift card from 30 merchants, including Microsoft (Xbox gift card), Nike, Lowes, buybuy Baby, Bed Bath & Beyond and Athleta. 

Postable

Postable

Another low-cost option with more than 900 holiday card options is Postable (only a website). They offer postcards starting at $1.99 and cards starting at $2.99. If you want Postable to send your cards, you just add postage — $0.35 for postcards ($1.15 internationally) and $0.55 for cards ($1.15 internationally). Postable can import your contacts from a spreadsheet or you can enter them manually. You can even send out a request for people to verify their addresses. Postable has a variety of fonts to choose from, including a few that look like real handwriting. 

Promotion good as of 12/12/2018: 20% off all Holiday Cards with code HOL19 (so $1.60 per postcard)

We hope one of these services will prove to be the ideal answer to your holiday card conundrum. Happy holiday card shopping!

Updated on 12/12/2019


Topics

Time Savers, Family and Parenting, Tips & How-Tos


Discussion loading

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From Scott on September 29, 2014 :: 4:21 pm


Lemon squeezy.

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From Tim on December 11, 2021 :: 11:26 am


dork

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From Luke Yancey on November 17, 2016 :: 12:19 pm


I’ve actually heard a lot of good things about Shutterfly recently! However, I prefer to work with a local company. This way I don’t have to worry about my cards being lost in the mail!

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From James on November 06, 2020 :: 3:10 pm


So….. this local company will hand deliver every card for you?  Wouldn’t they still have to mail them?

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From Christine Hess O'Connell on December 26, 2017 :: 11:13 am


I opted to go with Shutterfly despite their glitchy website and incomplete directions because this article claims they are your favorite. I wasted days and days figuring out why I couldn’t upload my address file of 200 addresses. Technical hurdle after technical hurdle and I finally put the cards in my shopping cart. But wait, where is the mailing option? Oh, it’s NOT AVAILABLE FOR PHOTO CARDS? Very, very important detail you left out here. Very misleading. Sigh. Should know better than to trust the internet.

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From Christine Hess O'Connell on December 26, 2017 :: 11:27 am


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From Suzanne Kantra on January 02, 2018 :: 11:00 am


So sorry for your trouble! We’ve ordered from them without a hitch, which is why it was selected as one of our favorites. We didn’t choose a photo card, though and didn’t catch the paper type issue in our fact check. Agreed that the Shutterfly site is misleading. I will send a note to Shutterfly regarding this issue and I will add a note about the paper types in the story. Thanks for the heads up!

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From Marilyn Piper on December 02, 2018 :: 8:58 am


I use Shutterfly for photo books, posters, etc.  So I want to do my Xmas cards with them as well.  I don’t seem to find an option to import my address book addresses and I don’t want to type them all.  Any work around?  Or is there a program that will allow me to import from my Apple address book?  Thank you

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From Josh Kirschner on December 04, 2018 :: 7:27 pm


To import your addresses, sign-in to your account and go to the “Address Book” page. Click the “Import” button and you will have several different options for importing your contacts to Shutterfly.

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From Ben on November 16, 2019 :: 5:26 pm


Hi,

I would like to send 1,700 Christmas postcards (Standard Postcards 4.25” x 6” )
to 1,700 different destinations in The US.
Same card. same (brief) message on each postcard.
how do I upload 1,700 addresses to your service? 
what is the total cost for the cards, handling and the mailing?

Ben Adam
Classroom Giving
All Man Corp
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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From Emily on December 15, 2019 :: 5:11 pm


Correction to your article: shutterfly will NOT mail cards directly to recipients.  After wasting hours uploading contacts (there is a glitch in the system uploading contacts) and creating a photo holiday card, I discovered SHUTTERFLY DOES NOT MAIL CARDS DIRECTLY TO RECIPIENTS.  What a waste of my time!

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From Kris the Designer on December 19, 2019 :: 12:27 pm


We’ve been using AmazingMail.com for years. Its $1.61 for a folded card in envelope with postage included. Can’t beat that price!

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From PinkPenny182 on December 21, 2019 :: 1:03 pm


What about TouchNote it’s another app service that sends cards.  I used it this year and last year it’s great you didn’t even mention it you can design them from your phone and send them from your phone they mail them for you it’s easy.  I will say that it takes a long time so you need to order in advance because cards can take up to 10 days even after being posted to get to their recipient but still as long as you have the time to do it in advance it’s totally worth it

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From Petra McDonald on November 18, 2021 :: 1:09 pm


“Mail For Me: Enjoy more seasonal joy, let us stamp and mail your cards for you, just 99c per card.”

It’s only available with some photo cards (and they don’t seem to have a way to exclude others from your search.)

Look down in the ‘Details’ section on the card page and you may see the possibilities:

Mail Options:  Send back to me, address envelopes for me, or stamp and mail for me

Reply

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