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Our Favorite eCard Sites
Browsing the greeting card aisle at your local store to find the perfect card can be a hit or miss proposition, especially if it's a holiday and you're on the late side of buying a card. And that's just the beginning. After selecting the card, you still need to fill it out, put a stamp on it–if you have stamps–and pop it in the mail.
Fortunately, there are a number of great sites online that take the hassle out of finding and sending the perfect card. Whether you want to send an ecard by email or by postal mail, or use your home printer for hand delivery, these sites cut out the legwork and let you focus on what you're trying to say.
American Greetings
You're probably familiar with American Greetings from their paper greeting cards, but they also have a great website. They have lots of options: many of which include sound, animation or video. And if you have a more DIY attitude, you can select cards which you can personalize and print from your home printer.
Despite some high-tech features, these are pretty traditional greeting cards: don't expect to find anything you wouldn't see on the shelves at Hallmark.
Membership is required to send cards and starts at $6.99 for a single month or as little as $1.67 per month if you sign up for two years. Benefits include unlimited cards, card scheduling for up to a year in advance, address book, digital delivery via email or Facebook and the ability to attach a gift or gift card to your ecard.
Card types: Ecards sent via email or through Facebook, cards you can personalize and print at home
Cost: Memberships to send ecards or print cards at home start at $6.99 a month (or $29.99 for a year or $339.99 for two years); free 7-day trial (requires credit card for trial)
Punchbowl
Though Punchbowl's cards are all digital, they have the aesthetic of mailed cards—even including envelopes and stamps with your virtual card. They're easy to customize with almost every aspect of the card editable: so you can add your own photos, change the text, switch the pattern of the envelope liner or even change the design of the stamp on the envelope. And if you want to give a little more than a card, it's easy to add a digital gift card as well to retailers like Starbucks, Amazon, Sephora, Home Depot, and Apple.
The downside? The cards have ads, unless you subscribe to the premium service for $4.99 per month. The service includes 500 per month and the ability to schedule delivery of your ecards.
Card types: Ecards sent via email or text
Cost: Some ecards are free; others require membership starting at $2.99 per month for 10 cards per month, $3.99 per month for 50 cards and the ability to schedule cards, and to go ad free, you'll need to step up to $4.99 per month for 500 cards per month
Paperless Post
Paperless Post—which offers both ecards and printed cards, and so is not entirely paperless—offers highly customized cards with the ability to tweak cards to perfection by adding your own text and images. But we've seen these features elsewhere: where Paperless post sets itself apart with stylish, not-just-another-greeting-card designs. And in addition to the style value, cards from Paperless are fairly economical: starting at the easy to buy price of free for many of their digital ecards, it's hard to say no.
Card types: Ecards sent via email
Cost: Some ecards are free, others cost $0.80 and up each
Updated on 2/14/2022 with new pricing and service information
[Image credits: Valentine's Day card concept via BigStockPhoto, American Greetings, Some eCards, Punchbowl, Paperless Post]
Elizabeth Harper is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience covering consumer technology and entertainment. In addition to writing for Techlicious, she's Editorial Director of Blizzard Watch and is published on sites all over the web including Time, CBS, Engadget, The Daily Dot and DealNews.
Discussion 
There is also Riversongs, 123 Greetings, Crosscards and Lutheransonline for ecards. Crosscards and Lutheransonline are religious.
Don’t forget to include SendOutCards….real greeting cards & gifts sent via the internet for only $1.50 per card including the stamp and all the printing, stamping and mailing too! This is revolutionizing the card & gift industry…
I am a intern trying to do research for the greeting card industry.
If you could answer a few questions and you can just reply by email.
Kiernanjacob@yahoo.com
1). There are lots of card companies out there so what dictates your choice in a particular business.
2). Is there a better way that card companies can better meet your needs.
3). What kind of services do you wish greeting card companies offered?
4). Is there anything that Minted and other companies can do better to meet your needs?
5). What are some of your greeting card needs that you possibly look for, especially with your wedding cards?
I just was following us on your review and if you have time to answer the survey questions I sent you that would be great.
For the most elegant,creative, classy e-cards on the internet—at a very, very modest fee—try Jacquie Lawson. She is an English artist who has created cards with beautiful graphics, great musical accompaniment and sometimes fun puzzles or explanations of the history and/or background of the card. If you explore this site, see if you can view the Thanksgiving Turkey and/or the Christmas Luminaries.
Yep, I’ve not found any to beat Jacquie Lawson cards. It’s a very cheap annual fee and you can send as many cards as you want and can schedule at the start of the year for everyone. A best buy.
I had a 2 year subscription to Jacqui Lawson,
ecards would not play on my system, I contacted the site and was told go FAQ yourself. I went to FAQ myself and there were no solutions to my problem so I contacted site again and was told to \go FAQ myself. So I had no choice but to send cards unseen.
used about 8 cards over the 2 years , might ass well picked up nice cards at shopping centre and posted them ahead in good time.
for me in my opinion and experience Jacqui Lawson is
not so great.
Leimation.com out of Hawaii makes beautiful, original animated Ecards and Evites. They are like nothing else online.
I agree with VM: absolutely Jacquie Lawson. Some cards are better than others, but they are unsurpassed for whimsy and creativity, at a modest annual fee. They also produce a wonderful Advent Calendar annually.
Had Membership for years , friend of a friends company. After years, with no fresh animation, content, or advanced music midi’s, well, it has just become boring. Didn’t renew my membership for 2017.
In January, 2017, I canceled a 10-year membership at Jacquie Lawson after my husband got an email solicitation from them. I made inquiries (opened a trouble ticket) and they tried to explain it away (as if I was confusing it with the small link at the bottom of ecard notifications, etc.) but finally admitted it was a “suggestion/invitation to join our site.” I call that spam. He uses the email account very little but it was in my Lawson address book. I didn’t pay an annual fee for them to use my address book as a source to solicit new members.
I have been with JL since her early days in 2003, and I love her beautiful cards. But they have a bad reputation for poor and even unresponsive customer service when things go wrong (and naturally they do). Unfortunately I’ve experienced it too a few yrs ago. That’s when I discovered the horrible experiences ppl had when tech issues arose. It’s always regarding the technical side. It’s an area she’s not addressing as it continues. The staff she has in this area have been spoiling her reputation; not the excellent-standard that Jacquie has built for herself. Tech issues have gone unresolved for years but never fixed. And the CSR don’t help. Frustrating when you suddenly experience it - then you learn first-hand what all the fuss is about in the reviews. Think JL needs fresh new competent staff on the tech side to match her excellence and gorgeous cards.
We use a service called WhinQ. They do automated greetings that I don’t have to remember to send out. It all happens automatically for each holiday or occasion.
http://www.whinq.com
Beware of Blue Mountain!! Check out their 1.5 star rating with Google. So sorry I ever signed up with them. Atrocious service.
Thank you for flagging this Elizabeth. Upon further investigation, we have removed Blue Mountain from our list of recommended sites.
I have used American Greetings for 2 years but would not recommend them for the cookies they make one accept to view their ecards and the fact that half the time I try to send a card via Facebook, they say it is not working and to come back later.
After several complanints over the years, they have never responded to my emails or “contact us” posts. Bad customer service.
I LOVE Jacquie Lawson cards..the only thing I have a problem with is the “Reply” option. Many people just want to receive the card..and not reply..at least that is my experience. I feel that without that it would be flawless as an e-card option!
I can see where you’re coming from but, actually, I find it quite useful! On a couple of occasions when I’ve received an unexpected card, it has been very handy to be able to reply instantly with a nicely produced response.
Right on Caz! I’ve been with Jacquie Lawson some 15 years now and like it. But I’m a person who greatly appreciates options in life. And my experience is that ppl appreciate the reply OPTION… it is an option to use, or not to use. And who doesn’t like having options?? It’s great for anyone who wants to reply 
Can you imagine (?)... lol
Loved there site until recently. Use to be able to easily delete your contact list and upload a new one with a CSV file, not longer. They also use to have great gift cards you could attach to your cards and it went away, I think they may have brought them back. I was trying to send out ecards for holiday and it is just too cumberson now. Have to individually add or delete a contact, dont have time for that!. Cards are not as good as they use to be. I seem to keep using older versions.
123greetings.com is another very popular one. There is a new one - loveline.dneiro.com as well although it is not very famous and quite basic, but they are growing fast. There are many more missing in the list
Punchbowl requires a whole year be paid. The 3.99 changed to 4.99 after I created an account. Monthly would be fine, but they shouldn’t advertise it as a monthly charge when they don’t accept a monthly charge. Of course they might have a refund or cancellation policy, but it’s honest to charge a monthly fee when that is what you’re using when describing the charge. The online ecard experience is not very good because of all the hype about monthly, when it’s really yearly.
I have used Smilebox for years. There is an annual fee, but it’s worth it because Smilebox has many formats and you can create your own cards, have music you choose, and it’s very personalized with my own photos, etc.
Recently, I haven’t been able to access it because of an Adobe flash problem.
I’m wondering if anyone knows about a site similar to Smilebox?
I’ve used Hallmark Card Studio for years. It is installed software but they probably have online version also.
We do not wish our payment info to be stored on the website after we’ve paid for our subscription. We currently use Blue Mountain, but there is no way to delete the credit card information online. Is there another site that has more respect for its customers? Thanks!
A new website launched recently with a selection of artistic “ooCards” at https://www.creativeecards.com. All payments are through PayPal so no financial information is stored on the site itself.
I do not endorse Jack Lawson. By comparison, they are expensive. That’s okay if their products and services match the pricing - it’s understood that you get what you pay for. Their cards are okay. They are a bit tired and stale and could use better graphics, better delivery, better design, etc. Their support is subpar. Members spend money to send cards and other offerings. When recipients have issues, the Support team is non-existent. The true measure of a service is how they handle issues. Jacquie Lawson receives a failing mark.
Can anyone tell me the name of the beautiful card website called angelcards or something similar? They had a huge range of cards , you could choose music to add. A great site but I forget name! thanks
From Lilian Burch on May 06, 2013 :: 3:13 pm
You should also include Care2.com ecards. It also generates donations to charities.
http://www.care2.com/ecards/
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