Best Holiday Card Services
It’s the busiest time of the year—but these holiday card services take the stress out of making and sending cards to family and friends
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If you love sending personalized holiday cards with cute photos of your family or pets, it can feel like you need a whole season to go from capturing the perfect photo to applying that last stamp and getting those cards out the door.
A holiday card service is like an industrious elf streamlining the task for you: Simply choose your favorite card template, upload your photo, customize messages and designs (when allowed), select a quantity, and plug in your credit card information. Some companies even offer the royal treatment (at an extra cost) by collecting addresses and mailing the cards out for you.
- A Few of the Holiday Card Services We Evaluated: Shutterfly Tiny Prints Postable Staples Minted Walmart
How We Evaluated Holiday Card Services
CR’s photo department provided a stock image of a family that resembles the quality you might get from most newer mobile phones. We used this image to evaluate 10 popular holiday card services and took notes on our experience, including how easy the site was to navigate on a Mac laptop and an iPhone (we didn’t evaluate any apps), how many customization options were offered, pricing (including for add-ons), and any extra services offered. We evaluated the diversity of holiday themes offered and noted when a company featured Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Feliz Navidad templates. Many sites offered the opportunity to design your own template rather than choosing from their selection, but we did not evaluate this feature.
To evaluate paper quality, we chose the least expensive and often the default paper option for each card. We saved our work in each service and returned to the sites after a few hours or days to evaluate how easy that was to do. We didn’t experience issues with returning later to complete the order on any of the sites. All pricing mentioned is the price prior to shipping costs and our delivery times are based on choosing the least expensive shipping method for each company. Fluctuations in pricing seem very common among holiday card companies—and sales prices affect pricing at different times of the year. Finally, we consulted with CR’s paper expert and two CR photo experts to get their professional opinions on each card’s quality.
Here are our merriest top choices and the cards that failed to give us tidings of comfort and joy.
