The Best Holiday Greeting Card Apps

Video Transcript

Mike: The holiday season has arrived, and with it, an annual tradition for many families: the good, old holiday card. There are so many websites and apps that claim to make it easy, so we wanted to find out which ones actually are. Ryan Eldridge, co-founder of Nerds On Call, joins us on Skype here. Ryan, I keep thinking of these people sitting at the dining room table, writing away. My mom comes to mind just because I saw her a couple days ago doing this. Sticking on the stamp. I understand it’s a tradition, but it’s a slow one. What’s the secret of getting away from this?

Ryan: We’ve used traditional services like Shutterfly or Snapfish or even Costco to create cool cards like this, where you can see your family and you get a customized message. But you’re right, sitting there and addressing each and every one of those and putting the stamps on them, is a pain, especially if you’ve got a lot of friends and family you want to send them out to.

So we found a lot of cool apps that you can do. You can create these cards directly on your smart phone or your tablet to create customized cards, import your contacts directly from your phone, as well as import your photos from your phone, and you can just send them out. They’ll mail them, they’ll stamp them, and they’ll address them all for you.

Mike: Seems pretty simple. Is it an expensive adventure?

Ryan: It can be. It ranges all over. Here’s the first one we found. It’s called Redstamp at redstamp.com, and you can get this for your phone, for iOS, or Android, or windows. And this is pretty cool. Here you can create photo or non-photo postcard-style cards, but they mail them in envelopes. And if you’re like me, you probably hold onto these cards all year, put them on your refrigerator. And the problem is, you put a normal postcard in the mail, it gets munched up.

Here, by putting them in an envelope, it protects them. You can upload your own photos directly from your device or from Facebook or Instagram. You can change the color of the background and customize it with your own message. But the price is a little bit expensive. It’s about $3 a card for each one of these, but the more you buy, the cheaper it gets. If you send about 200, you can get close to half off.

Mike: Seems like a bit of a rip off. Are there any cheaper ones out there?

Ryan: Yeah. Here’s one called Postagram. This one’s kinda cool. This is only 99 cents a card, and you can almost make these instantly right from your phone, but the problem is, you’re really limited on your template, as you can see there on the screen. You essentially get a picture and words. That’s it. You can’t really do much else with it, but it’s only 99 cents and it includes postage. What you want to do with a card like this is, make your photo a little more holiday friendly. Maybe throw a Santa cap on somebody so that way they know it’s from the holidays.

Mike: Got it. What about folks who say they’re burned out on the whole custom photo card route? They just want to send that traditional message.

Ryan: Yeah. You want to get one of those cool cards. You go to the grocery store and they’re still racks and racks of cards, and those are pretty high-quality cards. If you go to JustWink at justwink.com, you can get those same kind of quality cards but you can customize them with your own message, or you can put your own photos in there, if you just want to put a little photo of your kids in there and then use their own greeting cards because not all of us are great writers. These are only $3.49 a card, which is pretty nice.

Mike: That’s still pretty expensive though, right?

Ryan: Yeah, it’s pretty expensive. It’s cheaper than going to the grocery story and buying them one by one. That can be pretty expensive. There’s a better way. If you want to go super, super cheap, and you just want to get it done, go to americangreetings.com. Here you can sign up for a month’s worth of membership for $4.99.

You get access to all of their templates. You can create your own personal card with your own photos and your own message and everything. Here, though, you’re going to have to print them all yourself, and you’re going to have to mail them yourself, so you’re going to be back in that old range. But five bucks for essentially creating all of your cards for the holidays is a pretty good deal.

Mike: That’s not bad. That’s more my speed. If I don’t go that route, then I’ll just pick up the old phone and give the relatives a call. I can always do that.

Ryan: Yeah. Check out Redstamp. It is the place. It’s so easy to use.

Mike: I will. Ryan Eldridge, co-founder of Nerds On Call. Thank you for all the great tips, Ryan. Have a great holiday.

Ryan: Hey, you, too.