Top Photo Card Services for Spreading Holiday Cheer

With the holidays right around the corner, it’s time to either get those Christmas cards out the door or find a service to get them out the door for you! Whatever your preference, we’ve narrowed down the perfect Christmas card printing services for this holiday season.

It’s not only the best time of year to send some sharp-looking photo cards to friends and family, it’s the best time of year to score tons of deals on these cards in the process. Regardless of which of our recommendations you choose, we strongly suggest signing up for their emails and checking their website for coupon codes.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, practically every printer under the sun is running one sale after another. If one service isn’t running a 40% off (or better) sale, just hop right along and check the next one out or wait a day to see what pops up. Keep that in mind while perusing the prices below—with coupons you can expect to pay around half the list price.

What to Look for in a Photo Card Service

Whether you want those fancy, foil-pressed cards of your kids sent directly to your family and friends, or you want to personally write messages on 200 postcards of your dog and send them with customized stamps, we’ve chosen the four best options based on several factors:

• Templates and Customization: While you can upload your own designs to many sites, we don’t all have that artistic eye—which is why all our recommendations feature on-site templates and customizations.
• Usability and Ease: With so many templates at your fingertips it can get overwhelming, which is why we selected services that are easy to navigate with user-friendly interfaces.
• Quality: If you wanted to deal with smudged ink and crooked pictures you’d wrestle with your inkjet printer at home. When you’re farming out the print job you want crisp prints and good quality control.
• Labels, Postage, and Mailing: Whether you want to order and send the cards directly from the website, or you want the service to print send and return addresses on the envelopes so you can send them without the hassle of doing monotonous labeling yourself, we’ve chosen different options to suit your need.
• Pricing: Premium-looking cards don’t have to cost premium prices—we’ve selected great values across the board so you can spend less on cards and more on holiday fun.

Best All-In-One Service: Shutterfly

Shutterfly is one of the biggest names in the holiday photo card industry for a reason. This service can do it all—not only does it have hundreds of templates and designs to choose from, but they’re also all customizable. They sell custom envelopes and can ship your cards for you, too.

Although they’re not the cheapest card printer around, they’re our top pick for all-around value. You have the option to choose regular or foil stamped cards as well as different edge trim options (like rounded, scalloped, bracketed, or ticketed). You can further customize your card by choosing formats (like Gate Fold or Tri-Fold) or a style (like Rustic or Contemporary).

Blank white envelopes are included with the cards, but you can spend a little more per card for personalized patterns, text, and colors on the inside and outside of your envelopes. They can also print a return and recipient address for $0.39 each, or you can spend $0.99 to have them send your cards to family and friends (by simply uploading your mailing list to Shutterfly as either a spreadsheet or email contact list).

Conveniently, Shutterfly provides a template so the process is pretty painless. An extra buck a card might seem pricey, but considering postage alone is $0.58 per card if you slap the stamp on yourself, suddenly farming out the labeling and postage seems a lot more reasonable (and it leaves you more time to enjoy the holidays).

Best Service for Same-Day Pickup: Snapfish

Browsing through hundreds and hundreds of templates can be a bit overwhelming, and this is where Snapfish‘s user interface shines. Snapfish has a convenient filtering and search option to find the card you want. You can filter based on card type and size, how many photos you want per card, photo orientation, colors, and even by newest, oldest, or best-selling cards.

The preview for each design shows you the color options, whether it’s foil-stamped, how many cards come in a set, the sizes, the trim, optional foil text, and the prices. Depending on which type of paper you opt for, you might even be eligible for free return address printing.

Not only does the website allow you to choose your card design quickly and easily, Snapfish has the option for you to pick up your cards the same day at places like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. Since it would be printed at the place you decide to pick up from, the quality of your photos depends on the location at which you pick them up (and excludes options like foil stamping)—but the lower cost and convenience makes it a great option if you can’t wait on shipping.

Best Premium Service: Minted

 

If holiday cards are a big deal in your house and you’re not afraid to splash a little cash, Minted offers beautiful cards with letterpress foil stamping that give your cards the same luxurious look and feel as premium wedding invitations. With over 1,000 customizable templates sorted into easy-to-navigate categories, it’s simple to find your perfect card.

You can choose from a wide variety of formats—from Classic 5×7 to Ornament to Vellum Overlay—as well as from a nice selection of styles, like Plaid, Classic & Elegant, or Vintage. From there, you can filter options by photo quantity, orientation, layout, price, and printing type. Once you find a design you like, you’ve got a few other choices to make, like a color theme, paper type, a silhouette shape, a greeting, and whether or not you want foil lettering.

The service lets you customize the back of the card, select additional interior options, and choose your envelope and liner colors. While Minted doesn’t mail the cards for you, you can get return addresses printed on the envelopes to save yourself a little time (which you can spend writing personal notes on your oh-so-luxurious cards). To add to the custom feel, Minted also offers stamps customized with your own photo and text.