The festive period looms ominously for those of us who are yet to organise our annual Christmas card mailouts. Who do we send to this year? Does Aunt Peg still live at the same address? Didn’t Jamie break up with his girlfriend? The logistical effort it takes to wish your address book a ‘season’s greetings’ can be migraine-inducing. Thankfully, the advent of Christmas card mobile apps is a real game-changer.
Instead of poring over your contact book and trawling the high street for that perfect card design, we’ve selected a handful of the best Christmas card mobile apps to get the job done from the comfort of the couch. You can either share these cards digitally, or utilise printing services like Helloprint, who offer some of the best bespoke printing services around.
MoonPig
The well-known personalised card retailer MoonPig offers a slick and easy to navigate app, available for both iOS and Android, with a varied selection of pre-designed and personalised cards or gifts.
With a 4.7/5 rating on the App Store, MoonPig has thousands of designs to choose from, as well as the option to upload your own photos. Additionally, the app provides the function to not only compose a personal message for your recipient, but also to handwrite it using their advanced handwriter tool – providing that all-important personal touch.
Also included within the app is a smart calendar function, which allows you to populate a list of key dates, like birthdays, for your contacts, ensuring that no important milestone or anniversary goes unchecked. While MoonPig’s service isn’t the cheapest on this list, it does offer a rewards-based system, which equates roughly to one free card for every six you purchase.
JustWink
Another excellently-reviewed eCard app (4.9/5 on the App Store), JustWink doubles down on the emotions behind sending gift-cards. This app carries a smaller range of options than MoonPig, but each design is infused with the emotion of the occasion.
JustWink has over 200 card designs, filled with humour, sincerity, and soul befitting the sentiments. Personalised content is also very easy to manage on the app, through photo upload, voice messages (obviously, this function is digital only), personalised messages and your own digital signature. JustWink cards can be sent via social media, email, traditional mail or even via Apple Watch.
Felt
Featured on Shark Tank (the American version of our Dragon’s Den), Felt is built around the power of the personalised message, and serves as a design platform for your perfect greeting card.
You start by selecting either a pre-populated design on the app, or uploading one from your phone, before writing a completely handwritten message to go into the card, using a stylus, if you have one, or your device’s screen if you don’t. The card is then produced and sent out as per your requirements, looking as if you’d written it on traditional pen and paper.
Additional cool features on the Felt app, besides the excellent menu layout, include delayed sending – so you can produce your gift cards long in advance and Felt will send them at a date specified, and push notifications for calendar reminders.
Paperless Post
Paperless Post offers a more refined approach to greeting cards and invitations – pairing with designers to create a boutique range of base cards to work from. Originally used exclusively to create e-invitations with an in-built RSVP system, the app has now diversified to include a snazzy set of greeting cards, too. Like all of the apps included in this list, Paperless Post allows you to customise content, including photos and messages.
The app utilises its own currency system, so you’d need to buy ‘credits’ in advance in order to use the service.
Ink/Postagram
Sincerely Inc’s Ink app offers one of the better-rounded eCard experiences on the market. Cards priced relatively cheaply, including free postage in many cases, but with a wide range of designs available, Ink is a leading app in the market, allowing you to build a glossy, high-quality card from your own personal photos and messages.
Also available from Sincerely Inc is the Postagram app, which allows you to turn your favourite social media photos into memorable keepsakes. The designs exclusively Christmas-themed, but the adaptability of the concept lends well to a year-round alternative to the traditional Christmas app.
