You’re about to congratulate your best friend on their birthday, except you’re missing the most important thing: a birthday card.
There’s no time to rush down to the store. But you want to appreciate your friend any way you can. Nothing is worse than for you to forget your friend’s important day.
The solution is a simple one: an e-card.
E-cards (or electronic cards) are digital versions of their get-well and congratulatory counterparts. They can be a simple graphic with a joke when you click on it. Or they can make use of digital graphics and animations in ways that paper cards cannot.
That said, there are a lot of cards to choose from, and your needs might differ from event to event. So today you’ll learn about the best e-cards so future events will never catch you unaware.
Think of this as a digital cast signing. Kudoboard allows a group of people to send their best wishes in a single note. Rather than passing around a card at work until they’ve signed it, people can follow the link in the email and quickly add their thoughts.
This makes it incredibly efficient to hunt down all those signatures you need without having to track down people one by one to get them to sign. During the pandemic, this is a great way to avoid contact between people to avoid spreading the virus. And wherever the signers are, they can add their signature as long as they have an internet connection.
If your local church wants to send a meal to a family with a new baby in the house, this allows you to avoid sending a germ-infested card to a house with a newborn.
Kudoboard provides a number of sample formats so you don’t have to worry about how to phrase the get-well greetings. It allows you to easily attach a digital gift card, or create an online memorial for someone who has passed away.
Best of all, this option allows you to either send the card digitally or print it out. If you want to go further, you can print this into a book to keep the memory forever.
Kudoboard offers a number of pricing models. You can make a free mini-board with up to 10 signatures, or you can buy a one-time premium board for only $5.99. You can also purchase a business plan for as little as $189 per year that allows you to send out multiple Kudoboards throughout the year.
Physical cards can have some great punchlines when you open them. Some cards have a miniature speaker inside that plays a funny sound byte. But nothing can do what JibJab does: a custom-made card that features the recipients doing a dance or singing karaoke.
JibJab is built around a simple concept: you insert a funny profile picture of your friends, and then JibJab animates them onto a digital body that can dance and sing.
This provides a hilarious and unexpected e-card that is bound to cheer up your friends the second they watch it. When you send an e-card wishing your friend a speedy recovery, the best thing you can give them is laughter.
You can purchase an e-card from JibJab for practically everything. If you want to congratulate your friend on their new house, this is a great way to relieve tension from a tiring move.
JibJab has been around the block for a long time, making them one of the kings of e-cards. If you want the most variety possible, this might be the best electronic card out there.
However, these are not the best e-cards for serious events. Steer clear of this if you need something professional in nature, or solemn, such as for a funeral.
JibJab has free cards, but a regular subscription of $24 a year means you can send cards to your friends all year long.
Sometimes, you need a personal touch. Writing a kind note with your signature won’t be as impactful as a candid video message telling someone how much you care for them. For your friend who just lost their partner and only has life insurance left as a reminder of them, this is a great chance to say something memorable.
Tribute works like the other e-card options here. It sends out an email to all invited participants and asks them to record a short video. They then upload this video to the server, and Tribute puts it together into a slideshow or special collaboration video.
What’s great about Tribute is you don’t need to deal with the hassle of using video editing software only to make a mediocre video with poor production quality. Tribute does the hard work for you. Once all the participants have sent in their contributions, it automatically packages things together for the recipient.
Tribute gives you excellent options once you go premium, including USBs in special cards so you can remember people forever even if Tribute’s servers go down.
You can start a Tribute for free, or go premium beginning at $25. If you need extra customization, Tribute has some of the best customer service out there to make sure your e-card is perfect.
If you don’t want to use the computer to make your e-cards, there are options for all mobile devices. CardSnacks is prime among them and allows you to customize an e-card to taste all from the comfort of your smartphone.
There are a wide variety of ready-made templates. On top of these templates, you can add stickers, pictures, voice messages, and even music. Since your phone has a touch screen, this makes it much easier to customize than if you were to do this on your computer.
The app is free to download for Android and iOS, but keep in mind that there will be ads, and better options might be paid. That said, this is an excellent way to create an e-card as quickly as you can download the app and choose a design.
For those in need of invitations for weddings and baby showers, look no further than Greetings Island. Like CardSnacks, this is an app you can download right now on all of your devices. You can choose pre-made cards, or design your own.
Greetings Island does include a watermark until you purchase their paid versions. However, paying gets you all sorts of nifty features such as scheduling when to send an e-card invitation and ways to print your card for later recollection.
Greetings Island is free to download, but as mentioned, you’ll need to pay to remove the watermarks.
What makes Touch Note unique compared to its other mobile competitors is that it’s designed to allow you to send a card physically to yourself and your recipient.
That’s right, once you’ve designed your card in the app, it gives you options for shipping. You don’t have to do anything else; Touch Note will print the card, put it in an envelope, and then send it directly to your recipient.
If you’re looking for a way to send physical cards with the most minimal effort possible, this is it. Keep in mind, though, that you can’t do this last second. They send the card by post, so if you forgot a card last second you should go through the other options above.
Touch Note is free to download on Apple and Android, but the shipping charges are where you’ll have to pay.
If you want your recipient to experience opening a digital card, this is what you’re looking for. Just like other mobile apps, this lets you customize a card from a wide variety of templates. Then you send the card through any medium you like: text, email, or social media.
When the recipient gets the card, they can open it as if they were really there.
This app is free to download, however, the premium is $19.99 a year and unlocks all the paid templates. If you send a lot of cards, though, this might be worth the investment rather than purchasing a single physical card for $2-10 for every birthday and celebration.
The best e-cards depend on what you’re looking for. Whether they’re group Kudoboard cards or personalized Tribute cards, you can purchase an e-card that works perfectly for the celebration at hand. E-card options give you a lot more freedom and convenience than having to drive down to the store and spend 10 minutes stressing out in the card aisle.
If you found this guide helpful, check out our other guides, and feel free to get in contact to find the best comparisons on the internet.
