As usual, I was searching the Internet for some work issues when I stumbled upon a peculiar service named Postcardly. And you know I fell in love with the principle which is the base for its functioning!
What is Postcardly?
Postcardly is a fun and easy online postcard making and mailing service. Postcardly helps you turn your emails with attached photos into a 100%-real post card that your nearest and dearest will get within a week. Hallmark provides you with a plenty of nice cards and envelopes, Postcardly, in addition to the mentioned above, sends them for you.
In 2009 Postcardly came from Seattle where one of the founders Paul Hughes wanted to send traditional printed postcards to his grandma on Fleda on Christmas and other family events, but without visiting post office or store and dealing with traditional postcard mailing routine.
Personally I have already forgotten when I last saw a paper card in my postbox! And it would be a really great and very pleasant surprise for me. Sad to say, but this kind of mailing becomes rare. For Generation ’00, it’s exotics! For our grandparents, it will be a surprise too as they don’t receive postcards very often now.
How to Send Postcards to Friends and Family via Postcardly?
So, here’s what you do to send postcards to friends via Postcardly:
- You register with Postcardly (on website or inside their iPhone/Android app);
- Create an email address book within the service where there will be the names of your recipients combined with the ending @postcardly;
- Send a text, a photo and the real address to these virtual email boxes;
- The service will resize the pic and place the text on the rear side and then send the ready paper postcard with U.S. mail. Alas!
That’s it! No need to go to the shop and have your pics printed. You don’t have to visit the post office either. You do everything online.
What Size is Postcard Size?
Postcardly uses the standard U.S. Postal Service size for postcards: 4.25″ x 6″.
How Many Words is a Postcard?
Postcardly puts about 100 words on a postcard. And the first line will be your postcard title highlighed in bold font. Here’s an example of rear side of Postcardly postcard template:
What Image Can I Place on a Postcardly Postcard?
You can use your own family photos. Use JPEG images up to 4MB size. Now, as for the photos management. I was a bit disappointed when I saw that Postcardly doesn’t provide any photo editor to create a personal design by adding some frames, or effects. But after all I thought that I can attach an already edited image and it will still arrive to my granny. For example, Photoscape, Picnic, etc. that we described in our posts can help you.
How to Send a Postcard from Somewhere Else?
With Postcardly you can send postcards from anywhere in the world, as long as you have access to your Postcardly account. So if you want to send greetings from you vacation, go ahead. Download and install iPhone or Android Postcardly app, upload your travel photo from famous sight and write several lines to your family at home. Postcardly will ship your printed postcard via US mail within a week or less.
Good news. You can send your postcards from any part of the world. Postcardly accepts pics from computers, mobile phones and any portable devices with the Internet support.
Bad news – cards are delivered only to the addresses within the USA borders. The site owners promise that they work on this but I cannot say for sure when I will be able to send a nice post card to my friend to France.
What’s Postcardly Price?
Postcardly charge money for their services. The are 2 types of Postcardly pricing plans: pay as you go (for example, $19.99 for 10 prepaid US postcards) or a monthly subscription (for example, $8.99 a month for 5 postcards). All post fees (like stamps) are included in plans. You don’t have to pay anything extra for the postal services. If you still hesitate, then you should know that the trial plan includes 3 free postcards, so you can check Postcardly service.
And still I find the idea of the service great! My grandmother doesn’t even know how to switch on the computer and very often I forget (let’s tell the truth) to call her. And Postcardly will be the smartest way out for me!
Image Sources: Picture 1, Picture 2
Thanks for the writeup! Glad you like Postcardly—and we’re also (not surprisingly!) big fans of snail mail. It’s pretty special, and we miss it from our childhood days.
Re: the post fee, postage is *included*. The cost is about 99 cents per card (or as low as 67 cents, depending on what plan you pick), including printing, postage, everything!
Anybody can send an email to preview@postcardly.com to see a pdf preview of how a Postcardly message would look, even without signing up.
What a neat article. I had no inkling.
Jazlynn, the idea of the service is really great. Hope, it will be a success! And many thanks for your comment!