In our busy, digital world, a tangible holiday card may provide more meaning than ever before, and Simply to Impress is the best service for creating and sharing holiday cheer.
The site makes it easy to find and customize a stylish template. The prints are consistently the best we’ve seen. And a free design review just might save you from sending an embarrassing mistake to your nearest and dearest.
Even better, this service is more affordable than many competitors that deliver less-impressive results.
Our pick
This service delivered our favorite prints and made it easy to create an adorable custom card (free design review included).
With Simply to Impress, it was easier to create a beautiful, custom holiday photo card than with the other services we tried. This company offers an exceptionally wide selection of designs, with filters that efficiently narrow the results, so you won’t spend ages scrolling. Once you’ve found the right one, you can customize it with simple editing tools and choose from ample paper, finish, and trim options. Turnaround is brisk, and there are various options for shipping speed. And if you’d prefer, the service can do the work of addressing and mailing your cards (at extra cost).
Budget pick
This service has fewer options than top competitors, and the site is harder to use. But no other service we tested offered such high-quality cards for such a low price.
If you’re on a tight budget, the holiday photo cards from Nations Photo Lab look nearly as good as those from Simply to Impress. The site offers fewer customization choices and photo-upload methods, and it has scant photo-editing tools. Also, Nations Photo Lab has neither an addressing service nor a card-mailing service. But the company’s per-card prices were about 70¢ less than those of our top pick. And shipping is free on orders of $79 or more, so this one is an especially good value if you’re ordering a significant number of cards.
Also great
This service delivered cute holiday cards that were comparable to cards from our top pick. It provides double-sided printing and has a terrific app, if you want to create a holiday card directly from your phone.
If you don’t need your holiday cards shipped out for you, as Simply to Impress will do, you may find a better deal through Mixbook. This service offers free double-sided printing and an app, unlike our top pick. It also stocks some creative card sizes and has a minimum-order option as low as one. The quality of Mixbook’s cards is on a par with the ones we got from our top pick. But we thought the plethora of design choices and being able to have your cards mailed for you gave Simply to Impress an edge.
Also great
If you need last-minute cards, this is the best option for getting decent (but not great) prints in less than 24 hours.
If time isn’t of the essence, go with one of our other picks. But if the holidays sneak up on you, or you’re stuck with a last-minute assignment from your boss, Staples provides the best mix of quality templates, ease of use, and quick turnaround at a reasonable price. Our Staples cards looked almost as good as those from Simply to Impress, with comparable sharpness and color fidelity (albeit slightly darker and on slightly flimsier paper). These cards are not the best, but they’re definitely good enough for display on a fridge.
