Holiday Greeting Cards: Where to Order & How Much They Cost

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It’s almost time.

Before long, you’ll see the holiday greeting cards trickling in every day — filled with the smiling faces and coordinated outfits from your family members and friends all over.

If you haven’t begun creating your holiday card yet, you still have plenty of time. To help you focus on what company’s card offerings work best for you, we put together this list of holiday greeting card companies and how much you can expect to pay.

10 Companies to Order Your Holiday Greeting Cards From This Year

These card companies have deals and discounts going on all throughout the holiday season. So much so that you’ll probably never pay “100%” of the costs, whatever that may be.

To help you figure out what you’re getting into, we went through the ordering process for some of the most popular holiday card companies currently. We looked at how much it cost to order 50 standard stock cards. Nothing fancy or extra. Just the basics.

Remember, these prices were for a random Tuesday in November. By the time you order, the prices may have changed. But these examples should give you a good idea of a ballpark price with each card brand, as well as which ones typically are more affordable or considered higher end.

We include shipping when possible in the cost per card but didn’t calculate sales tax since that varies greatly.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get started.

1. Shutterfly

Shutterfly has been involved in the holiday card game for a while now, so they have a vast selection of quality cards that highlight you and your family.

We made a sample order for 50 5×7 cards at $2.15 each, some of the more expensive cards we found. That totals $107.50 and includes envelopes. There was a deal for free shipping when checked and Shutterfly often runs sales, so let’s call it at $107.50 for a 50-card order. Your total may be a lot less depending on what deals you find.

Cost per card: $2.15

2. Snapfish

The folks at Snapfish also offer you a wide variety of options when it comes to personalized Christmas cards and holiday photo cards. Their offerings start as low as $1 per card and can go as high as $3.70 per card, if you want a card with a fancy embossed gold foil typography.

For our 50-card example, we chose a set of 20 standard stock 5×7 cards that run $1 each. Since our chosen theme only comes in sets of 20, we need to order 60 photo cards for a total of $60. Standard shipping on three sets of cards is $11.49.

That puts the total spend for 60 cards through Snapfish at $71.49.

Cost per card: $1.19

3. Minted

Minted gives you plenty of options when it comes to choosing your Christmas holiday card. You can add a photo and make your own design, or go with an already designed card. You can pick a style and a format. You can pick religious Christmas cards or non-religious ones.

Minted’s holiday greeting cards definitely run on the pricier end, but come with higher quality. For our card, we chose a basic non-foil 5×7 card (foil is pricier). For 50 cards, the cost comes to $114 or $2.28 each.

Shipping ranges between $3.95 to $9.95, making the total price in the neighborhood of $120.

Cost per card: $2.40

4. Vistaprint

Vistaprint offers pages full of card designs to showcase you and your lovely family. Prices for many start at $11.99 per 10 cards. Many of their holiday photo cards also have embossed foil options that may cost extra.

For a 50-card order on 5×7 standard stock, Vistaprint will charge you $59.95. Standard eight-day shipping runs $11.99 on an order that amount.

That would bring your order with Vistaprint to a total of $71.94.

Cost per card: $1.44

5. Paper Culture

Like almost every company we researched, Paper Culture also had holiday cards discounted in November.

For our basic 5×7 50-card order, Paper Culture only offers premium stock cards. That comes to a total of $66 at a price of $1.32 per card. They also offer 4×6 cards for $1.20 each.

With shipping costs of a standard flat rate of $8.99, the total cost of our cards through Paper Culture comes to $74.99.

Cost per card: $1.50

6. Zazzle

Zazzle offers quite a few designed as well as heavily custom Christmas card options.

We “ordered” 50 basic flat 5×7 cards for $1.22 each. That came to a total of $61. While Zazzle didn’t provide a lot of shipping rate information, we estimate around $9 to $12, based on other companies’ costs.

After shipping, our order would run somewhere around $70 total.

Cost per card: $1.40

7. Etsy

Etsy offers a lot more in the way of traditional, designed cards without building around a family photo if you don’t want to. Although they have those options as well. Even better, you get to support small businesses and independent designers while you’re at it.

That said, many of these cards come in smaller quantities per set, making them more expensive. This lovely 12-card set of snowy village cards costs $18 per set, which would cost us about $72 for 48 cards.

The particular Etsy seller we chose offers free shipping over $35, so we’re good to go at $72 flat for holiday cards through Etsy.

Cost per card: $1.50

8. Papier

Papier has a nice selection of pre-designed cards, as well as customizable Christmas greeting cards ready for your family photo.

Most of Papier’s options range between $18 to $24 for a set of 10 to 12 cards. We selected the Bold and Bright Border flat holiday card set. This set starts at $22 for 10 cards. The price per card drops as your order increases. Our total was $90 for 50 cards.

Shipping costs a very reasonable $4.99, which brings the total costs of our 50 5×7 card set from Papier to $94.99.

Cost per card: $1.90

9. Artifact Uprising

Artifact Uprising also has quite a few options when it comes to customizable holiday photo card themes.

Like other companies, the more cards you order, the cheaper your total is per card. Most 50 card orders come to around $2 per card. For our order, we chose a Minimal Greeting Holiday Card, which costs $100 total for 50 5×7 cards.

Artifact Uprising doesn’t provide estimated shipping costs, but we would estimate around $110 for our order after shipping.

Cost per card: $2.20

10. Amazon

If you’re just looking for something simple without the family photo, Amazon has plenty of no-frills options.

This basic “Happy Holidays” card comes in a set of 40, with envelopes, for only $12.14. You could double that amount and still come to less than $25 — much cheaper than any of the other options. But, again, there is no beaming photo of your beautiful family with these card options. These are basic Christmas greeting cards.

Cost per card: 30 cents

Pro Tip

Don’t forget about postage, which will add to your cost. The good news is that you can buy stamps for less than face value if you know where to look.

5 Ways to Save on Holiday Greeting Cards

We’ve established that you can get 50 Christmas cards (without photos) for less than $30, and you can find 50 photo Christmas cards for well over $100. Plus, there are many options in between.

But what if you’re looking to save a little bit more? We’ve got ideas.

1. Look Out for Deals

Deals. Many of these companies are always offering discounts of some sort. Our examples above were just that — examples. By the time you read this, the discounts we found could be replaced by even better, or worse, options. The point is to visit all these sites and compare prices to see what best works for your budget. Waiting for a better deal? Sign up for email notifications.

2. Go With Digital Cards

There’s no shame in saying “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas” via email. Not only are these digital cards quite merry and charming, many companies offer them free! Sites like American Greetings, Blue Mountain and PunchBowl have plenty of free options to send your holiday cards online.

3. Cut Back on Your List

Do you really need to send 50 cards this year? Maybe 25 would do just fine? Think about trimming your list to the most important people in your life or the ones you don’t see often. You might spend a little more per card, but overall you will save money.

4. Hand Deliver When Possible

Save on shipping costs by simply skipping them altogether when you can. Drop off cards at a co-worker’s desk, place them in your neighbor’s mailbox or hand deliver them with a smile to the front doorstep.

5. Buy as Early as You Can

This advice is for next year, but go ahead and start comparing prices early in the fall for next year’s personalized holiday cards. If you’re not including a family photo, go ahead and order next year’s cards right after Christmas this year. You’ll usually save more the earlier you order, especially after retailers mark down holiday items.

Robert Bruce is senior writer for The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.