Postcards From Paradise

There are a number of services that will mail postcards for you and on my personal to do list was to test and choose a service.

Why? I find myself sending fewer postcards because the selection is often poor, or doesn't reflect the experiences that I had, and because the cards and postage can be expensive. With electronic photo sharing options many people cruising forego postcards altogether but there is something special to me about receiving something from someone in the mail.

Postcardly is the compromise that I chose. I can send an email with a photo I took as an attachment, to a special email address I set up in advance. The card is printed with the photo as the front and the subject and body of my email as the message on the back. Depending on which preset email I chose, the card is addressed to different people and mailed from the US - for a total cost of $1 if mailed to a US address or $2 if mailed internationally.

I wanted an email based service rather than an app based service because now I can prepare the emails to initiate the postcards while I am offline and then when I next sync my email the cards are processed and sent.
To use the service I need internet access but so far I have had WiFi as often or perhaps more often than I have seen post offices. And of course the card isn't mailed from an exotic port.

After testing the service I was quite happy with their photo printing quality and speed. I set up a bunch of addresses while I had fast internet.

I received 3 free postcards as part of a free trial and after seeing the cards I prepaid $20 for 20 printed-and-postage-paid cards.