Review of Paperless Post

Many of you know I have a thing for stationery, and love to send family and friends a card for birthdays, Christmas and special occasions. I think sending something in the mail in the form of snail mail or happy mail is a cheerful and fun thing to do to brighten someone's day. So when Paperless Post asked me to trial their online stationery platform, I was excited to accept.

Nothing beats a physical card, but sending e-cards with Paperless Post is a much cheaper and quicker way of communicating with friends and family, and there's no chance your card will be lost in the mail.

Positives
I loved choosing from the wide range of cards and spent quite a bit of time selecting the colour of envelope, the design of the envelope liner (so much fun!), the stamp, postage mark and viewing background. The designs are attractive and modern and there seem to be an endless number of combinations. Users are guaranteed to come up with something unique to their event or recipient. And did I mention it was fun?

If you've ever used Moonpig, this is like Moonpig on steroids! There are options to create events, address lists and track your recipient activity. Recipients can send you a message back if they want to, and it's all collated in your dashboard. You can even track RSVPs, and I imagine this would be an easy and fun way to organise the office Christmas party.

Negatives
There doesn't seem to be a way to set your country of origin, so the tracking dates and times didn't correlate with my activities in the dashboard.

I didn't see an option to schedule the sending of a card on Paperless Post, but I assume there must be a function somewhere to allow you to choose the date and time your card is sent. However, being in Australia and the times not matching up, this could a little be problematic for some users.

You can email yourself a preview of the card, but it says “your recipient’s name will go here” so you can’t see exactly what it’ll look like to your recipient.

The verdict
While Paperless Post - and platforms like it - may very well be the way of the future, I think I'm going to continue sending physical cards and notes for now; barring the occasional event where this method of delivery has it's advantages.

Carpe Librum!