The Perfect Valentine ECard

There are many sites available to create the perfect electronic greeting card for your Valentine. Most of them offer free E-cards, but a few of the well known companies will charge per card or ask for a monthly membership fee. Beware when selecting a lesser known E-card company - they may include advertising on the card or worse - they could sell your email information to third party advertisers. Look out for a "terms of use" warning when you fill out your information - no one wants to receive spam on Valentine's Day.

For the safest internet Valentine greetings, stick with the top three: Hallmark, Blue Mountain and American Greetings. These companies have been around for years and are well known and trusted.

Hallmark.com: the granddaddy of greeting card companies. Hallmark offers many free Valentine e-cards as well as premium cards that cost up to $1.99. The free cards are still Hallmark quality, with animation and sound. You can select cards from Classic, Romantic, Cute and Humor styles.

Hallmark's seven Premium Valentine E-Cards feature the Temptations, a Scooby-Doo game card, and a card with your own photo.

If you can't find the perfect E-Card in the Valentine section, Hallmark also has about 20 free "Love" cards that you can send to your Valentine.

Blue Mountain: for Members Only. This online greeting card company requires membership to join. They offer a free trial, but you still need to enter your credit card information. Blue Mountain features many animated and game cards you can send to your sweetie for Valentine's Day. Set up your card in advance and Blue Mountain will send it in time for Valentine's Day.

American Greeting: for Members Only. You'll need to sign up for a membership to send E-Cards from American Greetings to your sweetheart. But you can preview the cards before you pay and see if the price is worth it. Cards have high quality animation and sounds. This site has dozens of cards to choose from, so one will be a sure fit for your Valentine.

123Greeting: "free cards for the planet." This website allows users to rate the E-Cards and lists the numbers of cards sent and viewed. 123Greetings has dozens of free cards with music and simple animation.

Hi Greetings: free web cards. This site lists several free E-Cards, but they come with advertising. The Valentine cards are professional looking and have music, but does a pizza ad next to your greeting really mean that you love someone?