Three of the Best Sites for Holiday E-Cards

Hallmark is synonymous with greeting cards. While you could easily spend $5 for a card in one of their retail stores or online, on their website you can send e-cards for free. It's usually the first site I check out if I want to email a birthday or holiday card to a friend. They're very professional in appearance and sweet or funny, depending on what you're looking for. They have every holiday covered from New Year's to Groundhog Day to Easter to Christmas and everything in between. Need to cheer someone up on Tax Day? Hallmark.com can handle that too. There are some funny e-cards for Thanksgiving including turkey football, turkey cannonball, and a drumstick that faces mean-looking knife and fork and a plate that licks his lips. Most cards have some sort of movement, dialogue or music.
You have to register and login before you can send an e-card but it's fast, easy, and free. Then just choose a card and personalize it with your own message. Then enter the recipient's email and date you want it sent. The card will be sent within an hour unless you choose another date, up to a year in advance. You can also opt to be notified when the card is viewed to make sure the recipient received and looked at it.

BlueMountain.com is another site with professional cards affiliated with American Greetings. They have a huge selection of cards for every holiday. When the site was newly created, most of the e-cards were free. Now, however, about 25 to 30 percent don't require payment. Free e-cards can be hard to find, though, if you click on a holiday/event and you just search through the lists. I suggest typing "free" in the eCard Search box and then clicking on the holiday or event you're interested in. I just created a free holiday e-card without registering for an account or downloading anything and it went right through and was sent immediately. With a paid membership (credit card or e-check) you can send any e-card on the site, receive reminders, for upcoming birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, store email addresses in an Address Book, and attach a digital photo to any e-card.

"Snow Friends" is a very cute and simple e-card that I like, depicting three children building a snowman and decorating him with holiday lights. If your recipient is a fan of the classic A Christmas Story, there are a couple of cards with humorous scenes from the movie.

Americangreetings.com is very similar to Blue Mountain. It has the same look and setup but with a different selection of e-cards. Again, when searching for free cards, type "free" or "free Christmas" etc in the search box at the top of the page. This site seems to have fewer funny cards and more that are touching, meaningful, and classic. There are also quite a few patriotic cards within the Christmas category which could be sent to soldiers overseas during the holidays.

This site is also easy to use and requires no registration. Just personalize and send. One drawback, however, to the Blue Mountain and American Greetings sites are that you can't specify the date you want the card sent. It will be delivered as soon as you hit "send".