It’s one of my favorite year-end traditions — sending out cards to friends and family to wish them the best for the holiday season and the new year, and update them on your own life. But in this fast-paced world, it’s also a serious pain in the butt to go through the process of writing out the cards, or having them printed up, and then putting them in envelopes, addressing them, affixing stamps and dropping them in the mail.
Here’s my preferred solution: It’s an app called Ink, from a company called Sincerely. If you’ve use Sincerely’s Postagram app or one of its competitors, you’re familiar with the basics: Select a photo from your device library, add a personal message and the recipient’s address, complete your transaction and they’ll handle everything else for you — sending a postcard in the mail exactly as you’ve designed it on your device.
The twist with Ink is that it makes larger cards, and provides holiday-themed templates. It does cost more — $1.99 per card. But for me, at least, the convenience is worth it. I spent maybe 10 minutes last week using the app to send out more than two dozen cards from our family and friends, for about $50.
It works primarily via your device, but you can use the account management tools on the Sincerely website to help compile and update your address book, and then access it inside the app. The best part for me this year was that it was my second year using the app to send out cards, so I only had to make minor updates.
It’s a free app for iPhone, iPad and Android.
Here’s the audio of this week’s segment.
