Postable – A Fresh Take on a Social Tradition

Handwritten thank you notes are becoming less and less common, in part because so few people know their friends’ physical mailing addresses anymore. Postable is a web-application that’s working to bring back this tradition, offering people a way to collect addresses and send personalized thank you cards to their friends and loved ones.

Etiquette dictates that you should send a handwritten thank you card when you receive gifts or other thoughtful gestures, but that process can seem daunting when you’re the bride-to-be, the mom-to-be, or the very lucky birthday boy and you’ve got dozens (or hundreds) of notes to write. Offload some of the burden to Postable by signing up for an account and creating a free online address book. Postable will contact your friends and ask them to give you their mailing information. While that’s going on, you can get busy selecting thank you cards — Postable offers multiple cards designed by independent artists — and typing out the messages you want included in your cards.

Postable will print your messages using “ultra-realistic” handwriting or vintage typewriter fonts, so recipients will never know you didn’t write out the messages yourself. The web-application also handles the printing, stuffing, stamping, and mailing of your thank you cards, leaving you with more free time to enjoy your new gifts.

Practical Uses:

• Send thank you cards to everyone who attended your wedding
• Show your appreciation to the guests at your baby shower
• Mail a handwritten note to your grandmother
• Collect the mailing addresses of all your friends and family members

Insider Tips:

• Address books can be exported to Apple Address Book, Outlook, Gmail, or Excel
• Cards can be mailed to any country, for an additional fee
• People can use their address books to print mailing labels
• Postable cards are printed on tree-free paper or recycled paper

What we liked:

• Users don’t have to worry about buying stamps or taking a trip to the Post Office when they want to send a thank you note
• People are more likely to send thank you notes when the process is easy
• Recipients will think that the cards they’ve received were written by hand
• People can use Postable’s address book for free without ever sending a single card

What we didn’t like:

• Postable is currently only available for senders in the U.S.

Alternatives:

• Apple’s Cards – http://www.apple.com/apps/cards
• lettrs – http://lettrs.com
• Sincerely – http://sincerely.com

Company Info:

• Launched: May 2013
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: New York, New York
• Founded by: Scott Potash and Jesse Blockton
• Web site: https://www.postable.com

Costs:

• Cards start at $2, plus the stamp