Best photo cards: personalized greeting cards for weddings, birthdays & holidays

The best photo cards are a great way to let our loved ones know we are thinking of them, especially given how difficult it has been to see family and friends recently. What better way to show them you care than with the personal touch of a well chosen photo card? We've tested five suppliers of the best photo cards to help you decide which one is right for you.

Why settle for a generic greeting card when with just a little effort you could send a card that's much more meaningful and personal? The best photo cards are the perfect way to relay heartfelt messages, convey gratitude or sympathies or simply send a loved one a birthday greeting or wedding invitation. Your recipient is bound to appreciate the thoughtful gesture and the uniqueness of your chosen image.

Of course there are many other ways to treat loved ones to unique photo gifts, including some of the best photo books, best canvas prints or even the best digital photo frames. However the best photo cards are the simplest way to show someone you care. 

We tested five different suppliers to see which ones offer the best photo cards and the best service. To ensure the test was fair, we used the same image on each website and tried to create a similar design too. Each supplier was judged on how well their creator tool worked and whether there were any glitches or difficulties when creating our photo card.

We also rated each of the best photo cards suppliers on how fast they delivered the photo cards and how well they were packaged. We examined how accurately the color was reproduced, the printing finish and overall quality of the product, looking for any marks or defects on the photo cards. Read on below to discover what the best photo cards are for you...

Best photo cards

CEWE Photoworld offers hundreds of photo card designs, covering everything from weddings, birthdays, baby announcements and more. We were happy with most of the photo card designs, but we did feel a few of them were a little bit dated. 

The shipping was suitably speedy, and the cards were well-protected in the packaging. Where CEWE Photoworld's service really shone was in the quality of the cards. The colors of each photo were printed accurately and each image was nicely sharp and vibrant. The cards were a little smaller than we were expecting, but overall we were incredibly impressed with the printing of CEWE Photoworld – in terms of quality they produced some of the best photo cards.

Our only quibbles with CEWE Photoworld's service were that you could only buy cards in packs of 10, and their cards are only available in the UK. If their service covered more countries and you could buy single cards, they would definitely be among our choices for best photo cards. 

Mixbook is one of the most prolific photo finishing product providers, supplying photo books, photo cards and more to customers all over the world. Their extensive experience definitely shows on their website, as Mixbook offers some of the best photo cards in terms of range and design. Plus, not only does Mixbook offer a wide range of designs, they also feel very stylish and modern. 

The shipping was reasonably fast, and Mixbook had provided very substantial packaging with a plastic film envelope protecting the card inside a sturdy cardboard package (we're unsure whether the plastic film envelope was recyclable). 

Print quality is really the only area where Mixbook could improve. The finish of the printing was very matte, which meant that the colors felt a little dull. The images printed inside the card also had some light scratches/ marks. However, despite these issues, we still think Mixbook produces one of the best photo cards. 

As Boots outsource their printing to print specialists CEWE you know the quality is going to be good but there are a few benefits order through Boots rather than CEWE directly. One of which is you can collect Boots points which quickly add up especially if you regularly shop there anyway. There is also an option to collect in-store which is cheaper at just £1.50 although it does take 5 - 7 working days. Home delivery takes 4 - 6 working days but it will cost you £3.49. 

Snapfish offers some of the best photo cards in terms of designs, and we were also very impressed with the creator tool. It was fantastic for fine-tuning our design – we especially liked the fact that the text editor flagged up any potential spelling errors, as this will help prevent any disappointing mistakes once the printed version arrives.

The shipping was reasonably fast, arriving on the same day as most of our other cards. However, we were a bit concerned with the packaging, as it was a flimsy thin cardboard envelope. The card inside it was laid flat and pre-creased so that we could fold it in half ourselves.

Unfortunately, whether this was due to the packaging or the printing process, our card arrived slightly damaged. While there was nothing huge marring the card, three out of the four corners were dogeared and there was a noticeable crease on the back cover.  

There was also an issue with the alignment of the images on the card, with the front photo spilling out onto the back. The logo and text at the bottom of the back cover were also cut off by the bottom in another example of poor alignment. In addition, we felt that the colors of the printed photos were quite desaturated and dull. In terms of quality we didn't feel Snapfish was up there with the producers of the best photo cards.

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If you're just looking to buy individual cards, you're better off looking elsewhere as the minimum you can buy is 10. We found the site to be buggy, tools took ages to respond and it was hard to reposition, resize and crop. Out of all the sites we tested, Photobox had the worst creator tool.  

The cards were shipped relatively quickly and arrived in good condition. They were made of decent qualty card and we didn't notice any imperfections such as scratches on the prints however the print quality itself was disappointing. Color varied from card to card with some being brighter and more vibrant than others. 

However, the image on the front cover of our Photobox photo card had been significantly brightened. It's worth noting that the images inside the cover were fine, so we assume that the software automatically bumped up the brightness as it felt our photo was too dark. However, the amount of editing the image received meant that our original editing and color grading disappeared from view. With this in mind, this is probably not one of the best photo cards for professional photographers who want to retain their color grading in printing.

We thought Moonpig might produce one of the best photo cards, but despite some positive aspects of the service, we did end up being disappointed with our Moonpig photo card.

We found the Moonpig website buggy to navigate, as it kept glitching as we were trying to limit down the design options to just 'Weddings'. We also found most of their designs quite fussy, with few minimal options. Each design we looked at had very limited customization options as well. We also thought the price of £3.49 per card was quite steep.

The most positive aspect of Moonpig's service was that their delivery was extremely speedy, arriving just two days after it was ordered. The color reproduction of the printed image was also fairly accurate as well.

However, there were some issues with the quality of the card. The image alignment wasn't quite right, which meant that the photo on the front cover bled onto the back cover. The image was also chipped and marked along the spine as well. We also found that the card wasn't folded neatly, with one side overlapping the other.

Overall, considering the price point of the card, the lack of design options and the poor quality of the final product, we would recommend choosing one of the others as suppliers of best photo cards on this list.

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