July is always a crazy month for our family. All four of our children have birthdays within nine days of one another, we generally attempt/execute a family vacation, and the growing season on our hobby farm is in full swing. Thankfully, my husband has time off from the busyness of the school year so we can tackle everything together but still… a lot of life happens in those 31 days.

This year, our summer has the addition of my 10-day mission trip to Paris, which means we have a little less time to fit everything in. A few months back, my husband and I pulled up our calendars and realized we only had one available weekend to throw our annual family birthday bash for the kids. Gulp.

Thankfully, a collaboration request from a company called Paperless Post popped into my inbox last week, offering their design invitation services in exchange for a blog post. Problem solved. I immediately sat down and started perusing birthday invitations.

Here’s the low down!

Paperless Post offers well-designed, on-trend email invitations, cards, thank yous, stationery, and flyers. The idea is similar to what you’d find at evite.com, but with a much more elevated selection of graphics and designs.

Of course that lovely design comes at a price; beauty isn’t free here. However, it is reasonably priced. My eight emailed invites cost 48 coins (their version of currency) to make, which put cost in the $12 range.

Following my rabbit trail of reason/rationalization, if I bought a box of 14 invites at the store, I’d probably spend $6-10 plus mailing costs. If I made photo invites and printed them, I’d be looking at somewhere around $20 plus mailing costs. If I sent a plain text email, I’d risk my guests doing what often happens to me: losing the invite in the mass of 3000 some odd emails that live in my inbox. (I’m not kidding. It’s my online version of hoarding.)

Bonus: the emailed invitation comes with the option to add directly to a calendar, which is a lifesaving feature I’m always grateful for.

What’s great?

Aside from invitations, there are plenty of other great design offerings. I particularly liked the thank you note section, the personal stationery section, and the fantastic birthday card section (perfect for people like me who desperately want to BRING BACK BIRTHDAY CARDS!!! but never actually have any of said cards to mail.) Being able to choose from a great selection of script-type fonts was another huge bonus, as was the fact that I didn’t run across any ugly designs. Seriously.

Also, no ads (yet). Bless you, Paperless Post.

What needs improvement?

The coin idea is a little strange to me. I’d rather not have to check a table that converts dollars to coins every time I add or detract a feature from my projects. I would also love to see a print-to-paper option for more of the designs. They currently offer that service for wedding invitations, stationery, and a few holiday cards, but it’s pretty spendy ($50-$100 for 20 pieces of stationery or 20 holiday cards) and isn’t available (that I found) for cards, thank you notes, or standard invites. I understand there are probably limitations with printing small batches… I’m just saying it’d be nice to purchase 20 really cool birthday cards to have on hand.

Overall

Paperless Post is a great online invitations+more service that provides timely, trendy design offerings at a reasonable price and value.

Meanwhile, I can mentally cross off birthday invites from my future to-do list without ever having to write them in. Score.

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(This is, as you may have guessed, sponsored content. Here’s the deal. I will occasionally share products and services I think add value to life, and/or that I would have organically used without any prompting. Note that all thoughts and opinions are entirely my own. All images courtesy of Paperless Post. Collage built at Fotor.com.)