As I learned quickly with the birth of my first child having a baby can be expensive. With the use of the Internet, sending out baby announcements does not have to be. Many sites are now offering free announcement ecards. The trick is knowing which site will be best for you, because in the days after the birth of your child you will not have any extra energy to waste on researching sites. To help you, below is a description of some of the ecard sites with free announcements.
These websites offer graphics and layout tools to help you create your ecard. However, the designs and features of these sites can different dramatically.
www.egreetings.com
Egreetings is a branch of AG Interactive which is American Greetings’ Internet company. They have over 20 designs; some have flash animations and with some you can add photos. With these ecards the picture and a caption is framed at the top of the page and there is space at the bottom for your wording. A unique feature to this site is that you can change the font style of your message. The drawbacks with these cards include that you can not change the caption of the picture, so you can not cross-purpose a card, and that you can only send the cards to one recipient at a time.
www.MyFunCards.com
Unlike with many of the other sites, you do not have to register with this site to use it. It does require you to install an Active X Control on your computer. This adds access to their ecards from your browser’s toolbar for easy reference. You are also able to send these cards to 20 recipients at a time. Should you have problems, the site includes a comprehensive FAQ section.
If you are looking for an ecard with a more unique style one option is Hipster Cards. This site was created by Californians and contains vintage and modern designs. They only have 14 styles; you are limited to 5 recipients at one time and your message is limited to 500 characters. However, the site was extremely easy to use and the process was very quick and simple.
www.babycrayons.com
Another site with a twist is Baby Crayons. Baby Crayons was designed to offer free baby clipart and now also offers free baby ecards. There is only one postcard style to the ecards but you can select one of approximately 50 clipart images to use on the postcard. You can only send the postcards to one recipient at a time. However, you also have the option to use the free clipart to create your own announcements.
www.smilebox.com
The site I am most excited about is Smilebox. The ecards available on this site are scrapbook layout quality. You add pictures to your cards (in some cases up to 400 pictures on one card) and your own text. You can also add videos and music. Your email address list can be imported from Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, Gmail and Plaxo. The cards you create can be printed, emailed or use on your blog. Although I feel there are plenty of free options, if you want even more you can purchase premium styles or pay a monthly membership fee.
www.baby-ecards.com
The last site I want to mention is www.baby-ecards.com. This site is powered by 123Greetings. It is an example where researching a company is important. This company has an unsatisfactory rating with the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org). The Internet provides many products but you need to know about the integrity of the company. There are plenty of reliable sites so I would avoid this site.
The birth of your child is a wonderful event and one which you want to share with all your friends and family. Ecards make that easy. Free ecards make it affordable. Some of these sites actually make it fun.
