Free Email Greeting Cards for Holidays, Birthdays, Weddings, and Any Other Occasion

Whether it's for the Christmas holidays or a simple birthday congratulations, email greeting cards offer many advantages over the traditional, physical Hallmark card.

First off, you can usually find a free electronic version of a card that you see in a store, but don't way to spend money buying. Second, you can make your message as long as you like since there's unlimited room on an email greeting card. Third, if you have a long list of greeting card-worthy acquaintances, it's a lot faster to copy-and-paste your stock greeting card message than laboriously writing it in cursive on every card.

But that doesn't mean you can't personalize each card according to its recipient. After you pick a greeting card from one of the sites below, you can add your own personal message to it as well as modify the font, background, and colors on the card to your satisfaction. And once you click "Send", your recipients usually get their cards within seconds in their email.

Free Email Greeting Card Resources

The differences aren't huge between the various email greeting card websites. Some primarily offer premium cards that you have to get a membership to access, but others exclusively offer free cards. Typically, there's just a slight difference in quality with premium cards having slicker graphics or designs.

The following sites contain some of the largest collections of email greeting cards online.

1. 123Greetings

http://www.123greetings.com/

While it might not look like much, 123Greetings has a comprehensive collection of email greeting cards whether you need to send invitations, celebrate an anniversary, or just stay in touch with a friend. The best part is that all cards are free.

2. Hallmark

http://www.hallmark.com/

Surprisingly, Hallmark offers quite a large collection of free E-Cards compared to its competition. You can pick up cards in categories like "Favorite Characters", "Just Because", and "Special Occasions". There are also cards that come packaged with free games.

3. American Greetings

http://www.americangreetings.com/

The publicly-listed American Greetings (NYSE: AM) has eCards for celebrating friendships, holidays, and weddings among many other occasions. There's usually one or two free eCards in each category. They also offer music cards.

Through a partnership with Yahoo!, American Greetings offers free eCards on a "hidden" part of its site.

4. Dgreetings

http://www.dgreetings.com/

Dgreetings (for Desi Greetings, perhaps?) offers cards for all occasions and in six languages. You will find support cards, kid-friendly cards, and even divorce cards.

5. Blue Mountain

http://www.bluemountain.com

Blue Mountain, owned by American Greetings, offers a limited selection of free eCards in categories like Birthdays, Anniversarys, Love, and Holidays. You can also create and print your own custom cards.

6. All-Yours

http://www.all-yours.net/

Although it's got a strange name, All-Yours claims to have over 5,000 free email cards for just about any occasion, and if you don't find any that you like, you can create your own cards with personal pictures. They even let you embed greeting cards on your blog or MySpace profile.