What are E-Cards?

An e-card is an electronic greeting card sent through the Internet. People send e-cards, often featuring animation and music, to friends, family, and business associates. A person who would like to send an e-card merely has to visit a website that offers a selection of electronic greeting cards. The person chooses a card and is allowed to personalize it by writing a message.

The card can be sent to one person or several. Once an e-card is sent, the recipient opens the email and clicks on a link in order to view the electronic card. She then has the option of choosing an e-card in response to the sender's message. Sending an e-card is an environmentally friendly way to send greeting cards to people because no paper is used during the process.

The Internet has a variety of companies that offer e-cards. One popular company is Blue Mountain.com. It offers several categories of e-cards, including ones on friendship, love, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, thank you cards, and more. They even have talking e-cards.

Talking e-cards say exactly what the card-giver types onto the card. The talking cards allow the sender to write as much as she likes. In order to send a talking card or any other e-card from BlueMountain.com, card senders are required to purchase a membership.

An affiliate of Blue Mountain.com is egreetings.com. E-greetings® is a free e-card site that provides visitors with several categories of cards as well. Senders can choose cards based on love, friendship, anniversaries, babies, sympathy, religious, and other common topics. Once a card is chosen, the sender personalizes the card with as much text as desired. Since the service is free, the website features brief commercials and advertisements as the visitor browses the site.

The well-known Hallmark.com features both free and paid e-cards for visitors to send to friends, family members, and business associates. Card categories are organized in the following manner: Holidays, Birthday, Just Because, Care and Concern, Special Occasions, Announcements and Invitations, Hallmark Characters, Collections, and Sponsored E-cards. The sponsored e-cards are sponsored by companies such as Campbell's® Soup or Bissell.

123greetings.com is a free e-card website that offers the same categories as the previous companies. According to its website, it has a host of 20,000 cards available in over 3,000 categories. The site was founded in 1997 and highlights a variety of animated, musical cards for visitors.

People who love pets might consider sending a card from ASPCA.org. The e-cards feature pictures of cuddly animals, ideal choices for anyone who loves their pets. Senders can send the cards for free and make a donation to the organization at the same time.