Guide · Published October 10, 2026

Best Print on Demand Supplier for Greeting Cards in 2026 (Real Costs, Folds and Holiday Card Formats)

Quick answer: Printful is the best print on demand supplier for greeting cards if you want simple, known costs, with a folded card in three sizes from $2.55 (4″×6″) to $3.75 (A5) and four panels you can design separately. Printify is the pick if you want range, with folded cards in eight sizes, flat cards with envelopes and fancy edges, holiday cards and a five-design multipack. Gelato doesn't carry greeting cards in the catalog we connect to, so it's out of this one.

Greeting cards are an odd product in print on demand. The base cost is tiny, the artwork is easy to reuse, and the holiday season makes them one of the few products people actively hunt for in November and December. But the margins live or die on shipping, and the artwork layout is nothing like a tee or a mug. A folded card is one sheet of paper with a fold down the middle, and if you don't know which half is the cover, you'll find out from a customer.

We connect to all three of the big providers. ApparelHub works with Printful, Printify and Gelato, all three are live for our merchants, and we don't take a cut of anyone's print margin, so we've no reason to push you toward one. Everything below comes from the live provider catalogs as they appear inside ApparelHub in October 2026.

Which print on demand supplier is best for greeting cards?

• Printful if you want a short list and real numbers before you build. Their catalog has one folded Greeting Card in three sizes, plus a Standard Postcard if you want something flat and cheaper. Every option has a published base cost.
• Printify if you want formats. A catalog search turns up folded cards in vertical and horizontal versions, flat 5″×7″ cards with envelopes and four edge styles, one-sided and two-sided holiday cards, packs from 1 to 50 cards, and a five-pack where every card carries a different design.
• Gelato isn't an option for cards right now. A search of their catalog as connected through ApparelHub returns no greeting cards and no postcards. If your card artwork would also work as prints, our poster and wall art supplier guide covers where Gelato fits.

What do greeting cards actually cost from each supplier?

Here are the real base costs from Printful's catalog in ApparelHub. These are production costs only, before shipping and tax.

The 5″×7″ is the size most buyers picture when they think "greeting card", and the 40 cent jump from 4″×6″ is usually worth it. A5 is a nice premium option if you sell into the UK and Europe, where it's a familiar card size.

Printify works differently. Their catalog data doesn't include base cost the way Printful's does, so we can't give you a like-for-like price table across their cards. The real per-variant cost comes back when a product is actually created on Printify's side, which happens as part of building it in ApparelHub, so it lands on your variants automatically without anyone typing it in. The limit: you can't sort Printify's cards by cost before you build. If you want to price shop across a dozen formats, that's still a job for Printify's own catalog.

Here's what Printify offers, from the same catalog data:

That last one is worth a look. A five-pack with five different designs is a genuinely different product from five copies of one card, and it's the kind of thing that sells as a gift in its own right.

How is greeting card artwork laid out?

This is the part that trips people up, and it's different on each supplier.

Printful splits the card into four panels. The catalog lists four separate print areas: front, two inside panels, and back. You upload a design for each one you want printed, so the cover art, the left inside, the right inside (where a message usually goes) and the back are all their own files. It's the easiest layout to reason about, because each file is exactly one face of the card.

Printify's folded cards take whole sheets. On their folded cards, the print area isn't one face, it's the full unfolded sheet. The Greeting Cards product with 1 to 50 pcs, for example, has a "cover" area of 2175 by 1538 and an "inside" area of the same shape, both wider than they're tall. That's because a vertical 5″×7″ folded card opens out into a landscape sheet, with the front cover on one half and the back of the card on the other. So your cover image needs to sit on the correct half of a wider canvas, with the fold running down the middle. Put a full-bleed illustration across the whole sheet and the fold cuts it in two.

Printify's flat cards are simple. The Flat Greeting Cards product takes a portrait front and back, each 1538 by 2175, which is just a 5″×7″ card shape. No fold to think about.

Holiday cards come in two shapes. The one-sided version takes a single front image at 6.9″×4.9″. The two-sided version adds a back. If you're making photo-style holiday cards, the one-sided card is the cheapest way to get a clean, frameable front.

The practical rule: decide the supplier and the exact card product before you make the artwork, because a cover made as one panel for Printful won't drop onto a Printify folded sheet without rework.

ApparelHub holds the print geometry for each product and sizes your design to the real print area, so a cover meant for a card doesn't get stretched to fit a different shape. The boundary: it fits the shape, it doesn't decide which half of a folded sheet your cover belongs on, so check the mockup before you list. Our guide to print-ready files covers resolution and bleed.

What should go inside the card?

Most POD cards ship blank inside, and that's fine. Buyers write their own message. But the inside is where a card stops looking like a postcard with a crease in it.

1. A short printed greeting on the right inside panel ("Happy holidays", "Thinking of you") makes a card ready to send without making it impersonal.
2. A small echo of the cover art inside, like a corner motif or a matching border, makes it feel designed rather than printed.
3. Keep the message area light. Pale backgrounds and plenty of empty space give the buyer room to write. Dark full-bleed insides look striking and are miserable to write on.
4. Put your brand on the back, small. It's free advertising every time the card gets passed around.

If you use AI to make card art, check every letter of any printed greeting before you build. Text is where image models still slip, and a misspelled "Merry Christmas" is a refund. Our guide to the best AI image model for t-shirt designs covers which models handle lettering best, and the same advice applies to cards.

How should you price print on demand greeting cards?

Cards have the cheapest base cost in this whole series, and that's exactly why they're easy to underprice.

Take Printful's 5″×7″ card at $2.95 base. A single card is light, but shipping still applies to every order, and on a product this cheap, shipping can cost more than the card itself. Add payment processing fees and the real cost of selling one card is far higher than the $2.95 suggests. So:

• Sell packs, not singles. A pack of five or ten cards spreads the shipping across more units. That's why Printify's pack sizes matter: 8, 16, 24, or up to 50 cards in one product.
• Price singles as a premium item. If you do sell a single card, price it like a boutique card, not a supermarket one, and set a free shipping threshold that encourages buyers to add more.
• Bundle with the rest of your range. A card in the same artwork as a mug, an ornament or a print is an easy add-on that lifts order value without any new design work. Our mug and ornament supplier guides cover two natural companions for the holidays.

Our guide on how to price print on demand products walks through the full formula, and tracking profit margins shows how to catch a product that's quietly losing money on shipping.

Which greeting cards sell best in print on demand?

We won't make up sales rankings, but some patterns hold:

• Holiday cards are the obvious seasonal play. List them in October so they're live before people start shopping.
• Niche cards beat generic ones. A birthday card for one dog breed, one profession or one hobby has a buyer looking for exactly that.
• Multi-design packs work as gifts. Five different botanical illustrations in one box reads as a stationery set, not a stack of cards.
• Flat cards with fancy edges suit invitations, thank-you notes and wedding stationery, where the scalloped or rounded edge does a lot of the work.
• Postcards are the cheapest way to test a design. At $1.53 base on Printful, a postcard tells you whether artwork sells before you commit to a folded card.

How ApparelHub fits in

ApparelHub is a multi-channel ecommerce platform for custom merchandise. You connect the providers you already use, design with the leading AI image models built into the platform, turn designs into products, and list them on Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and TikTok Shop from one place.

For greeting cards specifically, here's what's true today:

• Printful, Printify and Gelato are all live. You can sell a Printful 5″×7″ card and a Printify multi-design pack in the same store. Gelato has no cards to build right now.
• Base cost lands automatically when you build, for Printful and for Printify, so your margins are worked out from real numbers rather than guesses.
• Full pre-order estimates covering production, shipping and tax are available for Printful orders. They aren't available for Printify, so don't expect a like-for-like landed cost comparison across both.
• Margin guardrails can hold an order that would lose money instead of sending it to production, which matters on a product where shipping can outweigh the base cost.
• Your own AI agent can run the workflow. Through the Agent API, MCP connector and Claude skill at apparelhub.ai/agents, an agent you bring can search the connected catalogs for cards, generate a cover and a matching inside design at the right shape, build the product and list it on every channel you sell on. ApparelHub doesn't run the agent for you; it gives your agent the catalog data, the print geometry and the tools. For a seasonal line of ten card designs, that's a lot of repetitive work you don't have to do by hand.

For the bigger picture of how the three providers compare, see Printful vs Printify vs Gelato.

FAQ

What is the cheapest print on demand greeting card? Among Printful's cards, the 4″×6″ Greeting Card is the cheapest at $2.55 base, and the 4″×6″ Standard Postcard is $1.53 if you don't need a fold. Printify may have cheaper options, but its catalog doesn't publish base cost before you build, so compare inside Printify's own catalog.

Does Gelato offer greeting cards? Not in the catalog we connect to. A search returns no greeting cards or postcards, so you'll need Printful or Printify for cards.

Do print on demand greeting cards come with envelopes? It depends on the product. Printify's Flat Greeting Cards say envelopes are included in the product name, and some of their postcard bundles come in versions with and without envelopes. Check each product's details before you promise envelopes in a listing.

Can I use the same artwork on a Printful and a Printify card? Yes, but not the same files. Printful takes each panel as its own image, while Printify's folded cards take the whole unfolded sheet, so the cover has to sit on the correct half. Plan to export two layouts.

When should I list holiday cards? October, so they're live before gift shopping starts. Check each provider's holiday production and shipping cutoffs, since cards are often ordered late and need to arrive before they're sent on.

Start building

If you want to compare greeting cards across Printful and Printify in one place and list them on every channel you sell on, create a free ApparelHub account. To have your own agent handle the catalog search, the card designs and the build, start at apparelhub.ai/agents.