Once you've completed checkout our automated service prints and posts your cards as quickly as possible. We are generally unable to cancel or change cards.

Great question. We figured it would be useful and fun to be able to post cards in the real world, made via the Internet. And we figured it should be really easy too. So we made this website.

Everything's automated, so you won't be hanging around while a postcard Oompa-Loompa finishes their lunch break. Cards get printed, queued and sent very shortly after you've paid for them (usually within one working day).

The price for each card includes processing, printing and a First Class or Airmail stamp to get the card to its destination as quickly as possible.

You create a postcard. We print it and put it in the post. Simple.

We started way back in 2012. In the 5+ years since then we've sent thousands of postcards to almost every country in the world. We continue to print and post out your personalised postcards every day.

Our automated system prints and posts your cards on the day of order or, at the latest, the day after (including weekends). It's then up to the postal services whether international or domestic. In our experience, the care they take with your cards can be variable. We send all cards via priority Airmail or First Class but please allow a couple of extra days if your cards have not yet arrived.

If after the due date shown on your order there's no sign of them, do get in touch. Please include the email address used for payment (or forward your confirmation email): hello@cardsinthepost.com. We'll investigate and can offer a full refund and/or a voucher code to order replacement cards without further charge. We'll respond as quickly as we can.

It's horrible when that happens: please accept our apologies! The rollers used by postal services can be unkind to your postcards not to mention inclement weather, despite the thick card we use and robust printing process.

We will of course offer a full refund and/or a voucher code to order replacement cards without further charge. Email us and please include the email address used for payment (or forward your confirmation email): hello@cardsinthepost.com.

See our pics of real postcards.

We think our postcards look and feel great. I guess we would say that, but we went to some lengths to find the right print partner to deliver really smart looking high quality postcards.

Your cards are printed on 350gsm white board. They are full colour with a light gloss on the picture side, with a pleasing matt white background on the message side.

They measure around 151mm x 106mm. The picture side has a white border around it, so that your actual image will measure 142mm x 99mm, which is an aspect ratio of 1.4343 : 1.

Thanks for your interest in our service.

As a consumer-facing business, the only interface to our postcard service is what you see on our website. There is no facility to upload spreadsheets or CSV and no programmatic API. The web interface is quick and easy to use. If you set up the first postcard as you need, duplicating it and changing the address is quick. We suggest batches of perhaps 20 to make it manageable on your side, though the system will accept orders of 100s at a time.

If you need something more targeted, automated, programmed or bulk mailings, there are other services with APIs that will suit your needs better.

Yes, in some cases, we will slightly crop your picture to make it fill the postcard.

In other cases, if your picture is too wide or too tall to make a good crop, then we will fit the whole image within the postcard dimensions. In that case it will have a white border around the side that doesn't fill the card.

You'll be able to see how your picture will look when you preview it on the card after it has been uploaded.

When you upload an image into our system, we will make intelligent decisions about how to make the best looking postcard. At the moment, cardsinthepost.com does not provide a whole load of tools to crop and manipulate the image on our website.

Whatever we do, we will not change the aspect ratio of your image. That means your picture will never be distorted.

Use as high-resolution and large a filesize as you can. We accept files up to around 50mb, though you may need to be patient with the upload at the higher end.

We suggest to use images a minimum 960 pixels wide. We do our best with smaller, lower-resolution images, but they will look grainy when printed.

The photos from your smartphone or compact/SLR digital camera will work fine.

We accept JPEG, GIF and PNG files. We don't directly support digital camera RAW files e.g. CR2.

When you add an address to your card we will tell you how much it will cost, so you can decide whether you want to pay for it.

The price includes processing, printing and a First Class or Airmail stamp to get your card to its destination as quickly as possible.

If you make more than one card, you'll see the current total displayed.

The cost depends on which country you are sending to, since that's the way the UK postal service works. Make sure you specify the destination country using the drop down menu when you address your card.

Please note, we reserve the right to alter our pricing for postcards. The price you pay will always be represented accurately at the point of checkout. We will always have your best interests at heart: all we want to do is print at the best value and highest feasible quality, and sometimes we have to make changes in order to do that. See terms & conditions for full details.

We use Paypal to collect payment for postcards (www.paypal.com). PayPal is one of the easiest and most secure methods of paying for things on the Internet. Your financial details are not shared with us.

You don't need a Paypal account to use their payment service: look for the options to do that if you prefer.

We can't guarantee an exact delivery date or time, since we are dependent on the timings of the world's postal services.

We process and print cards within one working day of receiving your order, but timings can vary.

We send cards from the UK, using First Class mail to UK destinations and Airmail for non-UK destinations.

The UK Post Office has information about their expected delivery times here:

UK First Class: https://www.royalmail.com/personal/uk-delivery/1st-class-mail

Airmail: https://www.royalmail.com/personal/international-delivery/international-standard

You can send a postcard to anywhere that can receive post. Make sure you specify the destination country using the drop down menu when you address your card.

Yes you can - you can send postcards wherever you are, so long as you can access this website.

(All cards will originate from the United Kingdom though, so bear that in mind.)

You can use this site on your mobile too wherever you go - we've designed it especially to work on mobile devices.

All our cards are printed and posted from the UK.

What you see on the screen is more or less what gets printed. Only the text you write on the back is included from you, so by default cards are anonymous. They show the postal address of our printers not your postal address.

See our pics of real postcards.

To prevent abuse, please be aware that if there are complaints from recipients we can provide contact, address and payment records of your order to legal authorities.

As far as possible, we avoid taking payment from your account until we know your card is totally sorted and fit to post.

We authorise payment when you checkout, but we actually only take money from your account when your card is prepped and ready to go. That means we catch most problems before you've paid. And of course, we won't charge you if we've found a problem.

If there's a problem after this point, unfortunately we cannot be held responsible since your card will be dependent on the world's postal services. We pay for reliable postage - UK First Class and Airmail - but delivery responsibility is ultimately in the hands of the postal services required to get your card to its destination.

You are responsible for addressing your card well enough to reach its proper destination.

See terms & conditions for full details.

If there's a problem making your card and/or paying for it, please try again later. We're probably doing some necessary maintenance to the site (and we'll try to notify visitors if that's the case).

When you make a card, you accept full responsibility for the imagery used on the picture side, and for the text content on the message and address side.

Please note that we reserve the right to contact you if your card has received any complaints at any point from its journey to its recipient.

See terms & conditions for full details.

You are responsible for correctly addressing any postcards that you buy from this site, such that they can be delivered to the correct recipient, starting from the UK Post Office and using other worldwide postal services where necessary.

We recommend ensuring that you use the recipient's full address, including postcode / zip code, and we recommend that you specify the destination country using the drop down menu when you address your card.

See the Post Office's guidelines for correct addressing for further details: http://www.postoffice.co.uk/letters-parcels/mailing-guide/overseas-clear-addressing

Great! We've designed cardsinthepost.com so that you can easily stack up a bunch of cards before you checkout and pay.

Each time you click the "Make another card" button, your current card will be duplicated, making it dead easy to send several cards in one go - either using the same picture or the same message or the same address. Or not. Whatever you like, really!

You won't need to upload the same picture more than once. Just click on the card and you'll see any pictures you've uploaded already in the "My uploads" tab, ready for use as many times as you like.

If you'd like to use cardsinthepost.com for larger bulk mailings, we'd love to hear from you. Just tweet @cardsinthepost or send us an email to hello@cardsinthepost.com