Paper Culture Review 2021 | Eco-friendly, sustainable holiday cards, wedding invitations, photo books, and cards
The Top Line: It’s a BUY! We are very impressed with the quality and commitment to reducing carbon footprint that feels very deeply ingrained in the DNA of Paper Culture — all for a cost that is competitive with other premium brands like Minted, Artifact Uprising or TinyPrints. Paper Culture will be our new go-to for cards and photobooks!
The Breakdown:
Cost & Products: Starts at $1.39 per card (depending on design), currently 50% off through 11.23.2021 for Holiday Cards! Extra cost for designed envelopes, comes with 10 blank envelopes for free. No extra cost for return or recipient printing.
How ‘Clean’ Is This? There is ALOT that Paper Culture does:
All products are made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper
Paper Culture offsets the entire carbon footprint of manufacturing and transportation process
Plant a tree with every order, have planted over 1M trees to date!
Packaging: Paper/recyclable packaging. There was a little inflated recyclable plastic cushioning in the box.
Purchasing & Shipping: Overall process was straight forward in personalizing a card and purchasing. Uploading addresses a little bit clunkier of an experience, but not any worse than other card sites we have used like Minted.
Good to know: We love their Cards to Trees initiative - every order plants a tree. They encourage you to make a dedication for the tree (some examples below) and you receive a card with your dedication.
The Experience
Context: We have used various sites like Minted, Artifact Uprising, Snapfish and MPIX to print photos, cards and photobooks. We came across Paper Culture and were impressed by their designs and commitment to reducing their carbon footprint.
Great modern and more traditional designs - in line with more premium brands like Minted, TinyPrints and Artifact Uprising in terms of quality of card designs
Relatively simple to personalize a card. UX slightly clunky but nothing that slowed us down too much
Uploading addresses (if you want addressed envelopes) was a bit more tedious, but we have had similar experiences on other sites like Minted as well
Real standout in the experience was how well they built their eco-friendly initiatives in their product and experience — every product uses recycled paper, tree dedication at checkout (really loved this!), etc.
Cards were of very high quality
Envelope design was gorgeous
Colors printed in a natural tone, not over saturated like some other sites may do
Overall a very positive experience.
Comparison
Difficult to compare pricing given the variety of designs, but we found Paper Culture to be less expensive than some of the other brands we looked at, specifically Tiny Prints and Minted.
The Good:
✔ All products are made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper
✔ Paper Culture offsets the entire carbon footprint of manufacturing and transportation process
✔ Plant a tree with every order, have planted over 1M trees to date! (LOVE THIS!)
✔ Cards and envelopes were of very high quality
✔ Colors printed in a natural tone, not over saturated like some other sites may do
✔ Very reasonable / competitive pricing vs other premium brands
The Bad:
✗ Some UX improvements could be made in the personalization process, as well as when you are uploading addresses for recipient address printing
Our Recommendation:
It’s a BUY! We are very impressed with the quality and commitment to reducing carbon footprint that feels very deeply ingrained in the DNA of Paper Culture — all for a cost that is competitive with other premium brands like Minted, Artifact Uprising or TinyPrints. Paper Culture will be our new go-to for cards and photobooks!
We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!
