E-card vs digital postcard: what's the difference, and which should you send?

People use “e-card” and “digital postcard” as if they mean the same thing. They don’t, quite, and the difference matters more than you’d think. Send a cheery template card from your holiday and it feels like a reminder email. Send a rainy photo from the seafront on someone’s birthday and they’ll wonder whether you forgot.

This guide gives you the honest version: what each one is, a side-by-side table, when to choose which, the etiquette nobody writes down, and how to make sure your gran can actually open the thing.

The short answer

• An e-card is about a date. Birthday, anniversary, Christmas, congratulations. It’s an occasion greeting, usually built from a ready-made design, often with a bit of animation.
• A digital postcard is about a place. It says “here’s where I am, here’s what it’s like, wish you were here”. Usually your own photo and a short message.
• A playable postcard is about both, with a game in the middle. A small game sent as a link, starring your people, titled after where you are, and ending on a postcard with your message on the back.

If the reason you’re sending is on the calendar, it’s a card. If the reason is where you are, it’s a postcard.

What an e-card is

An e-card is the digital cousin of the greeting card in the shop. You choose a design for the occasion, add the person’s name and a message, and send it by email or link. Many have a little animation or music, and a few let you add a photo.

What e-cards are good at:

• Hitting a date. They arrive on the day, even if you remembered at 11pm.
• Covering formal or gentle occasions. Congratulations on a new job, a thank-you to a teacher, get well soon.
• Looking polished with no effort. Someone else did the design.

What they’re less good at is feeling like you. Because the design is shared by everyone who picks it, the only personal part is your message. That’s fine, as long as you actually write one.

What a digital postcard is

A digital postcard is the “wish you were here” note, sent from somewhere. Traditionally it’s a photo plus a few lines: the view from your hotel in St Ives, a soggy walk in the Lake District, the pier at Llandudno with a seagull eyeing your chips.

What makes it a postcard rather than a card:

• It’s place-led. It tells them where you are, not what day it is.
• It’s usually your own photo. Wonky, real and a bit windswept.
• It’s short. A postcard is a wave across the distance, not a letter.
• It doesn’t need an occasion. That’s the lovely bit. “Thought of you” is reason enough.

Postcards also don’t need a holiday. A postcard from your new flat, your first week at uni or your street at home can mean more to someone far away than any beach. Our list of digital postcard ideas has 30 of them.

And then there are playable postcards

A playable postcard is newer and sillier. Instead of a picture, you send a small game. On become.games, Postcard is an occasion in its own right. You pick it, choose a game style (a one-tap flappy flyer, a platformer, an arena battle, a story climber, an endless runner, a kart racer, a beat-’em-up, a survival night, an escape room or a Quest RPG), and fill in the “Where’s it from?” box, which takes up to 24 characters. The game gets titled something like “Greetings from Glasgow”, and the jokes are pre-written with a holiday flavour (and editable).

It has its own Postcard look, too: vintage seaside-postcard art with sunburst skies, pastel houses, bunting and far-off landmark silhouettes. The landmarks are generic cartoon ones rather than the real sights of wherever you are, so the local detail comes from your words. Chip-thieving seagulls and runaway suitcases get in the way, and stamps are there to collect. If the trip calls for something else, any look works with the Postcard occasion, so a ski week can go out in Winter and a festive city break in Christmas.

At the end, a vintage postcard flies in reading “Greetings from Glasgow” in big retro letters, with your message on the back, a stamp and your signature. That’s the bit an e-card can’t really copy.

The people in it are yours: we draw them as cartoon characters from a photo you upload. It’s sent as a link and plays in the browser on any device, with no download.

It’s not for every situation, and it isn’t trying to be. But when the point of the message is “we’re having a laugh and we wish you were in on it”, a game says that better than a photo.

E-card vs digital postcard vs playable postcard: side by side

	E-card	Digital postcard	Playable postcard
Format	Designed card, often animated, sent by email or link	Your photo plus a short message, sent by message or link	A small browser game sent as a link, ending on your message
Effort	A few minutes: pick a design, write a line	A few minutes: take a photo, write a few lines	A few minutes to build, plus uploading a photo for your own characters
Personal feel	Depends entirely on your message	High, because the photo and details are yours	High, because it stars your people and your jokes
Best for	Birthdays, anniversaries, thank-yous, formal or gentle occasions	Holidays, trips, moving away, “thinking of you”	Group chats, families, kids, anyone who likes a laugh
Typical cost	Free to a few pounds, sometimes a subscription	Often free if you send your own photo, more if it’s printed and posted	Free to try with demo characters; a small monthly or yearly plan to draw your own people from a photo (publishing and the permanent link are free), and custom links come with it

None of them is “better”. They’re different tools. The mistake is using one for the other’s job.

When each one is the right choice

Send an e-card when

• It’s a fixed date and you want to be on time: a birthday, an anniversary, Mother’s Day.
• The relationship is a bit more formal: a colleague, a neighbour, a teacher.
• The occasion is gentle or serious and a joke would be wrong. For sympathy, many people still prefer a handwritten paper card, and that’s worth respecting.

Send a digital postcard when

• You’re somewhere and you thought of them. That’s the whole brief.
• Someone’s missing out: a friend who couldn’t make the trip, a grandparent who can’t travel any more.
• You’ve moved, and the people at home want to picture where you are.

Send a playable postcard when

• You want a reaction, not just a “lovely!” reply.
• It’s going to a group chat and you’d like the leaderboard to start an argument.
• Kids are involved, on either end. Children tend to get it immediately.
• The trip had a cast of characters worth immortalising, such as the whole family on a weekend away in Oban or the hen group in Belfast.

Or combine them

There’s no rule saying one per trip. A quick photo postcard on day one, a game on the last night, and a paper card with a QR code printed inside for the grandparents who like something to hold.

Etiquette: the unwritten rules

Pro tip: If you’re sending to one person, send it to one person. A postcard dropped into a 30-person group chat stops being a postcard and becomes an announcement.

• Don’t swap a card for a postcard on a big date. A holiday snap on someone’s 40th, with no mention of the birthday, reads as “I forgot”. Mention the occasion, or send both.
• Don’t send the same message to everyone. Copy-paste is obvious, and it’s always the person you love most who notices.
• Keep the bragging light. “Wish you were here” can tip into “look where I am”. Make it about them: what they’d love, what they’d laugh at.
• Mind the time zone. If someone’s abroad, don’t wake them at 3am with a notification. Schedule it, or wait.
• Ask before turning people into characters. For a playable postcard, everyone in the photo should be happy to be in the game, and photos of children only with a parent’s or guardian’s say-so.
• Reply to postcards you get. Even one line. It keeps the habit alive.

Sending to older relatives

The best postcard in the world is useless if it sits unopened because Grandad doesn’t trust links. A few things that genuinely help:

1. Use the app they already use. If they’re on WhatsApp, send it on WhatsApp. If they only do text, send a text. Don’t introduce a new app for a postcard.
2. Tell them it’s coming. A quick “I’m sending you a postcard, just tap the link” removes the “is this a scam?” moment.
3. Keep it to one or two taps. Photos and links that open straight in the browser are easiest. Anything needing a sign-up, a password or an app store is a dealbreaker for many.
4. Make text big enough. If you’re writing on top of a photo, use large, plain letters on a calm background, or put the message in the text of the message instead.
5. For games, make winning easy. Flappy flyer is one tap, the platformer has big on-screen buttons on phones, the runner runs on its own so they only tap to jump, and you can lower the win level so they reach your message without a struggle.
6. Give them something to hold. Print a QR code inside a paper card. Someone else can scan it for them if needed.
7. Follow up with a call. “Did you get my postcard?” is a lovely excuse to ring.

For more on this, our guide to keeping in touch with grandparents is full of ideas that work across the miles.

What to write in each

An e-card needs the occasion and one personal line. “Happy birthday, Mum. Thank you for teaching me to parallel park and never mentioning the bollard again.”

A digital postcard needs a place, a moment and them. “Greetings from Derry. Walked the whole city walls this morning and found a café that does a scone the size of your head. You’d have had two.”

A playable postcard needs a short message for the back of the postcard, because the game has already done the talking and the front already says where you are. One or two lines: “Wish you were here. The seagulls didn’t.” Edit the in-game jokes too, if you’ve got a better in-joke than ours.

If you’re stuck, our guide on what to write on a postcard has more than 60 example lines, from soppy to silly.

So which should you send today?

Ask one question: why am I sending this? If the answer is a date, send a card, and write a real line in it. If the answer is a place, send a postcard, with a detail only you would notice. If the answer is “because it’ll make them laugh and I want them in on the fun”, send something they can play.

Whichever you choose, the effort that counts is the thinking, not the format. And if you’d like inspiration for a particular town or city, our digital postcards pages have ideas and sample messages for places across the UK.