The online invitations and eCards market will only get bigger. There are the basic invitations for party and social events, but is that all? Well no. Just like most of the internet markets, people can come up with other uses; sometimes weird, sometime very innovative.

eCards can be a good way to remind someone of an important date, like reminding your forgetful brother of your parents anniversary in a couple days. Of course you could just send an email or make a phone call or a text message or just hope he remembers. However a nice colorful eCard can be a much better incentive.

Any message that can be delivered by any usual method can also be delivered by an eCard, well except for that box of valentines candy. A just to say “Hi” message may be more appropriate with an eCard than a traditional email or text message, provides a little more sincerity to your communication.

You could use eCards in your business relationships for greeting cards, special promotions, employee events and employee gift certificates. Send an eCard for special announcements like employee of the month or top sales person or receipt of new contract. Could eCards take the place of the company newsletter, at least for small companies?

eCards can be for any announcement, maybe you want to inform you family members throughout the country that you are expecting a baby in a few months. See where I am going? I would like to get others to come up with a few different, off the wall and just good ideas for an eCard. Maybe, just maybe there are some good reasons to be sending and receiving announcements via an eCard.

The online eCard and invitation market is large with many different players. Many of these players are well financed and many are companies that have been producing greeting cards for decades. There are two companies that I want to compare. The first is Evite, a heavyweight that has been around for a few years. The second is Pingg, a new site with some promising ideas. My goal here is not to provide an in-depth analysis of each but to provide a brief high level comparison that is hopefully informative. If you need more information, please visit their site.

Evite.com

According to their web site; Evite.com has “more than 15 million registered users and is the top online destination for invitations. A free service, Evite.com estimates it saves party planners millions of dollars in paper invitations and postage each month. With party-planning tools and content, the site helps hosts be more successful while saving even more money and time.”

Evite tries to be a lot more then just a place to send eCards. It has several party planning tools like checklist, budget estimator, drink calculator (not sure how well this one works) and a notebook to keep your ideas and lists documented.

Evite also provides many different eCard templates based upon different occasions. One new feature is the photo center to save your party photographs.

Evite was launched in 1998 as part of Interactive Corp, an American media company with 60 different brands. Other parts of the company are USA Networks, Hotels.com, uDate.com, LendingTree, Hotwire, RealEstate.com, GetSmart, Ticketmaster, Expedia, TripAdvisor, ServiceMagic, and Ask.com; just to name a few.

Evite has long been established as a primary online invitation site. But as with the internet, nothing stays the same very long.

Pingg.com

Pingg is in the same market as Evite but on the other end of the spectrum. Pingg.com was launched in early 2008 and plans to bring online invitations up-to-date with today’s technology or Web 2.0 in geek speak. The big differentiator is that “pingg has No Advertising cluttering up our website or your invitations.” Pingg makes their money on optional services like print and mail invitations, additional original invitation designs, gift registries, mobile communication and ticket services.

Pingg has focused more on the appearance of the invitation then many of their competitors. From their official press release; “For style conscious hosts everywhere… No more juvenile clip art. No more intrusive and inappropriate banner ads surrounding dinner party invitations. Fully customizable event web pages that include photos, video, collect money functionality, gift registries, etc.. You choose — it’s your personal event webpage.”

Pingg is one to keep watching over the next few months; maybe they have closed the gap between cheap looking email invitations and rich looking snail mail invitations. I have nothing against email or internet services, I would actually prefer to receive mail, notifications and many other types of communication via the internet; as long as the correspondence gives the right amount of information with appropriate atmosphere and no ads on my invitations.

I have often wondered who exactly used online eCards and invitations. This is usually a free service that makes it very easy to send a card or invitation for just about any event, all you need is an email address. You don’t have to buy or make invitations, address envelopes or pay for postage; some big advantages over the costly snail-mail approach. So this at least implies that the typical user of an online eCard or invitation is lazy and cheap? If you want to spend the least amount of time and money, use one of the many free online services. Well maybe!

I suppose there may be a few other reasons like the cost of buying and mailing a card is just too high for a simple party invite. Just to send a reasonably nice card to 20 people will hit your pocket book for around $60 plus a couple hours of time. Or maybe your invitation information needs to get to the potential guests quickly for an event happening in a couple days. I would also suggest that for many of these people, the type of event will play a part in the decision on how to invite the guests; most people will not send free online invitations to a formal wedding, but some do.

Some of the online sites offering free eCards and invitations are shown below with their estimated monthly visits:

evite.com - 5,700,000

americangreetings.com - 7,700,000

bluemountain.com - 2,700,000

123greetings.com - 3,800,000

sendomatic.com - 24,000

mypunchbowl.com - 94,000

crush3r.com - 7,900

pingg.com - 3,100 (the newest of the group)

Some interesting numbers is that a typical user of Evite is female between 25 and 50 years of age, a household income between $60,000 and $120,000 and a college graduate. While American Greeting Cards, which is a much older company that offers this product plus much more, has a user base of older females 45 to 65 years of age, income of less than $60,000 and not a college graduate. Crusher has the youngest users, 18 to 30 years of age, male (male??) and income of less then $40,000. Pingg is the up and coming site with new technology and ideas.

Anyway the question should be asked; “Would you rather receive an invitation to a birthday or anniversary party by email or by the US postal service?” I see the online invitations good for a “stop by our backyard barbeque on Friday” as being OK but if you send me an invitation by email to a 50th anniversary party, don’t expect much of a gift! It’s difficult for me to take any invitation serious when it comes with product advertising.