Love Envelope and Minted, compared.
Minted prints beautiful paper. This is the comparison between a real card in a real envelope and one link, and it is mostly a question about the postbox.
Minted is a print shop and a good one. The designs come from a marketplace of independent artists, the paper stocks are real choices rather than a dropdown, and what arrives is a card somebody can hold. If you want printed invitations, this is one of the two or three places worth ordering them from.
Printed invitations carry a set of costs that have nothing to do with the design. The print bill scales with the guest list. Postage scales with it again, twice if you enclose a reply card. Proofing and printing take weeks, so the whole thing has to be finished a long way ahead of the day. And any change after that, a moved venue, a corrected time, a name spelled wrong, is a reprint and a second round of postage.
Love Envelope is the same ceremony without the press and the postbox. The design is chosen, the words are yours, the invitation arrives sealed and is opened, and it costs one payment however many people you send it to. What it is not, and never claims to be, is a thing on the mantelpiece.
Side by side.
Paper against a link, with the parts that are usually forgotten until the invoice.
What you pay
Love Envelope$100 once, whatever the list.
MintedPer card. Their classic invitation starts near $2.34 each at a hundred, so roughly $234 of printing before anything else.
Cost per guest
Love EnvelopeNothing.
MintedYes, and it is the main cost. A hundred cards is a hundred cards.
A website with it
Love EnvelopeNot offered. The invitation is the whole product.
MintedFree, and a decent one, with a custom address at $15 a year and stationery credit for building it.
Postage
Love EnvelopeNone. It is a link.
MintedBoth ways if a reply card is enclosed.
How long it takes
Love EnvelopeAn evening, and it is live the same night.
MintedProofing and printing, so weeks rather than hours.
Changing something afterwards
Love EnvelopeEdit it, and everybody who already has the link sees the new version.
MintedA reprint and a second round of postage.
Replies
Love EnvelopeOn the invitation, collected for you, with names and dietary notes.
MintedReply cards to be posted back, chased and typed up by hand.
What a guest keeps
Love EnvelopeA link that still works, and a screenshot.
MintedA real card, which is the whole argument for it.
The seal, the envelope, the moment
Love EnvelopeAll present, on a screen. It arrives sealed and is opened.
MintedPresent, in the way only paper manages.
Their public pricing was last read on August 22, 2026. Prices move, and theirs is the page that decides what you pay them, so check it before you decide anything.
What Minted does better.
It gives somebody an object. A card with a texture, in an envelope, with a stamp on it, arriving on a Tuesday, is a genuinely different experience from anything on a screen, and for a lot of families it is a large part of the point. The artist marketplace is excellent and the printing is properly done: letterpress, foil, thick stock, deckled edges, things that only exist on paper. If the invitation is meant to be kept in a drawer for thirty years, that is not something a link can do, and no amount of good design here changes it.
Where the difference actually shows.
Four costs of the printed route that are real and are almost never in the first budget.
The reprint nobody plans for
Venues move, times shift, a surname is spelled wrong on the proof and spotted after delivery. On paper each of those is the whole print run again. On a link it is a correction that takes a minute and reaches everybody who already has it.
Chasing the reply cards
A posted reply card has to come back, and about a third of them will not without a phone call. That is a fortnight of admin during the busiest month of the whole thing.
The week at the press
Printing has to happen a long time before the day, which means the wording and the details have to be finished a long time before the day. Anything still undecided has to be decided early or left off.
What is genuinely lost
The object. Nothing here pretends otherwise. What is kept is the envelope, the seal, the paper texture and the moment of opening, all of which exist in the product, and none of which needs a press.
Which of the two to use.
This one is a values question more than a features question.
You would rather put the print and postage budget into the day, the list is long or still changing, and you want the replies to come back by themselves.
The card on the mantelpiece is part of what you are buying, the list is settled, and the weeks and the budget for printing are both there.
Worth reading either way.
Guides on wording, timing and replies that apply whichever of the two you end up using.
- Invitation wording when parents are hostingThe host line is the first sentence of an invitation and the one that causes the most family conversation. Every version of it, including the awkward ones.6 min read
- Anniversary party invitation wordingWording for a fortieth, a sixtieth, one thrown by the children, and a quiet one for two. Including the line that gets the older guests to reply.5 min read
- Adults only wording that nobody takes badlyHow to say no children without sounding cold, where to put the line, and what to do about the guest who asks anyway.5 min read
- Vow renewal invitation wordingYou are not getting married, you are saying it again on purpose. Wording for ten years, twenty five, and the ones that follow something hard.5 min read
- Reception only invitation wordingInviting somebody to the party and not the ceremony, without it reading as a second tier. The wordings that work and the ones that sting.5 min read
- Destination wedding invitation wordingYou are asking guests for money, time off and a flight. The wording has to do more work, and it has to arrive much earlier.6 min read
$100, once.
One payment for one invitation, and the link stays online permanently with the replies behind it.
Asked and answered.
What people ask when they are deciding whether to print at all.
Plenty of couples do, and it is the cheapest way to have the object. Print a small run for the people who would want one, grandparents usually, and send the link to everybody else.
Almost all of them will, because it opens in any browser with no app and no account. For the few who will not, print the page or read it to them and enter the reply yourself, which takes about ten seconds.
Only if it looks it. A formal invitation is formal because of the wording, the typesetting and the restraint, and all three are available here. It is the clipart and the novelty fonts that read as informal, not the screen.
Print the invitation page itself, or order a small run of cards from a printer for the couple of people who want one. The link stays where it is, and the two do not conflict.
Tell us if any of this is wrong.
Their prices are theirs to change, and a page quoting them is only as good as the day it was read.
Spotted something out of date about Minted?
If a price has moved, a feature has been added or dropped, or something here reads as unfair, write and say so. It gets checked against their own pages and corrected, and the date printed under the table moves with it. A note from the service being written about is as welcome as one from a couple.
Contact usNothing on these pages is paid for. No service here has paid to be included, written about or left out.
Other comparisons
The rest of the field, one page each.
- Paperless PostDigital invitations, paid for in coins and spent per recipient.
- GreenvelopeOnline invitations for weddings, priced by the size of the guest list.
- EviteFree party invitations supported by advertising, with paid tiers to remove it.
- ZolaA whole wedding planning suite, with a free website and a registry at the centre of it.
- JoyA free wedding website, guest app and digital invitations, funded by paper and the registry.
- The KnotA wedding marketplace and planning suite, with a free website inside it.
- Appy CoupleA wedding website and native guest app, charged by the year or the month.
- PunchbowlSubscription online invitations and cards, aimed at parties rather than weddings.
- CanvaA design tool. It makes a picture of an invitation and leaves the sending to you.