Handwrytten vs Simply Noted
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Both sides assessedHandwrytten compared with Simply Noted
Both use robots with real pens and both are Arizona companies, so the product is close to identical in kind. Handwrytten sells single cards at $3.75 with no commitment; Simply Noted sells prepaid credit blocks starting at $2.76 a card for 100 or a $497 flat-rate unlimited plan. Choose Handwrytten if you want to test the channel without prepaying anything. Choose Simply Noted if you already know you will send at least a few hundred a month, because its per-card rates fall faster with volume and the unlimited plan is unbeatable above about 560 cards.
Simply Noted compared with Handwrytten
The two are close cousins, both Arizona robotics companies writing with real pens. Handwrytten sells single cards at $3.75 with no commitment and has a much deeper native integration list including HubSpot and Shopify. Simply Noted requires a 100-card minimum but its volume pricing falls faster and its $497 unlimited plan has no equivalent. Start with Handwrytten to find out whether handwritten mail works for you; move to Simply Noted once you are sending several hundred a month and want the rate cut in half.
Choose Handwrytten if
Small sales teams, agencies, real estate and automotive professionals, ecommerce brands, and founders who want a physical touch that costs a few dollars rather than a few hundred, and who already have mailing addresses or can buy them.
Choose Simply Noted if
Teams that already know handwritten mail works for them and send hundreds to thousands of cards a month, especially real estate, hospitality, insurance, mortgage, franchise, and B2B sales operations that want the per-card price driven down and the sends triggered from a CRM.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Handwrytten | Simply Noted |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Gifting | Gifting |
| Starting price | $3.75 per card with no subscription, or $374 per month on an annual Pro plan (free trial) | $2.76 per card (100-credit block, $358 all in with postage) (free trial) |
| Pricing model | Pay per card with no commitment, or buy a monthly platform plan that lowers the per-card rate. Postage is always billed separately at prevailing USPS rates, and gift cards or inserts are billed at face value on top. | Prepaid card credits with published volume tiers, or a flat monthly rate for unlimited notes. Postage is charged separately at $0.82 per card at First-Class rates. |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Free trial | No free trial; free physical samples are offered so you can judge the handwriting before spending anything | No free trial; free samples and a first-card offer for email subscribers let you judge the handwriting before buying a block |
| Best for | Small sales teams, agencies, real estate and automotive professionals, ecommerce brands, and founders who want a physical touch that costs a few dollars rather than a few hundred, and who already have mailing addresses or can buy them. | Teams that already know handwritten mail works for them and send hundreds to thousands of cards a month, especially real estate, hospitality, insurance, mortgage, franchise, and B2B sales operations that want the per-card price driven down and the sends triggered from a CRM. |
| Setup time | Under an hour for a first send. Create an account, choose a card, pick a handwriting style, paste a message, and check out. Connecting Salesforce or HubSpot takes another hour or two, and custom stationery design adds a few days of proofing. | A day or two for a first campaign. Buying credits and uploading a CSV is immediate; custom card design and handwriting selection add a short proofing cycle. Salesforce or Zapier automation takes a few hours of configuration. |
| Learning curve | Low. The dashboard is a card configurator plus a recipient list, and the only genuine skill involved is writing a short note that does not read like marketing copy. Teams that paste their email sequence into the card get poor results and blame the channel. | Low on the tooling and moderate on the strategy. The dashboard is straightforward. The real work is deciding message, timing, and volume tier, and resisting the temptation to write marketing copy on a card that only works because it does not read like marketing. |
| Platforms | Web dashboard, iOS app, Android app, REST API | Web dashboard, REST API, Zapier |
| Compliance | Standard US commercial mail handling, No SOC 2 or ISO certification advertised publicly | Standard US commercial mail handling, No SOC 2 or ISO certification advertised publicly |
| Founded | 2014 | 2018 |
| Headquarters | Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, United States | Phoenix, Arizona, United States |
| Ownership | Privately held, founder-led | Bootstrapped, founder-owned |
Strengths and limitations
Handwrytten
Strengths
- Genuine robotic writing with a real pen on real card stock, built and patented in-house, which survives the thumb-smudge test that printed handwriting fonts fail.
- You can send a single card for under five dollars with no subscription, which is close to unique in a category built on platform fees and annual contracts.
- Deep integration coverage for a company this size: Salesforce, HubSpot, Shopify, Zapier, Make, Integrately, an API, and vertical connectors for automotive dealerships and nonprofit fundraising.
- Custom handwriting and signature replication makes notes from a named person plausible rather than generic, which matters when the recipient knows the sender.
Limitations
- You must have the mailing address. There is no choice link, no email-first flow, and no way to send to someone whose address you do not know, which is the single biggest workflow gap versus the gifting platforms.
- No gift catalog, no recipient choice, no spend approval workflow, and no per-user budget controls, so it cannot serve as a governed company gifting program.
- The monthly plans are expensive relative to the volume most small teams actually send; Pro at $449 needs roughly 255 cards a month before it beats the no-commitment rate.
- Postage is quoted separately everywhere, which makes the advertised per-card prices look better than the real all-in number until you do the arithmetic.
Simply Noted
Strengths
- Fully published volume rate card with per-card, total, and postage figures at seven tiers, which is a level of pricing transparency almost nobody else in corporate gifting offers.
- Real ballpoint pen on paper from a fleet of roughly 225 purpose-built machines with nine patents, so quality holds at volume rather than degrading.
- The $497 flat-rate unlimited plan is the cheapest way to send high volumes of handwritten mail anywhere in this category, and it includes API, CRM, Zapier, and webhook automation rather than gating them.
- Bootstrapped past $10 million in revenue with no outside investment, which means no investor pressure toward enterprise repositioning or a forced price rise.
Limitations
- The minimum meaningful purchase is 100 cards at $358, so you cannot cheaply test whether the channel works for you before committing.
- The unlimited plan's advertised per-note rate assumes a volume most small teams will never hit; below about 560 notes a month it is the wrong plan and the credit blocks are better.
- Integration coverage is thinner than Handwrytten's: Salesforce natively, everything else through Zapier or the API. There is no first-party HubSpot or Shopify connector published on the integrations page.
- No gift catalog, no recipient choice, no spend controls, and no email-first sending, so it cannot serve as a governed gifting program and cannot reach anyone whose address you lack.
Pricing compared
Handwrytten
Pay per card with no commitment, or buy a monthly platform plan that lowers the per-card rate. Postage is always billed separately at prevailing USPS rates, and gift cards or inserts are billed at face value on top.
- Pay as you go$3.75
- Pro$449
- Enterprise$649
- Elite$849
- Agency$2,499
On pure cost per physical touch, Handwrytten is the cheapest credible option in this category for a small team, and the reason is structural: you can spend $3.75 and stop. Gifting platforms charge a platform fee before you have sent anything, and handwritten-note competitors either require a prepaid credit block or a monthly subscription. The monthly plans here are only worth buying above roughly 250 cards a month, and a lot of buyers who sign up for Pro would have been better off on pay as you go for another two quarters. Judged as a note service it is priced fairly; judged as a gifting platform it is not competing, because it is not one.
Simply Noted
Prepaid card credits with published volume tiers, or a flat monthly rate for unlimited notes. Postage is charged separately at $0.82 per card at First-Class rates.
- Prepay 100 credits$2.76
- Prepay 1,000 credits$1.79
- Prepay 10,000 credits$1.15
- Unlimited$497
- Prepay 50,000 credits$0.84
At volume this is the best price per physical touch available in the category, and the flat-rate unlimited plan is genuinely aggressive: above roughly 560 cards a month, one more note costs you nothing but a stamp. That changes behaviour, because teams stop rationing sends. Below a few hundred cards a month the picture inverts. A 100-credit block at $3.58 all in is more expensive than sending single cards at Handwrytten, and the $497 unlimited plan is terrible value at 150 notes. Simply Noted is priced for people who have already validated the channel, and it is honest enough to publish the entire rate card so you can work out where you sit.
Editorial verdict on each
Handwrytten
Handwrytten is the lowest-friction way for a small business to test physical mail, and the pricing structure is the reason. Nobody else in this category lets you spend $3.75, look at what arrives, and decide. The robots write with a real pen, the integration list is unusually deep for a company this size, and gift cards go in the envelope at face value with no platform cut. Buy it if you have mailing addresses and want a cheap, credible physical touch wired into HubSpot or Salesforce. Do not buy it as a gifting program: there is no recipient choice, no address collection, no spend governance, and no way to recover the money when a card goes unopened. And be honest about volume before signing up for a monthly plan, because most teams who buy Pro would have spent less staying on pay as you go.
Read the full Handwrytten profileSimply Noted
Simply Noted is what you buy when you have already proved handwritten mail works and now want the cost per touch driven into the ground. The robotics are genuinely good, the rate card is published in full down to the postage line, and the $497 flat-rate unlimited plan is the most aggressive pricing anywhere in this category above about 560 notes a month. It is not a starter product: the 100-card minimum at $358 makes a cheap experiment impossible, and the unlimited plan is bad value at low volume. It is also not a gifting platform, so if your real problem is that you do not have addresses or you need spend approvals, this solves neither. For a high-volume US sales, hospitality, or franchise operation with addresses in hand and a CRM to trigger from, it is the best-priced serious option on the board.
Read the full Simply Noted profileHandwrytten profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Simply Noted last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.