Simply Noted vs Thanks.io
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
Still shortlisting? Browse the best in Corporate Gifting & Direct Mail for every option we track, with award winners called out.
The short answer
Both sides assessedSimply Noted compared with Thanks.io
Thanks.io needs no prepaid credit block and includes postage in a $1.49 to $3.04 notecard price, but its handwriting is printed rather than pen-written; buy Simply Noted for authentic ink, Thanks.io for the handwritten look at the lowest all-in price.
Thanks.io compared with Simply Noted
Simply Noted uses robots with real pens and sells prepaid credit blocks from $2.76 a card for 100, plus $0.82 postage. Thanks.io prints its handwriting, needs no prepaid block, and includes postage in a $1.49 to $3.04 notecard price. If authenticity of the pen stroke is what you are paying for, Simply Noted is the honest product; if you want the handwritten look on postcards and letters at the lowest all-in price, Thanks.io wins.
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.
Choose Thanks.io if
Small businesses, real estate and mortgage agents, insurance agents, ecommerce brands, and developers who want printed mail with a handwritten look at under two dollars a piece, all-in with postage, with no minimum order and a real API or HubSpot trigger behind it.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Simply Noted | Thanks.io |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Gifting | Gifting |
| Starting price | $2.76 per card (100-credit block, $358 all in with postage) (free trial) | $0 per month with 4x6 postcards at $1.18 each, postage included; Business is $49 per month billed monthly |
| Pricing model | 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. | Prepaid account balance drawn down per piece, with an optional monthly plan that lowers every per-piece rate and unlocks automation. All published rates include printing, handwriting, and US postage. Data services are metered separately per lookup. |
| Free plan | No | Pay as you go: $0 per month, every mailer type except gift cards, full REST API, QR codes and scan tracking, per-recipient personalization, and ThanksAI Studio, at the highest per-piece rates and First Class postage only. |
| Free trial | No free trial; free samples and a first-card offer for email subscribers let you judge the handwriting before buying a block | No time-limited trial; free physical samples and a $10 signup credit (valid 90 days) with no credit card required |
| Best for | 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. | Small businesses, real estate and mortgage agents, insurance agents, ecommerce brands, and developers who want printed mail with a handwritten look at under two dollars a piece, all-in with postage, with no minimum order and a real API or HubSpot trigger behind it. |
| Setup time | 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. | Minutes to a first send: create an account, pick a template or sync a Canva design, type a message, upload a CSV, and pay from the balance. HubSpot or Zapier triggers take an hour or two; a full API integration using test mode is a day or two of developer time. |
| Learning curve | 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. | Low for single sends and uploads. The campaign builder, evenFLOW pacing, and QR scan actions take a session or two to understand, and the harder skill is writing a short message that does not read like an ad printed in a handwriting font. |
| Platforms | Web dashboard, REST API, Zapier | Web dashboard, REST API v2, Product MCP server, HubSpot, Zapier, Make, n8n, Pipedream, Integrately, Pabbly |
| Compliance | Standard US commercial mail handling, No SOC 2 or ISO certification advertised publicly | SOC 2 Type I listed as planned on the vendor's trust page (not yet attested), No HIPAA compliance advertised |
| Founded | 2018 | 2017 |
| Headquarters | Phoenix, Arizona, United States | Two Rivers, Alaska, United States (company mailing address) |
| Ownership | Bootstrapped, founder-owned | Privately held, founder-led |
Strengths and limitations
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.
Thanks.io
Strengths
- Postage is included in every published rate and every rate is published, including international, nonprofit, and data-service prices, which removes the arithmetic most direct mail vendors leave to the buyer.
- No minimum order and a $0 plan: a single 4x6 postcard costs $1.18 delivered, and the per-piece rate does not change with batch size.
- A full REST API, OpenAPI spec, and test mode on the free plan, plus webhooks and an agent-ready MCP server with a mandatory cost preview on paid plans.
- Ten campaign types, QR scan actions that can start the next touch automatically, and a native HubSpot integration that is being actively extended.
Limitations
- The handwriting is printed by a digital engine, not written with a pen, so it fails the smudge test that robot-pen vendors pass.
- No compliance attestation yet: the trust page describes SOC 2-aligned controls on AWS and Cloudflare but lists SOC 2 Type I as planned, and HIPAA is not advertised.
- Gift cards are US-only, require a paid plan, and are the only gift option; there is no gift catalog, swag, or recipient-choice flow.
- Standard Mail on paid plans has no USPS tracking and no return-to-sender, and the vendor's own pages disagree on delivery windows.
Pricing compared
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.
Thanks.io
Prepaid account balance drawn down per piece, with an optional monthly plan that lowers every per-piece rate and unlocks automation. All published rates include printing, handwriting, and US postage. Data services are metered separately per lookup.
- Pay as you go$0
- Business$49
- Professional$199
- EnterpriseCustom
On price per physical touch with postage included, Thanks.io is the cheapest handwriting-look option in this category and one of the cheapest ways to mail anything at all: $0.64 to $1.18 for a 4x6 postcard delivered, with no minimum and no required subscription. The comparison that matters is with the pen-and-robot vendors. Handwrytten's cheapest no-commitment card is $3.75 before postage, so a Thanks.io Professional notecard at $1.49 with postage included is well under half the all-in price. What you give up for that is the pen: the handwriting is printed, and a careful recipient can tell. For postcards, farming mail, and post-purchase cards that trade is easily worth it. For a founder's note to a named enterprise buyer, it may not be. Against Lob and PostGrid the postcard rates are similar or better on the paid plans, and Thanks.io adds handwriting, campaign automation, and HubSpot without a developer.
Editorial verdict on each
Simply 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 profileThanks.io
Thanks.io is the cheapest way in this category to put something in a mailbox that looks handwritten, and the most transparent about what it costs: every rate is published, postage is inside it, there is no minimum order, and a $0 plan lets a solo agent send one postcard for $1.18. The automation is real rather than decorative, with ten campaign types, QR scans that trigger the next step, a HubSpot integration being extended month by month, and an API on the free plan. Two things decide whether it is right for you. First, the handwriting is printed, and the company says so; if the pen stroke is the point, buy Handwrytten or Simply Noted and pay two to three times as much. Second, there is no compliance attestation yet, so regulated senders should look at Lob. For a small business, an agent, or an ecommerce brand that wants trackable, personal-looking mail at postcard prices, it is the first product to try.
Read the full Thanks.io profileSimply Noted profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Thanks.io last reviewed 2026-09-26. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.
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Frequently asked questions
6 questionsWhat is the difference between Simply Noted and Thanks.io?
Thanks.io needs no prepaid credit block and includes postage in a $1.49 to $3.04 notecard price, but its handwriting is printed rather than pen-written; buy Simply Noted for authentic ink, Thanks.io for the handwritten look at the lowest all-in price.
Is Simply Noted or Thanks.io cheaper?
Simply Noted starts at $2.76 per card (100-credit block, $358 all in with postage) (free trial). Thanks.io starts at $0 per month with 4x6 postcards at $1.18 each, postage included; Business is $49 per month billed monthly. The billing models differ, so the entry price is rarely the whole cost. Simply Noted pricing model: 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. Thanks.io pricing model: Prepaid account balance drawn down per piece, with an optional monthly plan that lowers every per-piece rate and unlocks automation. All published rates include printing, handwriting, and US postage.
Does Simply Noted or Thanks.io have a free plan?
Simply Noted has no free plan. Trial terms: No free trial; free samples and a first-card offer for email subscribers let you judge the handwriting before buying a block. Thanks.io has a free plan. Pay as you go: $0 per month, every mailer type except gift cards, full REST API, QR codes and scan tracking, per-recipient personalization, and ThanksAI Studio, at the highest per-piece rates and First Class postage only. Trial terms: No time-limited trial; free physical samples and a $10 signup credit (valid 90 days) with no credit card required.
Who should choose Simply Noted?
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.
Who should choose Thanks.io?
Small businesses, real estate and mortgage agents, insurance agents, ecommerce brands, and developers who want printed mail with a handwritten look at under two dollars a piece, all-in with postage, with no minimum order and a real API or HubSpot trigger behind it.
What are the best alternatives to Simply Noted and Thanks.io?
SaaSTracker profiles 18 products in Corporate Gifting & Direct Mail. The Summer 2026 awards in the category went to Lob (Category Leader), Poplar (Best Value), PostPilot (Momentum). Every profile is compiled from primary sources, so a shortlist can be built from pricing, limitations, and fit rather than from star ratings.
