I am a professional stationery designer so I know a thing or two about printing. I recently did a thorough analysis of the printing landscape, ordering samples from the most popular companies and comparing them in terms of quality, price, speed, and extras. Here’s my honest review of VistaPrint and whether I think it’s a good choice for your wedding invitations.
When compared to other printing and wedding invitation companies like Zazzle, Minted and others, it’s difficult to justify the higher than average price of VistaPrint. In analyzing price, quality, reliability, and extras, VistaPrint is not the best choice for your wedding.
Overall, VistaPrint costs more than the average and delivers less value than the other companies we reviewed. The quality of the invitations and poor reviews from customers don’t put me at ease either. Keep reading to learn more about why I don’t recommend VistaPrint for your wedding stationery needs.
Is VistaPrint trustworthy?
The reviews for VistaPrint are mixed. Personally, I find them trustworthy and reliable. I have ordered from them and received my order on time. Generally, the company is an established printing service that has been in business for over 25 years. They are a legitimate business and listed with Better Business Bureau.
The only hesitation in giving them a full trustworthiness rating is their low score from Better Business Bureau reviews and the consistent complaint that they didn’t deliver orders on time and the customer service team didn’t make it right. When you’re planning a wedding, timeliness is paramount and I wouldn’t recommend a company that gets multiple poor reviews here.
Price
The average price per invitation on VistaPrint is $1.42 for one invitation and envelope. That’s actually 20% above average. Among the comparable competitors, the average price is $1.18 for the same thing.
| Company | Price for 100 Standard Invites and Envelopes |
| VistaPrint | $142 |
| Magnet Street | $276 |
| Walmart Photo | $46 |
| Average of 12 Most Popular Brands | $118.80 |
If you’d like to know where all of the 12 most popular brands for wedding invitations fall, check out our full article on cost comparison.
As of this writing VistaPrint is running a 20% off sale which is not accounted for in the costs above. The reason I didn’t include discounted pricing in this comparison overall is because sales are extremely common in the wedding invitations business. Basically, they are almost always running a 10-20% sale.
If I compared them all on their sale prices, the results would be pretty close. At the end of the day you will likely pay 10-20% less than the prices for any of the companies listed. But it is better to budget based on their base prices just in case you need to order them in the rare timing when a sale isn’t happening.
Trending Designs
VistaPrint does offer on trend options. According to Etsy, the biggest trends in wedding invitations this year are bridal bows, ’60s style, destination-inspired, regency aesthetics, and bright colors. So we compared the list to the designs VistaPrint offers to see if you can order the latest and greatest from them.
Their search filters do a great job in helping you find items related to the theme you’re looking for. For example, there’s a category for destination, or bold & colorful. At a quick glance most of the trends above seem to be covered well with hundreds of options to suit your taste and wedding theme.
Is VistaPrint good quality?
Now I get into why I truly don’t recommend VistaPrint. It’s better than your average home printer and maybe your local Staples but compared to the major players in the wedding invitation space, the quality just isn’t there.
In general, VistaPrint looks and feels like a lower quality product when compared to their direct competitors such as Zazzle and lower cost options like Shutterfly.
Here’s an example. I ordered samples from them and a number of other companies. The VistaPrint ones are noticeably lower quality. The ink is rubbing off the page onto the envelope and other pages they sent me. The paper feels lower quality and is thinner. (And these were their more premium paper offerings.)
The thank you card sample they sent me was also scored incorrectly, with the front edge being slightly longer than the back edge. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in their products.
Given that VistaPrint is already more expensive than average, this doesn’t seem like a great solution to me. Maybe the samples are purposefully lower quality items that they are trying to offload but that doesn’t make me want to pay or upgrade to a better quality paper option hoping that it will be better.
Wedding Website
VistaPrint does not offer any options to add on a wedding website or collect RSVPs digitally.
I’m not surprised by this because VistaPrint is not primarily a wedding company or a software company. It is not a mandatory to have your wedding website through the invitation company as you can get a free wedding website from many other places such as the Knot or Zola. But if you wanted an all-in-one solution with a website that matches the design of your invitations for a cohesive look, you’re out of luck.
Matching Day Of Items
VistaPrint does offer some options for matching items. They don’t offer as many options as some other companies do but they have a decent amount. VistaPrint offers the following items for weddings:
- Save the Dates (invites or magnets)
- RSVP Cards
- Reception Cards
- Enclosure Cards
- Programs
- Place Cards
- Menus
- Thank You Cards
We took a look at one of the designs we liked to see if you can get items in every single category that feature the same design.
They unfortunately don’t make it easy to find all of the corresponding items in the same design. You have to manually click through all of the categories and scroll through sometimes multiple pages of items to find it. There aren’t any titles to the designs so you can’t use the search bar to populate all of the designs with the same name.
For the design we chose, it wasn’t even sorted to be on the same page. For example, it was on the first page of invitations but depending on what item we chose was on the 1st, 2nd or even 7th page of results.
This is such a huge customer experience miss and a big business miss for them. Instead of showcasing all of the matching options you have to create a cohesive design for your wedding, they make it somewhat difficult to gather all of the options and purchase them.
Does VistaPrint print addresses on the envelopes?
VistaPrint does not print on the addresses for you. They don’t even offer it as an upgraded service.
You can add your return addresses on your envelopes and pick from several designs to make your envelopes stand out a bit more. There is an added cost of $0.43 per envelope to add your return address or design.
Free Samples
VistaPrint does offer free samples to see for yourself how the quality is. You can order them here to see for yourself.
I found VistaPrint to have the worst quality samples. The only item they sent me in the standard card stock was a small business-card sized place card. Everything else was one of their more premium options. And even on the more premium paper there was a lot of ink smudged on the envelopes they included. Items were bent or wrinkled when they arrived. Overall the impression was that their product is not as good as the other options for wedding stationery.
Final Recommendation
Generally, I don’t recommend VistaPrint for your wedding stationery. The price is higher than average. The quality is lower than average. They don’t have as many options for extras like addressed envelopes or matching accessories. And reviews from other customers say they are unreliable in terms of shipping and fixing customer service issues.
If you’re looking for better options, stay tuned for our full review of the most popular options and who we recommend.
