This post contains affiliate links and/or links to my own products. I never recommend anything I don’t love or wouldn’t use myself.
As a professional stationery designer I know a lot about printing and often recommend online printers to my clients when I’m not printing them myself. For this series on wedding invitations, I did a complete review of the most popular companies available to print wedding invitations. I ordered samples and compared them in terms of quality, price, speed, and extras. Here’s my honest review of Zazzle and whether I think it’s a good choice for your wedding invitations.
When compared to other wedding invitation services, I found Zazzle to be a pretty good option for wedding stationery. Their designs and quality don’t always justify the higher than average price. But if you’re looking for matching extras or to print your own template, they offer the most variety of products, and frequently run discounts.
They are missing some premium services like envelope addressing which makes them a good but not the best choice for couples who want a full-service offering. And because of their marketplace format, your design quality varies by the designer you’re working with and whether they’ve developed full product lines.
Because Zazzle offers thousands of print-on-demand products, it might be worth it for some brides to be able to put their designs on everything and have a completely cohesive look from save the dates to wedding favors to keepsakes. Their quality, price and shipping options are all close to average for the category.
Is Zazzle Trustworthy?
I personally haven’t had any issues with my Zazzle orders. They have been in business for 16 years and are located in the United States. They don’t have great reviews for their customer service on Better Business Bureau with shipping delays and misprints listed as commonly cited concerns.
While they’re a legitimate business I would leave plenty of time to order from them and not leave it until the last minute in case something goes wrong. If you’re looking for your best last minute option, I recommend your local Walmart Photo center for that because you can receive printed invitations in as little as a few hours. Here’s more information about ordering from Walmart for your wedding invitations.
Price
Zazzle costs more than the average printing company. The typical cost for 100 invitations with envelopes is $132, compared to the average of $118. What you get for this higher price is better quality than the closest competitor in VistaPrint. But I don’t think the quality is higher than a Shutterfly or Walmart Photo, which is less than half the price.
They do offer discounts frequently just like most businesses in this space. So depending on when you order, your price may be lower than that. Here’s a sample of what the competition charges for 100 invitations with white envelopes.
| Company | Price for 100 Standard Invites and Envelopes |
| Zazzle | $132 |
| Vistaprint | $142 |
| Magnet Street | $276 |
| Walmart Photo | $46 |
| Average of 12 Most Popular Companies | $118.80 |
Trending Designs
Because Zazzle is a marketplace full of designers selling their custom work, you’ll find all kinds of themes represented here. We took at look at Etsy’s guide to wedding trends for 2022 to see if they had those themes represented.
We found everything from royalty-inspired to bows to bright and colorful designs on the platform. They even have some all-in-one designs with a tear-off RSVP card.
Is Zazzle good quality?
The quality of Zazzle printing is good. We saw no major issues with the sample we ordered. And it was significantly better than the VistaPrint samples we received. You can read our full review of VistaPrint here. The quality is not as good as some of the higher priced alternatives like Minted or Magnet Street.
You can pay more to upgrade the quality of the paper and add finishes like gold foil to increase the look and feel of your invitations. But then you’re closer in price to the more luxury options. And at that rate you might as well order from somewhere that has higher baseline standards.
Wedding Website
Zazzle does not offer a free wedding website as one of their services. This is not a deal breaker for most couples because you can get a free wedding website through The Knot or Zola. But if you were hoping to match your wedding invitations to your website design or collect RSVPs digitally all in one place, you won’t be able to do that through Zazzle.
Matching Day of Items
Zazzle has great options to add on everything from menus to wine labels to customized mason jars. Everything will match the design of the invite you chose and they make it easy to find. You can click on any design to see the full collection of matching items. Here’s the full list of different options for one of the designs we looked into:
- Save the Date Postcards
- RSVP Card
- Details Card
- Envelope
- Thank You Cards
- Engagement Party Invites
- Invitation Flyers (a lower cost option for invites)
- Bridal Shower Invite
Unfortunately the options vary from design to design. Because a lot of the designs on Zazzle are from independent designers, one designer may decide to fill out an entire line of products while another might stop after a few of the most common options.
But if you find that something is missing there’s a hack to transfer the design to any of their custom products like wine bottles, signs, bumper stickers, t-shirts, and we’d keep going but I could literally fill up this entire blog post with all of the possibilities.
If you want to check it out, take a look here at the 1,600+ products available to customize.
Does Zazzle print envelopes?
Zazzle does not print addresses on the envelopes for you. They will print a return address on an envelope for an additional fee.
You can add your return address on your envelopes and pick from several designs and envelope colors to customize your envelopes a little bit. There is an added cost of $0.80-$1.00 per envelope to order a custom envelope with your return address or design.
Adding your return address is definitely convenient but there are plenty of ways to do this cheaper than $1 per envelope. You can buy a personalized stamp like this one from Etsy and be able to add your retrun address to envelopes for years with it.
You’ll then still need a solution for guest addresses. It’s not hard to print these yourself at home with your computer and standard inkjet or laser printer. I will caution you though that certain envelopes from Zazzle won’t work with an inkjet printer.
I learned this the hard way recently with a client. I ordered custom colored envelopes that were sold out everywhere else and upgraded to linen because I wanted a nicer texture. Unfortunately, the linen envelopes don’t accept ink very well and smudged any time I tried to print on them. Lucky for me, I run a printing business out of my home so I have a laser printer that was able to print on the envelopes just fine.
Free Samples
Zazzle does not offer free samples. But you can test them out affordably if you have a few weeks before you need to send out your invitations by just ordering one of your customized design.
I wish I could tell you that will only cost you a dollar or two for one invitation. Unfortunately, they still charge you $6.99 for shipping. That is a RIDICULOUS cost to ship one invitation. They could ship it to you in an envelope for the cost of a stamp so I’m not totally sure why they charge you full price for shipping other than to deter you from ordering small quantities.
Despite the high cost of shipping, it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind. If you have the time, no matter which printer you choose, getting a sample of how it looks is a good idea. In this case it will be a custom sample so you can see exactly how your invitations will look and can correct any mistakes before you order 100+ invitations.
Speaking of expensive shipping, Zazzle does offer a way to cut down on shipping costs through a membership program. They call this membership Zazzle Black.
What’s Zazzle Black?
Zazzle Black is a paid subscription service that gives you access to free shipping, discounts, and other perks. It costs $9.99 a year for free standard shipping or $39.99 a year for free premium shipping.
I recommend purchasing Zazzle Black if you plan to place at least two orders with Zazzle for your wedding. They offer a free 30 day trial of Zazzle Black which is a pretty great deal as you’ll get free shipping on your order and you can cancel it within 30 days if you don’t think you’ll use it again.
For two orders, shipping would cost you $34 so you save $24 if you purchase Zazzle Black for standard shipping with your first order. For Zazzle Black Premium, premium shipping cost $23.99 so you’ll save $8 after two orders and get all of your purchases 2-3 days after they are manufactured. This can save you some time but it still generally takes a long time for Zazzle to process orders.
I recently ordered blank envelopes for a client because I needed a certain color that was sold out everywhere else. It took two weeks for me to receive those envelopes, which was crazy. And that was WITH me paying extra for shipping through Zazzle Black Premium. Nothing was being printed on them so I don’t know why it took so long to process.
Final Recommendation
Zazzle is best for couples who want the largest variety of designs and product options. The quality is decent for the price and they offer some additional services like return addresses and design consultations. If you’re thinking about purchasing from Zazzle for your wedding, take a look at my favorite designs here.
They are not, however, my personal first choice for quality of invitations and design. The best quality invitations can be found at Minted, in my opinion. You can read more about why I love Minted’s printing and designs here.
I do recommend Zazzle as my first choice for printing templates you’ve purchased off Etsy. Mainly because Minted does not offer custom design printing, but also because Zazzle’s affordability and range of product options makes it best for couples who are doing a little bit of DIY and trying to score a good deal on printing. You can read more about why that is and a full comparison of all of your options here.
Still looking around?
Read our review of Minted and VistaPrint, a higher cost and lower cost option to Zazzle. Minted, I recommend for the highest level of quality and best designs. VistaPrint, I don’t recommend for wedding stationery because of the overall subpar quality.
