What is Scribble and how does it work?
Scribble is a service that writes real handwritten cards and mails them. A machine holds an ordinary ballpoint pen and writes your message on real card stock, one card at a time, in a handwriting style you choose. We then hand-address the envelope, add a US stamp and put it in the mail. Nothing about the handwriting is printed.
On this page
#Written, not printed
The distinction matters, and it is the whole product. A printed card reproduces an image of handwriting: the same ink density on every stroke, the same letterform every time the letter e appears, and a flat surface under your thumb. A written card is made by dragging a pen across paper. The ink pools slightly at the end of a stroke, the pressure varies, and no two cards are identical because a pen never draws the same line twice.
The only thing that is printed anywhere in the process is the artwork on the front of the card, which arrives on the stock before we ever touch it, exactly like any other greeting card. Everything in ink on the inside and on the envelope is written.
#What happens to a card, step by step
Every card, whether you sent one by hand or ten thousand from an automation, goes through the same six steps, and you can see which one it is on from Sent cards or from the API.
| Step | What happens | Status in the API |
|---|---|---|
| Card stock prepared | The printed blank for your chosen design is pulled and staged. | card_stock_prepared |
| Card written | A machine holding a real pen writes your message on the inside. | card_written |
| Envelope addressed | The same machine hand-writes the recipient's address on the envelope. | envelope_addressed |
| Packed | Card into envelope, sealed, matched to its envelope by code. | packed |
| Stamped | A real US stamp, not a printed indicia. | stamped |
| Posted | Handed to USPS. | posted |
After that it is in the mail stream and out of our hands, which is why we quote an arrival window rather than a delivery date.
#The two ways to send
Developers have a third route: the public API sends one card per request, and the inbound hook turns any tool that can POST JSON into a card sender. All three end up in the same production pipeline and on the same Sent cards screen.
#What it costs
One credit is one card, including the card, the envelope, the writing and US postage. Credits start at $6.99 each and fall to $2.45 at ten thousand. There is no subscription and no minimum. See how credits work and the full volume pricing table.
#Where Scribble mails to
The US. Every address is validated as a US address: a two-letter state code and a five-digit ZIP, optionally with a +4. International addresses are not currently accepted through campaigns, automations or the API.
#Common questions
- Is the handwriting real or is it a font?
- It is real, in the sense that matters: a machine holds a physical pen and drags it across the paper, so the ink is real ink and the strokes are real strokes. The letterforms come from a handwriting style you pick, which is why cards from the same account look like they came from the same person.
- Can the recipient tell it was written by a machine?
- It is pen on paper, with the ink variation and the slight imperfection that comes with that, so it does not read as printed. We do not claim a human wrote it, and we would not advise you to either.
- Does Scribble sign the card for me?
- Whatever you type is what gets written, including the sign-off. In a campaign or an automation you can put a sender name in with a merge field so the same message signs off correctly for each team member.
- How long does a card take to arrive?
- The soonest a single card can arrive is seven working days from the moment you send it, and we quote a three-day arrival window rather than a single date because USPS transit is not deterministic. Ask for an exact day and the window collapses to that day, at the cost of one extra working day of production lead time.
- Can I send just one card?
- Yes. There is no minimum. One credit buys one card at the $6.99 rate, and the same wizard that schedules four thousand cards will schedule one.
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