The Best Christmas Card List App: What to Look For

The one feature that matters most

Marking a card sent or received has to be instant, from the list, without opening a detail screen. If it takes four taps, you'll stop doing it by December 10th and the app becomes a fancy address book. Look for two buttons per person on the main screen.

Year over year is the real value

A list for one December is a piece of paper. The reason to use an app is what it knows next year: who sent back, who didn't, how many years running. Make sure past years are kept and shown per person, not just as a total.

Watch out for accounts and sync

The most common complaint in card-app reviews is lost data: lists that vanish after an update, edits that don't stick, an iPhone and iPad that never agree. Almost every one of those traces back to an account-and-sync layer. If you only use one phone, an app that stores the list on the device with no login has nothing to go wrong.

MerryList is accountless on purpose. There is nothing to sign into and nothing to sync. Your list lives on your phone.

Nice to have: labels, envelopes, and a message helper

Once the list exists, the app should get you through the season: Avery 5160 labels or printed #10 envelopes for the people you haven't mailed yet, and a way to turn a rough note into a card-ready message when you're twenty envelopes in and out of words. Contacts import so you're not typing addresses, and a CSV export so the list is never trapped.

Pricing that makes sense for a once-a-year app

You'll open this app for about six weeks a year. A monthly subscription is the wrong shape for that. Look for free-for-the-basics with a one-time upgrade. MerryList is free for unlimited people and $4.99 once for Pro, no renewal ever.

FAQ