There are three reasons why you may want to send emails as paper letters using snail mail:

1. Your relatives live in remote villages where they don’t have computers let alone access to Internet.
2. our grandparents know computers but they’ll probably feel more happy if you could send them emails and photographs in printed form.
3. You are trying to reach a busy person who gets a few hundred email messages per day. Your email may get lost in the clutter but if you take the snail mail approach, chances are high that he or she will at least read your message if not respond to it.

How to Send Email as Snail Mail?

Print your email message, insert it into an envelope, rush to the nearest post office, buy some postage stamps and drop the letter in a post box.

Well that’s one of the option but it involves too much work so we’ll shift attention to some automated email to snail mail services that enable us to send paper mail right from the computer at our home.

These web based letter printing and dispatching services work more or less the same way. You send then an email or upload the document as Word or PDF on to their servers, make the payment online and they’ll send the letter via regular postal mail to the specified physical address.

Email to Postal Mail Services - A Comparison

Pricing

Colored Printing

Payment Options

What’s Unique?

Postal Methods

$1 for US addresses and $1.5 for international addresses

No

Credit Cards

More useful for bulk mails as price decreases with volume

Mail a Letter

$1 for US addresses and $2 for international addresses

Yes

Credit Cards, PayPal, Google Checkout

You can add a self addressed envelope with the letter

Postful

$1 for US addresses and $1.5 for international addresses

Yes

Credit Cards, PayPal, Google Checkout

You can send colored photos as postcards

EZGram

$1 for US addresses and $1.6 for non-US addresses

Yes

Credit Cards and PayPal

Supports USPS Priority Mail for quick delivery

L-Mail

Around $1 - depends on country

No

Credit Cards and Debit Cards

Supports Braille and audio letters

Click 2 Mail

Recommended for bulk mail

Yes

Credit Cards

Supports Product Flyers, Booklets and Postcards

Email 2 Postal

$1 for US addresses

No

Credit Cards

Supports handwritten envelopes and greeting cards

PC 2 Paper

$0.8 for UK and $1.5 for non-UK addresses

Yes

Credit Cards, Paypal and Nochex

Offers a real UK based postal address for incoming post

All the web based post mail services discussed above let you send letters from anywhere in the world to any other destination. There are some country specific services like Via Post (for UK), Pixel Letter (for European Union), Snail Mail Me (for Canada) and India Post (for residents of India) that may turn out to be cheaper if are sending letters to any of these countries.

Also, of the services listed above, only L-Mail has offices (or rather printing stations) in quite a few international locations (including Mumbai in India) and thus it can deliver mails more quickly (and cheaply) depending upon the destination address. And if you insist on sending colored letters or documents, Postful may be a good choice as they don’t charge extra for colored prints.

Related: Tools for a Paperless Office.

Update: I have removed eSnailer from the comparison chart - it’s a free ad supported email to post mail service for US addresses only but some users have reported issues with mail delivery.