Review and Giveaway: MyPunchbowl (CLOSED)

As in many areas of life, there are two kinds of people. Those who remember birthdays and special occasions without fail – and those who don’t. Well, then there are the people like me – who may have your birthday down on my calendar, see the reminders that pop up beforehand, think to myself 26 times, “oh I need to send a card/buy a gift/write an e-mail to so-and-so”. And then realize the day afterward that I’ve missed the birthday completely and think that there’s still time to send a belated card/gift/e-mail. Until a week or two later when I give up altogether and pretend that I simply forgot.

Sound familiar at all? Well the fact that I happen to be married to someone who’s exactly like me in this regard doesn’t really help matters any. So if we’ve missed your birthday, anniversary or other special day – don’t worry, we remembered. The day, that is. We simply forgot to do anything about it.  Sigh.

I’m happy to report that there is potential help for this particular affliction. It’s an event planning site called MyPunchbowl.

What it is:

MyPunchbowl offers the ability to personalize your events and send customized eCards to your friends and family members as the most personal way to help celebrate life’s milestones. Not only can you create your own online invitations, but the site allows you an easy way to poll invited guests for the ideal date, import guest lists, manage RSVPs, designed personalized favors and more. The site’s Birthday Reminders also provide a dependable way to keep track of those birthdays and important dates to help you remember them in plenty of time.

There are several levels of membership available on the site – from a basic free account, to paid Plus and Premium ones that give you ad-free invitations and eCards, access to technical support, premium designs, additional fonts, papers and ribbons as well as special offers from site partners.

With a Premium account, you can customize your invitations and eCards for just about any event and add your own photos and video to the design that you choose and customize with various fonts and colors. Planning a wedding, graduation party or shower? Use MyPunchbowl’s award-winning event planning section to manage everything from guest lists, RSVPs, and checklists to sharing event photos and memories afterward.

The birthday reminder service ties seamlessly with other social networking sites. You can sign up for the service using your Facebook account, and use both Facebook and Twitter to collect birthdays. Then just organize your birthday reminders into groups (which you can share with others if you want to) and customize your settings to specify exactly when and how often you want to be reminded.

Courtesy of MyPunchbowl I received a one-year Premium membership to try out and review the service.

Here’s my take on it:

Any kind of service to help me get (and stay!) more organized is a good thing to begin with. And I love how with MyPunchbowl, you not only can save birthday information and get reminders – but also design and send eCards right from the same site. I like sending eCards to my family and friends who have e-mail – even along with a paper card – because it’s always nice to find a fun surprise in your inbox on your birthday. And it’s usually much easier to sit at the computer to send a card than remembering to buy, sign, address, stamp and mail a paper card.

I would have loved this site back when I was planning our wedding! I kept track of expenses, guests, etc. in a series of databases and spreadsheets that I had to keep on floppy disks (pre flash drives) to take back and forth from home to work since I got a lot done on my lunch hours. One huge benefit of MyPunchbowl is that it’s all on the web – so you can access your account from any Internet-connected computer and not have to worry about which version of the data is more recent or forgetting to copy information over (not to mention losing disks or drives). The site’s interface is very user-friendly and I love how you can use your existing contacts and social networking sites to request birthdays and import information.

The only thing I would love to have that I couldn’t find on the site is the ability to schedule eCards in advance. I’d love to be able to design a card and set it up a few days or a week beforehand to be sent on the correct day. That way I can take care of things while I’m thinking about it and not have to chance that I’ll miss a reminder or not be able to get to my computer the day of.

The bottom line:

MyPunchbowl offers the ability to not only keep track of important dates, but also a way to acknowledge them by sending customized eCards or invitations (along with personalized gifts or party favors) and even planning the details of family gatherings or other events. Birthday reminders help you to never miss another special day and by using your existing contacts you can easily import them in without having to re-enter information that already exists elsewhere. And in their forums you can get party planning tips, advice and ideas for all kinds of celebrations.

Where can you find it?:

The site is located at http://www.mypunchbowl.com. A Standard membership is free, a Plus account costs $29.95 (right now on special for $14.95) and a Premium account costs $49.95 (on special for only $29.95).

Would you like to try it?:

I have two one-year Premium memberships to MyPunchbowl to give away to two lucky readers! If you’d like to be reminded of your loved ones’ birthdays and also be able to send customized eCards and easily plan your family’s activities, here are the rules:

1. Enter by visiting the MyPunchbowl site and leaving a comment here to let me know what your favorite feature is. Please don’t just say ‘choose me’, or your entry will be discarded.
2. The contest will run until Monday, July 13th at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected through random drawing, contacted by e-mail, listed on this post and also submitted to PRIZEY. US entries only, please.
3. Please leave a valid e-mail address or other way to contact you! If you don’t wish to leave your e-mail address, please make sure that you leave a unique name and check back with PRIZEY to see if you won. If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen by random drawing.
4. If you’d like extra entries, you can:

• Subscribe to my RSS feed (click on the orange icon in the upper right sidebar) or subscribe via e-mail – leave me a separate comment to let me know.
• Mention this contest on your blog with a link back to this post, and leave a separate comment with the link to your post so I can find it.
• Either Twitter about, ‘Digg’ or ‘Kirtsy’ this post – leave me a separate comment with your username at whichever site(s) you chose (one extra entry per method).
• Take my survey! Leave a comment to let me know. Even if you’ve previously taken it, just leave the comment and you’ll get the extra entry.

So that’s a total of 7 comments/entries if you do all of the extra entry options.

Good luck! 

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – the random number generator has chosen comments #1 and #5 as the winners:

Congratulations to:

• Cecile (who said),  “I like that there are so many designs to choose from!“
• Annette (no blog) who said, “I like the Share photos and videos with your guests after the party feature.“

I will be e-mailing you both shortly to work out the details!

This post courtesy of: MyPunchbowl. No payment or compensation, other than product samples as described above, was received for this post.