Letterjoy vs History By Mail: A Comparison

Prospective customers sometimes ask our support team how we compare to Historybymail.com. On this page, we lay out the highlights of the Letterjoy difference.

TL;DR: The short version is that Letterjoy puts in the work to make sure we offer the most educational & fun letter subscription on the market. We do that by poring through offline archives in our home city, Washington, D.C., to find amazing letters, carefully researching each selection, and painstakingly recreating design details in each letter to make sure every letter you receive is beautiful.

We use high-quality papers made in the USA and a real postage stamp to mail every letter. We also do our design and customer service in-house, to make sure that we hit our internal quality bar.

Letterjoy was founded in Illinois in 2017 by entrepreneur Michael Sitver while studying for his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago. We remain proudly American-owned and operated.

Letterjoy's Washington, D.C. office is located within a half hour's walk of the National Archives, the Smithsonian, and the manuscript reading room of the Library of Congress. Proximity to great archives and access to brilliant archivists and historians allows us to find undiscovered gems to share with you.

Every Letterjoy letter is carefully designed to recreate the experience of receiving the original letter, while maintaining readability. We work with an outstanding professional design team to restore faded letterhead, signatures, and other design details.

History By Mail seems to mainly print photo copies of existing letters.

Whether you dream of writing the next great novel, running for office, or pitching your product on Shark Tank, Letterjoy has a collection for you.

We offer a growing list of topic-specific collections: Great Authors, American History, Military History, Science & Innovation, Stoicism, and more.

At Letterjoy, we believe that every element of your experience deserves careful attention. Letterjoy letters arrive at your door on a variety of fine stationeries and parchment-style papers of varying hues and textures, tailored to your letter and, for the most part, milled in the United States.

Each of our letters is mailed to you in a sturdy cream or ivory-colored envelope made in Wisconsin or upstate New York, and sent to your door with a real First-Class stamp.

Letterjoy is the only weekly historic letter service on the market. With Letterjoy, your history buff can receive an interesting piece of mail not just monthly, but weekly. With History By Mail, they'd receive a letter only once a month.