The first is the free board. You start one for a colleague who is leaving, invite the team, and the board stops accepting posts at five. You are now choosing a paid plan with nine people waiting and a leaving date on Friday.

The second is a recurring bill you cannot justify. Somebody in HR notices the company has bought eleven one-off boards this year, or is paying a subscription for a tool used four times a quarter, and asks the reasonable question of why this is not part of the recognition platform already in the budget.

Those are different problems. This guide covers both, and it is honest about which tool fits which. If you want one board for one farewell and you want it printed and posted, Kudoboard is very good at that and nothing below replaces it. If you want group boards to be a normal part of how your company recognises people, the answer is a different shape.

Prices verified against each vendor's own site on 14 September 2026. Check before you buy: everyone in this category changes pricing without notice.

What to compare

Six things decide this, and only two of them are usually on the pricing page.

How many people can post. The single most important number, and the one that breaks the most boards. A limit of 5 or 20 sounds generous until you send the link to a team of 30.

How you buy it. Per board, per seat, or already included in something you own. A per-board price looks cheap once and expensive by the eleventh time.

What a message can carry. Text and photos are universal. GIFs are common. Video is a paid upgrade nearly everywhere.

Whether it can be printed. Some people want a physical book or poster handed over on the day. Only one tool here does that properly.

Who can use it. A consumer product needs nothing but an email address. A workplace tool knows who works at your company, which removes the invite-link chasing but means outsiders cannot post.

What happens afterwards. A board that vanishes when a subscription lapses is a different purchase from one the recipient keeps.

The seven tools

Kudoboard

The category default, and the one everything else gets compared against. Boards are bought one at a time or through a subscription, and the product is genuinely good: the board is attractive, the contributor experience is simple, and the printing is real.

Per-board pricing runs $6.99 for a Lite board capped at 20 posts, $9.99 for Premium at 100 posts, and $19.99 for Milestone with no cap. There are Memorial boards at $99. Subscriptions start at $39 a month or $299 a year, sold in employee bands.

The free board takes 5 posts and cannot be delivered. It is a demo rather than a free tier, which is worth knowing before you build a board on it.

Printing is the real differentiator. A hardbound 7x7 book is $32.99 and ships internationally. Posters start at $20 plus $4 a square foot, with shipping inside the continental US only.

Best for: a one-off board you want printed and physically handed over.
The limitation: the cost model rewards occasional use and punishes making this a habit.

Sendwishonline

The most generous free tier in the category by a wide margin. A free card takes 30 signatures, carries advertising, and works without anyone paying.

Paid cards are $2.99 for unlimited signatures with ads removed, or $5.99 for Premium Plus which adds video messages. Credit packs bring the per-card price down to $0.75 at volume, though credits expire after a year.

Digital only. You can download a PDF and print it yourself, but there is no physical delivery.

Best for: a one-off card for a big team when you do not want to pay anything.
The limitation: the free tier is ad-supported, and the product is built around consumer occasions rather than workplace recognition.

GroupGreeting

Unlimited signers on every card, on every plan, which removes the contributor-cap problem entirely. Cards are bought through annual bundles, and higher tiers add logo branding, multiple user accounts and bulk creation.

Worth flagging honestly: their own support documentation and their pricing page currently quote different per-card prices, and their bundle pricing differs between their own sources. Get a price in writing before committing to a bundle.

There is no free plan.

Best for: a large team where the signer count is the binding constraint.
The limitation: no free tier, and you should confirm pricing directly.

Flaree

Group boards inside a recognition platform, rather than a product you buy for one occasion. This is where I should declare the obvious: this is our product, so weigh what follows accordingly and check it against the alternatives above.

Flareeboard lets anyone in the company post messages and pictures on a shared board for one person, a department, or the whole company. No cap on contributors or messages. When the board is delivered, everyone who wrote on it can receive the cover card and points, once per person, which turns the board from a favour someone organised into part of the recognition record.

Because it runs inside a platform that already knows your people and departments, there are no invite links to distribute or chase. That is also the constraint: contributors need a Flaree account, so you cannot include a client or an alum.

Company-wide boards are in the Free Forever plan. Department and personal boards are part of Advance, at $2 per user per month billed annually, and the full pricing is public. Everything is open during the 90-day trial. More detail on the feature is on the Flareeboard page.

Best for: companies that want group boards to be routine rather than an event.
The limitation: no printing, no video, and everyone posting must work at your company.

Kudos

An established recognition platform with a Celebrations and Cards feature. Their site does not publish pricing, and it does not document whether several people can sign one card, so I cannot tell you whether it solves the group-board problem. Figures circulating on comparison sites are not from Kudos and should not be trusted.

Best for: hard to say without a demo.
The limitation: you have to book a call to learn anything, including the price.

Matter

A recognition platform with a real free tier: kudos, a template library and Feedback Friday at no cost. Paid plans are $1 per user per month for Basic and $3 for Pro, which adds a large rewards catalogue.

It has no group card. Matter's Celebrations feature posts an automated individual message into Slack or Teams on a stored date. Useful, and not the same thing as a board many people contribute to.

Best for: cheap recognition with a strong rewards catalogue.
The limitation: does not solve the problem this article is about. We have a fuller look at the product in our Matter alternatives comparison.

Bonusly

Points-based recognition with a strong feed. Free for up to 8 users, then $3 per user per month, with an AI assistant tier at $5. A 30-day full trial needs no payment details.

It has no group card either. Celebrations create a single post that colleagues comment on. That is closer to a board than Matter's version, and it is still a comment thread rather than something delivered as one object at a chosen moment.

Best for: companies that want points and a lively recognition feed.
The limitation: same as Matter, a thread is not a board. If you are weighing Bonusly itself, our Bonusly alternatives piece goes deeper.

The comparison

Verified 14 September 2026. Prices in USD.

Tool	Free tier	Paid from	Contributor cap	Video	Printing
Kudoboard	5 posts, cannot deliver	$6.99 per board	20 to unlimited by tier	Premium and up	Yes, book and poster
Sendwishonline	30 signatures, ads	$2.99 per card	Unlimited when paid	Premium Plus	No, PDF only
GroupGreeting	None	Confirm directly	Unlimited, all plans	Not verified	Not verified
Flaree	Company boards, free forever	$2 per user/mo	Unlimited	No	No
Kudos	Not published	Not published	Not documented	Not documented	Not documented
Matter	Yes, real free plan	$1 per user/mo	No group card	n/a	No
Bonusly	Up to 8 users	$3 per user/mo	No group card	n/a	No

When Kudoboard is still the right answer

Three cases, and in all of them you should just buy the board.

You want it printed. Nobody else here delivers a physical book or poster. If the plan is to hand someone a bound book at their leaving do, Kudoboard is the only option on this list.

It is genuinely one-off. A single farewell, once a year, from a company that has no recognition platform and does not want one. Ten dollars is the correct amount of thought to give this.

People outside the company need to post. Clients, alumni, a founder who left three years ago. Anything that runs on company accounts locks those people out, and an open link is exactly what you want.

Comparing group card tools? Flaree includes boards free.

Try for free Schedule Demo

Where a recognition platform fits instead

The case for moving this in-house is not that group card tools are bad. It is that the board is usually a symptom.

A company that makes four farewell boards a year is a company where recognition happens in bursts, at exits, organised by whoever cares most. The board is lovely and the pattern underneath it is not. Somebody leaves, everyone writes something warm about what they contributed, and it is the first time most of it has been said out loud.

Group boards inside a recognition platform change what the board costs to make, which changes how often it gets made. Nobody has to expense anything or ask permission. The people are already in the system. And when the board is delivered, the contributors are recognised for contributing, which is the part a standalone tool structurally cannot do, because it does not know who your colleagues are or what your company values.

That is an argument for a recognition programme, not for a board. If you already have one, check whether it does boards before buying a separate tool. If you do not have one, a farewell board is a fine reason to start looking, and a poor reason to buy software on its own. Our buyer's guide to employee recognition software covers what to weigh, and the employee recognition overview is a shorter version of the same argument.

Conclusion

The short version:

For one printed board:* Kudoboard. Nothing else here prints.
For a big team on no budget:* Sendwishonline, 30 free signatures.
For unlimited signers:* GroupGreeting, after confirming their price directly.
For boards as a habit rather than an event:* a recognition platform that includes them.
Matter and Bonusly* are good recognition tools that do not solve this particular problem.

If the eleventh board this year is what brought you here, the tool is not the thing to fix.

Flaree includes company-wide boards on the free plan, and everything else during a 90-day trial with no card required. You can start one or book a walkthrough if you would rather see it first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, but the free options serve different needs. Kudoboard’s free tier is limited to five posts and cannot be delivered, making it more of a demo than a usable board. Sendwishonline offers the most generous free option with 30 signatures, though it carries advertising and is built around consumer occasions rather than workplace recognition. Flaree includes company-wide boards in its Free Forever plan, which suits companies that want group boards as part of their internal recognition culture without extra cost.

Contributor caps are the most common breakage point, so this matters more than price. Sendwishonline removes its cap once you move to a paid card, and GroupGreeting offers unlimited signers on every plan. Inside a recognition platform, Flareeboard also places no limit on contributors or messages, though everyone posting must have a company account.

No other tool on this list matches Kudoboard’s physical delivery. Kudoboard offers a hardbound 7x7 book starting at $32.99 with international shipping, plus posters starting at $20, which makes it the clear choice if you plan to hand someone a keepsake. Sendwishonline lets you download a PDF to print yourself, but every other alternative including Flaree is digital-only.

Buying one-off boards becomes expensive and episodic, while a recognition platform makes group cards a normal part of daily culture. Flareeboard runs inside Flaree, so there are no invite links to chase, no per-board expenses, and everyone who contributes is already in the system. When the board is delivered, contributors can receive recognition points, turning the board from a one-off favor into part of the company’s official recognition record. If your team is buying its eleventh board this year, the pattern is usually a sign that recognition should be centralized rather than outsourced.