If you are wondering which way is better, read this summary. I’d like to list here all advantages and disadvantages of each way.

Traditional Penpals ( snail mail ) vs E-mail pals

When you are writing and receiving traditional letters you can feel the distance between you and your penpal. It’s not just another email in your mailbox. It’s a real letter with envelope with interesting stamp from your pen pal’s country. It’s a real overseas correspondence.<

Every traditional letter is different, because every stamp is different, every envelope, paper and what most important most of snail-mail penpals write letters by hand. When you see the choice of paper, stamps and handwritings of your pen pals, you can feel that I am hearing from real people.<

More time to write back your pen pal.

E-mail pals often reply each other very frequently, often every single day, because e-mails arrive much faster than mails. If you have enough time to write your pals often, that’s not a problem. But sometimes this burdens busy peole with the sense of obligation, especially if their pen pals write them more often than them. However, snail mails literally travel like a snail, so generally you don’t write letters more than once every two weeks at the fastest (one week before your letter reaches at your pal, and another week before you receive your pen pal’s reply). This means that you not only have to write so often, but also have more time to come up with the topics to write about in your letter.

Best way if you want to exchange gifts.

Many pen-pallers enjoy exchanging birthday presents and some other small gifts with their pen pals. You can enclose small presents such as your picture and inexpensive stationery from your country in the envelope with your letter. The gifts that you exchange your pen pals are real stuff that flew over the real sea, not a digital one. Sure, e-mail pals can also exchange gifts if they exchange their home address, but which is more convenient to send gifts frequently, to include them in your letter or ask your pen pal for his or her home address and send it separately? Some e-mail pals have never thought about giving out his/her home address! So if you want to exchange real gifts as well as written words, go for snail mails.

Long-term friendship.

Probably this has to do with the “feeling of distance” and the “sense of real people” that I was talking about, but in general, correspondence by letters tend to last longer than correspondence by e-mails. As the webmaster of this site, I often receive the question “Why can I keep writing to my snail mail pals for many years but not my e-mail pals?”. I have a separate page to describe this issue, but if you ask me in which way you can naturally establish a long-term friendship, I would say by letter.

Fast and more frequent communication.

How many e-mails can you send and receive while a single snail mail reaches your pen pal? Obviously, almost as many as you can handle! If you want to get in touch with your pen pal as frequently as possible and/or if you want to hear back from your pen pal ASAP, e-mails are for you.

Ease of mailing.

What do you need when you write a letter? In addition to pen and paper, you may also need some space (like a desk and a chair) to write a snail mail. You may also need more time to finish one hand-written snail mail than e-mails, especially if you can touch-type. However, you can write mails wherever and whenever - you can send mails as long as you have access to a computer, or you can also mail from your handheld computers, cell phones in some countries, etc. so in an extreme case, you can even write to your pal while you are waiting for your turn in a grocery store, using your handheld computer! You can also send mails faster, not only because many people can type faster than they hand-write, but also because one e-mail tend to be shorter than letters due to its nature. In short, if you have a easy access to the Internet, e-mails may be more convenient for you.

Safety issue.

Unless you have a P.O. Box, you have no choice but to give out your home address when you start exchanging snail mails. Even though your pen pals are abroad, it could be a potential safety issue. In case of e-mails, for example, you can create a “throw-away mail address” at any time with a free mail service such as Hotmail. In case that you get into a trouble with this mail account, you can switch to another mail account at any time. This way your pen pal won’t even know which ISP you are in, not to mention where you live. Even if you are planning to exchange snail mails, you can exchange e-mails several times and disclose your home address only after you know each other enough.

Economy.

It depends on the country, but snail mails tend to be more costly than mails. Does sending one e-mail cost you $1 USD? You will also need to buy pen and paper, especially if you are particular about the choice of stationery. Also, if you want to send presents to your pen pal, the postage is quite large. In the age of broadband connections, sending one e-mail does not make any difference in terms of your monthly fee for the connection. Even if you are using a modem and the phone line, the minimum required fee for one e-mail is generally smaller than one letter.

Summary

I think that the best way is to start correspondence with 10-20 emails, get to know each other and then decide.