The 6 Best Digital Business Card Solutions in 2023: Compare and Decide

Digital business cards have started to dominate their paper-based counterparts. The following two data points further this claim:

#1 More and more individuals and businesses are now inquiring about digital business cards. Case in point, demo inquiries for Beaconstac’s e-business cards over the last 3 months have increased by more than 300% in the last six months vs. the previous period.

#2 The global market for digital business cards continues to grow at a CAGR of 11.2%, with the market size projected to reach US$ 242.3 million by 2027. (Source) 

With the rising adoption of e-business cards, there is also an uptick in demand for robust and scalable digital business card solutions.

But if you perform a Google search for the best digital business card solutions, you’ll find hundreds of options online. Not all of these have the potential to deliver value as per your business needs.

To make it easier for you, we spent time researching and trying numerous options and narrowed down the list to the six best digital business card generators available today.

In this article, we will get into the details of each of these six solutions to help you pick the best one. Let’s get started.

Table of contents

1. List of the 6 best digital business card solutions
2. 10 Factors to consider when choosing the best digital business card maker
3. In-depth review of the 6 best digital business card generators on our list
4. Final verdict

The 6 best digital business card solutions in the market

1. Beaconstac (9/10)
2. HiHello (8/10)
3. Popl (7/10)
4. Knowee (6/10)
5. Blinq (5/10)
6. Haystack (4/10)

Before getting into the features and capabilities of each solution, let us learn what makes a digital business card solution great and worthy of your money.

10 Factors to consider when choosing the best digital business card maker

1. Ease of use

It’s important that everyone on your team should be able to easily and quickly create a digital business card. Hence, it’s ideal to pick a solution that is incredibly easy to use and helps you get started within minutes.

2. Card design capabilities

You need to create and share a professional, attractive, and detailed digital business card for increased client engagement. Look for a solution that lets you customize card templates and add more than just basic contact information. This might include details such as social media handles, business locations, website URLs, and images.

3. Product UI (User Interface)

The chosen digital business card generator’s user interface should be clean, intuitive, and consistent enough to ensure the card creation process is a breeze.

4. Analytics and tracking

Making and sharing your digital business cards is one half of the puzzle—tracking client engagement is the other half. Ensure the solution lets you track engagement with your cards, such as the number of card views, best-performing cards, views by location and devices, user demographics, and more.

5. Security

Since your digital business cards will include your team’s personal and/or professional information, it is necessary to choose a solution that keeps this data secure.

Choose an e-business card maker that has the best security standards. The top security features to look out for are GDPR and SOC-2 Type 2 compliance, multi-factor authentication, URL-based phishing detection, SSO login, data encryption, and a custom domain.

6. Ease of sharing

It’s crucial to opt for a digital business card solution that offers numerous ways to share your card so you can maximize client engagement. This can include sharing via a QR Code, text, email, Google or Apple Wallet passes, and more.

7. Two-way contact sharing

If you wish to capture and manage leads via your digital business cards, ensure the solution offers two-way contact sharing. This functionality lets your recipients submit their contact information via a form on your digital business card. 

Moreover, you must also check if the solution records each submitted contact detail as a lead entry in a digital address book. This virtual address book lets you transfer the warm leads you collect to your organization’s CRM software.

8. Bulk card creation

If you want to quickly create hundreds or thousands of digital business cards, choose a solution that offers the bulk creation feature. This will significantly reduce the efforts and time taken to manually create a batch of cards.

9. API and integrations

To create digital business cards at scale, it is vital to pick a solution that offers API access and integrations with other relevant tools such as Zapier, Make (Integromat), Google Sheets, etc.

10. Affordability

For the maximum bang for your buck, ensure you get all the features you need at an affordable price.

All six solutions in this article have been rated out of 10 based on these ten parameters to help you pick the best digital business card maker for your business.

The 6 best digital business card generators on our list

1. Beaconstac (9/10)

As much as we would like you to believe that Beaconstac is the best digital business card solution in the market, we’d rather show you why it is so. 

Here’s why our customers feel Beaconstac is the most capable digital business card generator:

#1 This solution has an easy-to-use and intuitive platform that helps you create a digital business card with a QR Code in less than 5 minutes.

This is substantiated by Beaconstac’s ratings on G2—9.7/10 for ease of use and 9.8/10 for ease of setup. (Source)

#2 You get access to beautiful card layouts and numerous fields to fill in the details you wish to add to your card—contact information, user image, brand logo, address, website, location, 20+ social media links, Shopify and Calendly links, and more.

#3 Beaconstac offers multiple card-sharing options—via URL, social media, QR Code, and Google and Apple Wallet pass.

When you store your card as a Google or Apple Wallet pass on your mobile device, you can share it on the go—without the need for an app.

#4 You also get access to Two-Way Contact Sharing with this solution. This capability lets you collect leads directly via the card you share. Once you collect these leads on Beaconstac’s dashboard, you can export them to your CRM software, such as Salesforce or 700+ CRMs (via Zapier).

#5 The solution provides comprehensive data analytics to help you monitor the performance of your digital business cards. This data includes the total and unique number of card views, contact saves, top-performing cards, the location of the people who viewed your card, and more.

#6 This digital business card maker offers best-in-class security features, which include:

1. GDPR and SOC-2 Type 1 and 2 certification
2. Password protection and multi-factor authentication
3. Phishing URL detection
4. SSO authentication
5. Data encryption
6. Multi-user access management

#7 Beaconstac’s bulk creation capabilities let you generate up to 2,000 digital business cards in ~5 minutes. Also, it offers API access, 4,000+ integrations via Zapier and Make, and native integration with Microsoft Azure AD to let you automate e-business card creation.

Here are some G2 reviews by paying customers who talk about their experience with Beaconstac’s digital business cards:

2. HiHello (8/10)

HiHello is the next digital business card maker on our list.

Following were the observations during our testing of the solution:

#1 Upon signing up, you navigate through an easy-to-use dashboard. You can create beautiful digital business cards that can be linked to your contact details, website, address, social media, payment apps, and PDFs.

#2 A good number of card-sharing options are available—via social media, email, QR Code, and text. You also get to hide your phone number and use a HiHello number instead if you wish to share your card through text.

#3 You only get basic analytics with this solution—the total number of card views/saves and new contacts made. Moreover, this analytics is restricted to their Professional, Business, and Enterprise plans and is unavailable on their Basic plan.

#4 Although HiHello is SOC-2 Type 2 compliant and offers SSO login, it does not provide other essential security features (GDPR compliance, multi-factor authentication, phishing URL detection) offered by Beaconstac.

#5 HiHello does not offer bulk card creation and API access, and its integration capabilities are only limited to Zapier.

Additionally, we found multiple customer reviews complaining about the solution’s downtime and the difficulty in accessing digital business cards created on their platform:

RELATED: You can read this Hihello vs. Beaconstac comparison for more details.

3. Popl (7/10)

Up next is Popl. After a thorough test of the platform, we identified the following key takeaways:

#1 Popl offers a 2-week free trial for each pricing plan so you can try out the platform. However, before you can begin a free trial, the platform requires you to hand out your credit card information.

#2 Using Popl’s intuitive dashboard requires no learning curve. You can immediately create professional digital business cards upon signing up. The platform also provides various card customization options so you can custom-design your cards per your company branding.

However, if you choose not to add any links to your social media handles or website, your card will reflect the text as shown in the image below:

This, in our honest opinion, is not desirable for a card owner.

#3 The solution provides various card-sharing options—via a QR Code, URL, email, social media, WhatsApp, and Apple Wallet. However, you need to download their app to share your card as an Apple Wallet pass.

#4 On the integrations front, Popl only lets you connect with Zapier. Native integrations with Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Salesforce, and other essential platforms are missing.

#5 While Popl offers lead capture capabilities, they are only limited to its higher-priced plans.

#6 As for security, Popl is GDPR compliant and offers SSO login. But the solution lacks key security features such as SOC 2 Type 2 certification, multi-factor authentication, URL-based phishing detection, and custom card URL.

RELATED: Check out this Popl vs. Beaconstac comparison for more details.

4. Knowee (6/10)

As soon as you sign up for Knowee, it lets you enter your details in the data fields provided, helping you get started in minutes. The solution offers multiple card designs to customize your digital business card.

Knowee also offers certain important security features such as GDPR compliance, SSO login, URL masking, and identity verification.

However, we noticed quite a few major drawbacks during our testing. Here are some of them:

#1 When it comes to sharing your digital business card, this solution offers limited options. Since their business card is essentially a URL, you can only share it as a website link via email or text.

There is also an option to share your card via a QR Code, but you need to save that code as an image so you can print and carry it wherever you go. This is extremely inconvenient and makes it tough to share your business card on the go.

#2 As for analytics, you can only track the number of times your card has been viewed. There is no other card tracking statistic available.

#3 The ability to add multimedia content—images, links, videos, CTA buttons, etc. is available only on the Enterprise plan.

#4 There are no bulk creation capabilities and API access offered by this solution.

5. Blinq (5/10)

The next digital business card solution on our list is Blinq. Here are our key takeaways from the trial of this solution:

#1 It is super easy to create your digital business card with Blinq. Upon signing up, you can quickly fill in all your contact details, social media handles, Calendly and payment URLs, and more.

But this solution does not let you customize your card layout as you can only change the color of your card.

#2 There is an option to share your card as a URL and a QR Code. However, you need to download this code as an image so you can share it, causing the same inconvenience as Knowee.

#3 As per their website copy, they do provide basic analytics for your digital business cards. However, we could not find the analytics section within their dashboard or mobile app.

#4 The security measures undertaken by Blinq are rather basic. Although Google Cloud protects their digital business cards, there is no information available about other essential security standards in place.

#5 The bulk creation feature is available only on their most expensive plan, i.e., the Business plan. Moreover, no integrations and API access are available for automating the creation of digital business cards.

RELATED: Here is a detailed, feature-based Blinq vs. Beaconstac comparison.

6. Haystack (4/10)

The last digital business card maker on our list is Haystack. This is what we found out during our testing of this solution:

#1 After you enter your email to get started, you will receive a verification email. Post verification, you need to download their app to edit and share your card, i.e., Haystack does not offer a web version. This, in our honest opinion, is not convenient and delays the process of creating a digital business card.

#2 Once you download the app and log in, you can edit your card. There is an option to add basic contact details such as name, company logo, designation, phone number, address, social media handles, and images.

#3 The number of ways you can share your business card is limited—via email, text, and a QR Code.

#4 The solution offers card analytics, which includes the number and type of interactions with your card. However, this feature is only available with their Business plan, which starts at $7.95/month for one card, making it an expensive affair.

#5 As for security, Haystack is SOC-2 certified, but we could not find more information about other security measures deployed by this solution. Moreover, there are no bulk creation capabilities that this solution offers.

Final verdict: Which is the best digital business card solution?

We hope our feature-based comparison of these e-business card makers will help you make an informed decision.

As for our recommendations, we believe Beaconstac (rated 9/10) and HiHello (rated 8/10) stand out among the six solutions discussed in this article.

Furthermore, here are our recommendations based on the size of your business:

#1 Individuals and small businesses: Beaconstac and HiHello—based on ease of use and/or value for money.

#2 Mid-sized businesses: Beaconstac and Popl—based on card analytics and/or design capabilities.

#3 Enterprise or large businesses: As security, bulk creation, and automation are the top requirements for an enterprise business, Beaconstac’s digital business card solution stands out in this category.

Further reading: 5 Features That Make Beaconstac the Best Digital Business Card Solution

Want to give Beaconstac’s digital business card solution a shot? Get started with a 14-day free trial, or schedule a free demo with our experts if you have any questions.

Or, you can directly explore Beaconstac’s pricing plans by clicking below:

• Author Details

Author Details

Piyush Garg

Piyush is a Senior Content Marketer with Beaconstac. He loves indulging in conversations that can intellectually and spiritually develop his mind. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn and check out his blog.

[email protected]