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You can now easily meet business contacts online through LinkedIn or Twitter, or just by plain old email, and that's all well and good. But when you actually meet a potential client, customer, or colleague in person, you'll want to be able to hand them a business card. That card will be a tangible and lasting representation of you once the meeting is over, so you'll want to carefully consider how it looks and feels. The online business card printers here let you create good-looking business cards yourself. They can even help you design your cards and choose the cardstock quality the fits your needs.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
4.0 Excellent
Vistaprint is the best online business card printing service we've tested, thanks to its combination of excellent print quality, good design tools, and reasonable prices. The company also prints promotional products like mugs, posters, and even tablecloths.
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100 Business Cards Starting at $17 With Free Shipping VistaPrint
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Vistaprint Review
4.0 Excellent
PSPrint delivers quality business cards at a low cost, with good design tools. It's one of the best online business card printing services we've tested.
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$12.00 PsPrint
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PSPrint Review
3.5 Good
EliteFlyers offers a wide selection of business card stocks and textures, quality printing results, powerful online card design tools, and timely delivery turnaround.
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$20.00 EliteFlyers.com
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EliteFlyers Business Cards Review
3.5 Good
MOO is one of the slickest-looking card printing services around, with top design templates, high-end options, and premium packaging. But its online editor is more rigid than competitors' and its prices are significantly higher.
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$19.99 Moo
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MOO Review
3.5 Good
If you need your cards today, Staples is a good option, with excellent online design tools and printing quality.
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$9.99 for 250 Business Cards Staples Print & Marketing Services
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Staples Print & Marketing Services Review
3.0 Average
GotPrint gets you business cards cheaper than just about anyone and has a decent design interface, but its entry level offering is of lower quality than the competition's.
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$8.50 for 500 Business Cards GotPrint
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GotPrint ReviewBuying Guide: The Best Online Business Card Printing Services
The services included here all offer design templates for a multitude of card types and uses. If you run an auto mechanic shop, you probably want a different card style from a restaurateur or lawyer. The better services here organize their templates by both industry and style. The latter choice often includes options like classic, modern, and bold.
You usually start designing your card with a template and customize what it includes based on the information you need to convey. Maybe you don't need to show a street address, or maybe you need to include social accounts. Most services let you add or remove text boxes to taste. I especially appreciate it when the web interface includes guidelines to help with lining up text boxes or images, as EliteFlyers' designer does.
All the designers let you upload your own images for printing, and some let you upload the whole card design as an image file, usually as a PDF. Many businesses will want a logo on their cards, and services may let you design one, choose one from available clipart, or offer professional designers for the purpose. As we found while testing photo printing services, color reproduction varies among the vendors, but Vistaprint and MOO are particularly excellent in this regard. We like when the service offers QR code generation to take your contacts right to your email or webpage. MOO offers an expensive NFC option which does basically the same thing.
Several factors affect the price of your business card order. Of course, the amount you order plays a role, but even more important is your choice of paper or cardstock. For example, if you buy the most basic level cards from GotPrint or PSPrint, you could pay less than $9. For this, you can get barebones cards with mediocre printing on thin, low-end cardstock. While such cards may be passable under some circumstances, if your image is important, you may want to pay more for better paper.
As you move up to heaver card stock, expect to pay significantly more. Two measures determine the density and thickness of paper. You may see indications in units of lb. or pt. The first, of course, stands for pounds, but the way it's calculated is a bit tricky. This number is different for what's called text and what's called cover. The latter is what we're concerned with for business cards, and it's a measure of how many pounds 500 sheets of 20 inches by 26 inches weighs. Points, or Pts. is more straightforward, it's just the thickness in .001 inch units.
Card quality, however, is about more than just weight and thickness. You also pay for textures. Linen, gloss, matte, and soft-touch are common choices. Some services also offer natural, recycled paper, which has a character all its own.
Another option is color and two-sided printing. Of course, you'll pay more if you add either. MOO offers an interesting choice with regard to card-back printing. The company can alternate among five different designs or images on the back for a single order. MOO is also more expensive than the other services.
We tested each service with both an entry-level and premium card order. In general, the old saw that you get what you pay for holds true. All of our premium test orders were of fine quality, though there were definitely differences among the services in terms of paper, printing, color reproduction, and so on.
How fast you want your cards affects the price as well. In some cases, you pay over $40 for next day shipping. If speed is important to you, then Staples may be your best option: If you submit your order before 2 p.m., you can pick it up at your local branch and save any shipping fee.
If you do choose to have the cards shipped, the services' packaging options vary in quality. MOO gets the prize for the best packaging. A high-end order came as what looked like a special gift, complete with a box with a magnetic closure. Even the lower-end order came in an attractive reusable slipcase box. The other card printers all sent orders in reasonably protected packaging, with the higher-end card orders from each coming with better packaging.
All the services we tested delivered acceptable print quality. If you just need something to convey your contact information, the entry-level cards from most of these services will do the trick. The exception was GotPrint's lowest-price cards, which seemed flimsy with not quite high enough print quality. But even GotPrint offers higher-priced options that looked good. Moving up to higher-quality paper stock, two-sided printing, special textures and shapes can really make you (and your card) stand out.
All the services in this roundup can get at the very least a decent card; if you're willing to pay more, all can deliver something impressive. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, however, so make sure to click through to the full reviews to get the details so that you can get the business cards that suit your image and your budget.
Note, too, that there are many more online business card printing services out there, and we'll be adding to the roundup over time. Don't hesitate to weigh in in the comment section below to tout your favorite business card website or detail a bad experience you had with one of the companies.
We spent dozens of hours researching, testing, and comparing some of the most highly regarded business card makers out there. In addition to our top pick, we also recommend Staples for same-day cards that work in a pinch, as well as Impress for those who don’t use a computer or simply prefer an app-based service.
Your business card is key to making a lasting first impression when meeting potential new clients. Moo delivers the best-looking, most premium-feeling business card you can buy online—an impressive memento for your brand.
If you prefer to order business cards from an iPhone or don’t use a computer, this is the easiest way to get a decent, well-priced card. But it’s unavailable for Android, and our top pick is better overall.
If you need cards right away, Staples provides pretty good print quality and same-day pickup at a reasonable price. But if you’re not in a hurry, these cards are not our top choice.
This service created the best-looking cards we tested and has fast and responsive customer service. It is more expensive than our other picks.
This service created the best-looking cards we tested and has fast and responsive customer service. It is more expensive than our other picks.
$21
fromMoo
Though they cost a bit more than most of the competition, Moo cards stood out for their vibrant colors, sharp text and photographs, and careful trim (how closely and symmetrically a card is cut) around our tricky design test. They feel more luxurious than any other card we tested, with a soft finish on a noticeably thick cardstock.
Moo’s customer service was also friendly and prompt; they quickly resolved an issue with our delivery.
If you need cards right away, Staples provides pretty good print quality and same-day pickup at a reasonable price. But if you’re not in a hurry, these cards are not our top choice.
Staples
Staples is a good option if you need a business card printed right away at one of more than 1,000 locations nationwide. The same-day cards we had printed were flimsier than our top pick, but overall the print quality was okay with bright colors, sharp lines, and photos, as well as a tight trim. The website is simple but functional.
If you’re in a pinch and need a new business card tonight, Staples will do just fine, but if you have the time, it’s worth investing in a better card from our top pick.
If you prefer to order business cards from an iPhone or don’t use a computer, this is the easiest way to get a decent, well-priced card. But it’s unavailable for Android, and our top pick is better overall.
Apple App Store
Impress is an iPhone-only business card app that easily transformed our digital business card into a tangible one, no computer required. Its cards use thick stock and feature vibrant, crisp prints—much better than the cards from Staples, but not quite as luxe as that of Moo—at a per-card price that falls right in between the two.
As you’d expect from an app-only platform, Impress is slicker and more intuitive to use than our other picks’ mobile websites, and it allows you to upload your own design or pick from a range of simple but serviceable templates. Its design editor allows for basic tweaks, and its digital proofs are helpful for previewing your design in real-world scenarios. You can even try an interactive 360-degree view.
You can chat with the Impress team via iMessage to address any questions, which felt more immediate, convenient, and satisfying than the options provided by our other picks—more like texting a friend than a typical customer service interaction.
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