8 ms·

Battle of the Business Cards

177 points by kmfrk 16y ago

kmfrk 16y ago
Mirror, in case HN or reddit breaks the non-WP Cache'd site: http://i.imgur.com/vokDd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vokDd.jpg. (Again.) Edit: Looks like it did indeed buckled.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  *buckle.
- pmichaud 16y ago
  Thanks a lot, I wouldn't have been able to look at this without your comment.
PonyGumbo 16y ago
I'm glad that Vistaprint got the drubbing it deserves.
davidw 16y ago
Seems like he's leaving money on the table by not linking those to the relevant affiliate programs.
- Encosia 16y ago
  Trading a few dollars in affiliate revenue for credibility can be well worth it, depending on the post's goals. Just look at how people react to Atwood's referral-laden product posts on Coding Horror, for example.
- edkennedy 16y ago
  There's a huge side bar banner for Vistaprint.
camtarn 16y ago
Funky and very useful website :) I had some cards printed out by VistaPrint a while back (using one of the free business card package fliers from an Amazon parcel) and was relatively impressed - having a stack of business cards with my name on them felt very professional to my just-graduated-looking-for-work self. However, you'd think the creator of such a nicely designed site would spell check their copy: in the footer, 'compareproducts' has no space between words, and there's a misspelled 'annoucnements' on the front page :/ Also, the 'DIY Printing' link in the menu bar 404s.
alinajaf 16y ago
Woohoo go us! (dev at moo)
- duck 16y ago
  A recent client had Moo biz cards and the quality of the card itself was awesome and very thick. They had a photo on one side that looked great, but the side with their information was kind of blurry. Is that just from them not doing something right in the creation of the card or just from the type of card stock Moo uses?
  - alinajaf 16y ago
    There are a lot of things that can go wrong at various points in the process of putting the details in the ui and getting a printed card out the other end, and there will always be bad batches. I'm not sure that its a general problem with the paper stock though. Did your client mention the problem to customer service? There's a chance that he/she could get the cards reprinted.
  - eschutte2 16y ago
    I received 50 cards from Moo this week. I love the shape and the paper quality and cutting are very good. They also upgraded my shipping for free, which was nice of them. However, the print quality is pretty poor--the text is visibly grainy. Might be my fault as I had to upload the whole card as a 600dpi image, but I'd expect that to be sufficient. I used the recycled paper option. I'd go with Moo in the future if I could be confident the print quality would be fixed.
    - sjwright 16y ago
      Did you make sure the text in your image was not anti-aliased? Anti-aliasing is a hack for monitors, not printers.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  Could you elaborate on the different size your cards have? As I understand, the size is perfectly normal by European standards, and might make American customers stand out. What I'm wondering is why you don't offer the US-sized cards to customers who may prefer them for reasons such as being able to fit it into a business card holder? Reading the reddit thread[1], a lot of people scoffed at the size and chose other brands over yours simply due to the size. There might be some interesting things to be learnt and taught if you get some guys to pick their brains about what they think. At the very least from a PR point of view. [1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/e3i8j/guy_ordered_the_exact_same_business_card_from_5/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/e3i8j/guy_ordered_th...
jasonlotito 16y ago
Or, you could just go to a local print shop. My wife used to work at one before moving up in the world. Practically ran the place for the owner. Good quality cards, and if something was wrong, they'd fix it. You got to see the options before you made a choice, and much easier to get exactly what you wanted. Also, from what I see in the chart, you'd get it a LOT sooner then most of the places.
- nodata 16y ago
  In my experience local print shops can be really expensive, and the quality of the card is normally pretty poor.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    YMMV, of course. Local prints shops vary. Here in Montreal, they are a dime a dozen, and having a wife in the industry, she has connections and knows what to look for. However, I still think it's worth the time and effort finding a good local print shop and developing a good relationship with them.
- wwortiz 16y ago
  This is easily the best option, especially if you already have the design ready to go. My dad used to run a print shop and he had all the card styles (paper, printing style) available to view and touch which can make a world of difference when deciding. The only reason I could see wanting cards from one of these online companies is if you only want a small amount of cards as it is usually better for local print shops to run larger batches on the presses. (But even then you will probably be able to get 500 cards for something like 50 dollars on a minimum run)
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    The benefit to a local print shop isn't in the initial price of the cards. It's in the follow through and printing needs after business cards. Most print shops don't make money off business cards. The cards barely pay for the cost of the material and time involved. It's a cut throat business. However, you get your business cards, and when you have additional printing needs, returning to them gets you better results (especially if you paid on time). The printers I know (several of them, in fact) all cherish customers who pay on time and will bend over backwards for them. It also becomes easier going back to them. They have material already, and can usually get what you need faster.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
crgwbr 16y ago
I've never done business cards through Printrunner, but their Matte-finish postcards are super high quality
thomas11 16y ago
The final recommendation based on cost is Vistaprint, when their price was $25 compared to Overnight's $9?
- mitko 16y ago
  that's for 250 cards from vistaprint in comparison to 25 cards from overnight's
- joshfinnie 16y ago
  And the cards are visibly terrible. That suggestion made me really question this review.
- Bostwick 16y ago
  Vistaprint was 250 cards for $24.25, for a per-card price of $0.097. Overnight was 25 cards for $8.81, for a per-card price of $0.352. On a per-card basis, Overnight is 3.6x as expensive as Vistaprint.
  - thomas11 16y ago
    Ah, thanks.
  - fragmede 16y ago
    It's a shame there isn't a graph showing the per-card price since that's the obvious question after seeing that Overnight Prints was only $8.81 to VistaPrint's $24.25
- roel_v 16y ago
  I started out with Vistaprint once, after clicking on a Google ad saying '250 card 5 euros' or something like that. Designed business card based on their templates, put it through their web order forms, turned out I had to add a bunch of options and preparation costs and shipping costs, and the whole thing turned into 25 euros or something. By that time I had spend hours on getting the business card just right for their template format, so I just went with them anyway. Other printers had the same I found out - I never did find heavy paper, ad-free cards including shipping for less than 20 euros or so. YMMV.
jackowayed 16y ago
I just ordered 1k business cards from Overnight Prints in preparation for RubyConf. I was impressed by the quality, given how cheap they were. They were thicker than I expected. My one complaint is that you either pay a lot for shipping or get them fairly slowly. (I upgraded one level from the bottom and it took from Tuesday to the next Thursday.) Even that shipping was expensive--it was $8 shipping plus $4 "handling". Others may be just as bad though. Overall, I was quite happy. I paid $40 with shipping and CA tax for 1,000 high quality, double-sided color business cards thanks to a half off coupon I found on retailmenot.com. And if you're coming to RubyConf, find me and I'll give you one.
yoseph 16y ago
@PrintingChoice This is a great piece of marketing. It provides me with some very useful information while selling me on your value prop. Brilliant.
gallamine 16y ago
I've recently been ordering from Clubflyers. I got a batch of 4x6 cards and business cards. The price was better than I could find elsewhere and they did a great job. The cheap printing is glossy only though.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
clistctrl 16y ago
I've always assumed what you get is going to be about the same anywhere so price is the only comparison, but its great to see just how much worse the quality of vistaprint is.
hedgehog 16y ago
Avery 8871, they look good and you can print a few cards when you need them (and change them when you want).
shin_lao 16y ago
Off topic but when reading this article I couldn't help thinking about the famous business card scene from American Psycho. Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark!
lowglow 16y ago
Anyone know of a great print shop in San Francisco?
- lerhaupt 16y ago
  was going to go with moo but wanted the more traditional business card size. just went to h&h imaging at 16th/alabama, really great service, options, price. http://www.yelp.com/biz/h-and-h-imaging-san-francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/h-and-h-imaging-san-francisco
  - lowglow 16y ago
    Great, thanks for the heads up. :) Edit: Oh, wow I work on 16th and Harrison. This is perfect.
sbierwagen 16y ago
One of the winners in the shootout was Moo. I went up to the top level page and searched on two sided, 50 count, whatever's cheapest business cards... and got four hits. All of them for Moo. Hmm.
- shanedanger 16y ago
  Moo is the only one who lets you print just 50 cards, with the exception of ONP who hasn't updated in the price search yet. If you search for other quantities you'll see plenty of others. :)
neilk 16y ago
Given this information, I don't see how the author recomended VistaPrint in any way. It looks to me like it's Moo for quality and speed, Overnight for price, and everything else is significantly worse in every dimension.
- jpwagner 16y ago
  the presentation looks confusing, but i think he means the graphs to convey that per card price was lowest with vistaprint
- igrekel 16y ago
  Right, I am puzzled too, especially since that according to his graph it was actually overnight prints that was the cheapest with better quality than vistaprint. I don't see how with these results the author can recommend vistaprint unless there is a mistake somewhere.
  - jpwagner 16y ago
    that price is for the min number of cards, per card price would look different
mbubb 16y ago
Just got my new cards from zazzle today. Used them before and was happy but wish I had this info. Next time will try moo. Question: what do others think about a large business card size. I like that because i inevitably jot something on the card when i give it to someone. The last example was that I was talking to a dogrun acquaintance about vyatta (ie the router project) and gave my card with the word 'vyatta' on it. I have a minimal amount of information - name, email, google voice number as well as a small qr_code barcode which links to my online profile. I think the oversized card (called a 'calling card' I believe) enables you to have a nice a mount of room for a graphic and room to write something.
- qjz 16y ago
  The card from Moo isn't oversized. It's the only company in the group based in England, where that's the standard size. Oversizing your business card might make it stand out, but some peoople might find it annoying, like television commercials that are extremely loud compared to the main program.
- enjo 16y ago
  If it doesn't fit in the standard card slot in my wallet, I'll likely (politely) give it back and ask for an e-mail. I hate toting around oversized cards, and just feel wasteful throwing them in my pocket to be tossed later.
  - mbubb 16y ago
    thanks - good point
mikeryan 16y ago
I have no relation to this company, but I've always been very happy with my cards from 4by6 http://www.4by6.com/ http://www.4by6.com/ (not covered in review)
- kmfrk 16y ago
  I saw a link to them in the reddit thread, but I was completely confounded by the fact that they don't show image samples of the different business cards. I see that they send out samples (at least to people from the US), but the approach makes no sense to me. http://www.deeprint.co.uk http://www.deeprint.co.uk do this, too.
blaines 16y ago
"Error establishing a database connection"
nkurz 16y ago
The quality comparisons here are quite helpful, but the pricing isn't that useful. If you're willing to do a little digging, you can find 30-50% off coupons for the big guys like PSPrint and VistaPrint. Not sure if this is also true for the smaller places like Moo. Also, the prices dive sharply at larger quantities. We're currently using PSPrint for business cards, and would agree with this assessment: "flimsy, but otherwise nice". For our recent order with coupon, we were at final price of $130 for 10000. If you are in the Bay Area, you can pick up for free from their warehouse in Emeryville.
Anechoic 16y ago
Having ordered business cards from Vistaprint and Overnight Prints, let me make a couple of observations: * Vistaprint had decent print quality, but IMO their paper quality left something to be desired. The biggest issue with VP (again IMO) is that their business cards are standard-sized, they are slightly smaller. It makes the card stand out a bit, but you have to decide if it stands out in a good way or a bad way * I've used Overnight Prints for the vast majority of business cards. I've only used the "Value Cards" products (basically printed on a laser printer" as opposed to the offset press printing of the Premium cards. They use a very thick stock, and I often get positive comments on the "feel" of the card stock. At first glance the print quality looks pretty good, but upon a closer look you can see that the cards were printed on a laser printer (I presume that the offset-printed cards look better). * The biggest 'gotcha' with Overnight Prints (at least the Value cards) is the color consistency - that is to say, there is none. They don't pay attention to embedded color profiles, and every order I've made the colors come out different. I don't mind too much because I know that my clients aren't comparing colors and I figure most of my cards either get scanned/transcribed into electronic address books and then put away, or get tossed out. But if you're someone who obsesses over the color consistency of your printed material, definitely stay away from the Value Cards (again I don't know if things are better with the Premium Cards).
brixon 16y ago
Your local print shop might not be printing their own business cards. My dad owned a print shop and he has been outsourcing the printing of business cards for over 10 years. He makes a little profit on outsourced cards (@$5 per thousand) and no profit on in-house printed cards. The only cards he prints in-house are car dealerships that have mass bulk with only the salesman contact information changing. Now, he can help you pick the stock, ink and other options and will make sure the order/product is correct before you pay him, so there is some benefit to local.
- dholowiski 16y ago
  Absolutley true, I know of at least two print shops who order many of their jobs from Vistaprint.
eli 16y ago
Worth noting that Overnight Prints very frequently has coupons for significant savings: http://www.retailmenot.com/view/overnightprints.com http://www.retailmenot.com/view/overnightprints.com Currently it's 50% off premium biz cards. I think they're very hard to beat at that price.
- dotBen 16y ago
  Just want to re-emphasize the discounts. Check retailmenot.com etc. I often order 250 cards from Overnight Prints for about $15 inc shipping. The quality is only bettered by Moo (great company but expensive).
terra_t 16y ago
I'm just astonished at how much blatant link bait is getting voted up on HN these days. It's starting to look like Digg.
- limedaring 16y ago
  Even if it has genuinely interesting and informative content?
  - terra_t 16y ago
    It's just not interesting and informative enough.
limedaring 16y ago
It always surprises me how many people don't know about Moo.com. Fast, fairly cheap, and really fantastic quality. And if quality isn't great, they'll reprint it. A few years ago I was ordering Christmas cards for my company, and I accidentally had a typo. I contacted them to see if I could get a discount at least since I was ordering them all again, and they insisted on reprinting them for free and even expedited the shipping to me. Compare that to OvernightPrints, when our business cards came back with streaks all over them, and after I called and emailed them several times, I never got a response. Of course I'm going to use Moo.com for everything now.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Plus moo has smaller sized cards which all the cool kids are using these days.
  - limedaring 16y ago
    And you can use those smaller size ones to create pretty awesome custom cards: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vadavia/3348895753/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vadavia/3348895753/ (my personal business cards)
  - dholowiski 16y ago
    I believe the smaller cards are no longer officially cool. But Moo does print top quality cards, for sure.
  - athst 16y ago
    I would recommend against getting abnormally-sized cards like this. After collecting cards from a group of people, it's annoying to have these stragglers swimming around in your pocket that don't really fit with the rest. I'd rather have a standard sized card that is designed well.
    - limedaring 16y ago
      Do you find you discriminate against those that have the oddly-sized cards, or do you pay them more attention? Think those that got the mini-cards were going for the latter effect.
snprbob86 16y ago
Been very happy with cards, shirts, and service ordered from Zazzle!

177 points by kmfrk 16y ago

kmfrk 16y ago

Mirror, in case HN or reddit breaks the non-WP Cache'd site: http://i.imgur.com/vokDd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/vokDd.jpg. (Again.) Edit: Looks like it did indeed buckled.

kmfrk 16y ago
*buckle.
pmichaud 16y ago
Thanks a lot, I wouldn't have been able to look at this without your comment.

PonyGumbo 16y ago

I'm glad that Vistaprint got the drubbing it deserves.

davidw 16y ago

Seems like he's leaving money on the table by not linking those to the relevant affiliate programs.

Encosia 16y ago
Trading a few dollars in affiliate revenue for credibility can be well worth it, depending on the post's goals. Just look at how people react to Atwood's referral-laden product posts on Coding Horror, for example.
edkennedy 16y ago
There's a huge side bar banner for Vistaprint.

camtarn 16y ago

Funky and very useful website :) I had some cards printed out by VistaPrint a while back (using one of the free business card package fliers from an Amazon parcel) and was relatively impressed - having a stack of business cards with my name on them felt very professional to my just-graduated-looking-for-work self. However, you'd think the creator of such a nicely designed site would spell check their copy: in the footer, 'compareproducts' has no space between words, and there's a misspelled 'annoucnements' on the front page :/ Also, the 'DIY Printing' link in the menu bar 404s.

alinajaf 16y ago

Woohoo go us! (dev at moo)

duck 16y ago
A recent client had Moo biz cards and the quality of the card itself was awesome and very thick. They had a photo on one side that looked great, but the side with their information was kind of blurry. Is that just from them not doing something right in the creation of the card or just from the type of card stock Moo uses?
- alinajaf 16y ago
  There are a lot of things that can go wrong at various points in the process of putting the details in the ui and getting a printed card out the other end, and there will always be bad batches. I'm not sure that its a general problem with the paper stock though. Did your client mention the problem to customer service? There's a chance that he/she could get the cards reprinted.
- eschutte2 16y ago
  I received 50 cards from Moo this week. I love the shape and the paper quality and cutting are very good. They also upgraded my shipping for free, which was nice of them. However, the print quality is pretty poor--the text is visibly grainy. Might be my fault as I had to upload the whole card as a 600dpi image, but I'd expect that to be sufficient. I used the recycled paper option. I'd go with Moo in the future if I could be confident the print quality would be fixed.
  - sjwright 16y ago
    Did you make sure the text in your image was not anti-aliased? Anti-aliasing is a hack for monitors, not printers.
kmfrk 16y ago
Could you elaborate on the different size your cards have? As I understand, the size is perfectly normal by European standards, and might make American customers stand out. What I'm wondering is why you don't offer the US-sized cards to customers who may prefer them for reasons such as being able to fit it into a business card holder? Reading the reddit thread[1], a lot of people scoffed at the size and chose other brands over yours simply due to the size. There might be some interesting things to be learnt and taught if you get some guys to pick their brains about what they think. At the very least from a PR point of view. [1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/e3i8j/guy_ordered_the_exact_same_business_card_from_5/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Design/comments/e3i8j/guy_ordered_th...

jasonlotito 16y ago

Or, you could just go to a local print shop. My wife used to work at one before moving up in the world. Practically ran the place for the owner. Good quality cards, and if something was wrong, they'd fix it. You got to see the options before you made a choice, and much easier to get exactly what you wanted. Also, from what I see in the chart, you'd get it a LOT sooner then most of the places.

nodata 16y ago
In my experience local print shops can be really expensive, and the quality of the card is normally pretty poor.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  YMMV, of course. Local prints shops vary. Here in Montreal, they are a dime a dozen, and having a wife in the industry, she has connections and knows what to look for. However, I still think it's worth the time and effort finding a good local print shop and developing a good relationship with them.
wwortiz 16y ago
This is easily the best option, especially if you already have the design ready to go. My dad used to run a print shop and he had all the card styles (paper, printing style) available to view and touch which can make a world of difference when deciding. The only reason I could see wanting cards from one of these online companies is if you only want a small amount of cards as it is usually better for local print shops to run larger batches on the presses. (But even then you will probably be able to get 500 cards for something like 50 dollars on a minimum run)
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  The benefit to a local print shop isn't in the initial price of the cards. It's in the follow through and printing needs after business cards. Most print shops don't make money off business cards. The cards barely pay for the cost of the material and time involved. It's a cut throat business. However, you get your business cards, and when you have additional printing needs, returning to them gets you better results (especially if you paid on time). The printers I know (several of them, in fact) all cherish customers who pay on time and will bend over backwards for them. It also becomes easier going back to them. They have material already, and can usually get what you need faster.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

crgwbr 16y ago

I've never done business cards through Printrunner, but their Matte-finish postcards are super high quality

thomas11 16y ago

The final recommendation based on cost is Vistaprint, when their price was $25 compared to Overnight's $9?

mitko 16y ago
that's for 250 cards from vistaprint in comparison to 25 cards from overnight's
joshfinnie 16y ago
And the cards are visibly terrible. That suggestion made me really question this review.
Bostwick 16y ago
Vistaprint was 250 cards for $24.25, for a per-card price of $0.097. Overnight was 25 cards for $8.81, for a per-card price of $0.352. On a per-card basis, Overnight is 3.6x as expensive as Vistaprint.
- thomas11 16y ago
  Ah, thanks.
- fragmede 16y ago
  It's a shame there isn't a graph showing the per-card price since that's the obvious question after seeing that Overnight Prints was only $8.81 to VistaPrint's $24.25
roel_v 16y ago
I started out with Vistaprint once, after clicking on a Google ad saying '250 card 5 euros' or something like that. Designed business card based on their templates, put it through their web order forms, turned out I had to add a bunch of options and preparation costs and shipping costs, and the whole thing turned into 25 euros or something. By that time I had spend hours on getting the business card just right for their template format, so I just went with them anyway. Other printers had the same I found out - I never did find heavy paper, ad-free cards including shipping for less than 20 euros or so. YMMV.

jackowayed 16y ago

I just ordered 1k business cards from Overnight Prints in preparation for RubyConf. I was impressed by the quality, given how cheap they were. They were thicker than I expected. My one complaint is that you either pay a lot for shipping or get them fairly slowly. (I upgraded one level from the bottom and it took from Tuesday to the next Thursday.) Even that shipping was expensive--it was $8 shipping plus $4 "handling". Others may be just as bad though. Overall, I was quite happy. I paid $40 with shipping and CA tax for 1,000 high quality, double-sided color business cards thanks to a half off coupon I found on retailmenot.com. And if you're coming to RubyConf, find me and I'll give you one.

yoseph 16y ago

@PrintingChoice This is a great piece of marketing. It provides me with some very useful information while selling me on your value prop. Brilliant.

gallamine 16y ago

I've recently been ordering from Clubflyers. I got a batch of 4x6 cards and business cards. The price was better than I could find elsewhere and they did a great job. The cheap printing is glossy only though.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

clistctrl 16y ago

I've always assumed what you get is going to be about the same anywhere so price is the only comparison, but its great to see just how much worse the quality of vistaprint is.

hedgehog 16y ago

Avery 8871, they look good and you can print a few cards when you need them (and change them when you want).

shin_lao 16y ago

Off topic but when reading this article I couldn't help thinking about the famous business card scene from American Psycho. Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has a watermark!

lowglow 16y ago

Anyone know of a great print shop in San Francisco?

lerhaupt 16y ago
was going to go with moo but wanted the more traditional business card size. just went to h&h imaging at 16th/alabama, really great service, options, price. http://www.yelp.com/biz/h-and-h-imaging-san-francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/h-and-h-imaging-san-francisco
- lowglow 16y ago
  Great, thanks for the heads up. :) Edit: Oh, wow I work on 16th and Harrison. This is perfect.

sbierwagen 16y ago

One of the winners in the shootout was Moo. I went up to the top level page and searched on two sided, 50 count, whatever's cheapest business cards... and got four hits. All of them for Moo. Hmm.

shanedanger 16y ago
Moo is the only one who lets you print just 50 cards, with the exception of ONP who hasn't updated in the price search yet. If you search for other quantities you'll see plenty of others. :)

neilk 16y ago

Given this information, I don't see how the author recomended VistaPrint in any way. It looks to me like it's Moo for quality and speed, Overnight for price, and everything else is significantly worse in every dimension.

jpwagner 16y ago
the presentation looks confusing, but i think he means the graphs to convey that per card price was lowest with vistaprint
igrekel 16y ago
Right, I am puzzled too, especially since that according to his graph it was actually overnight prints that was the cheapest with better quality than vistaprint. I don't see how with these results the author can recommend vistaprint unless there is a mistake somewhere.
- jpwagner 16y ago
  that price is for the min number of cards, per card price would look different

mbubb 16y ago

Just got my new cards from zazzle today. Used them before and was happy but wish I had this info. Next time will try moo. Question: what do others think about a large business card size. I like that because i inevitably jot something on the card when i give it to someone. The last example was that I was talking to a dogrun acquaintance about vyatta (ie the router project) and gave my card with the word 'vyatta' on it. I have a minimal amount of information - name, email, google voice number as well as a small qr_code barcode which links to my online profile. I think the oversized card (called a 'calling card' I believe) enables you to have a nice a mount of room for a graphic and room to write something.

qjz 16y ago
The card from Moo isn't oversized. It's the only company in the group based in England, where that's the standard size. Oversizing your business card might make it stand out, but some peoople might find it annoying, like television commercials that are extremely loud compared to the main program.
enjo 16y ago
If it doesn't fit in the standard card slot in my wallet, I'll likely (politely) give it back and ask for an e-mail. I hate toting around oversized cards, and just feel wasteful throwing them in my pocket to be tossed later.
- mbubb 16y ago
  thanks - good point

mikeryan 16y ago

I have no relation to this company, but I've always been very happy with my cards from 4by6 http://www.4by6.com/ http://www.4by6.com/ (not covered in review)

kmfrk 16y ago
I saw a link to them in the reddit thread, but I was completely confounded by the fact that they don't show image samples of the different business cards. I see that they send out samples (at least to people from the US), but the approach makes no sense to me. http://www.deeprint.co.uk http://www.deeprint.co.uk do this, too.

blaines 16y ago

"Error establishing a database connection"

nkurz 16y ago

The quality comparisons here are quite helpful, but the pricing isn't that useful. If you're willing to do a little digging, you can find 30-50% off coupons for the big guys like PSPrint and VistaPrint. Not sure if this is also true for the smaller places like Moo. Also, the prices dive sharply at larger quantities. We're currently using PSPrint for business cards, and would agree with this assessment: "flimsy, but otherwise nice". For our recent order with coupon, we were at final price of $130 for 10000. If you are in the Bay Area, you can pick up for free from their warehouse in Emeryville.

Anechoic 16y ago

Having ordered business cards from Vistaprint and Overnight Prints, let me make a couple of observations: * Vistaprint had decent print quality, but IMO their paper quality left something to be desired. The biggest issue with VP (again IMO) is that their business cards are standard-sized, they are slightly smaller. It makes the card stand out a bit, but you have to decide if it stands out in a good way or a bad way * I've used Overnight Prints for the vast majority of business cards. I've only used the "Value Cards" products (basically printed on a laser printer" as opposed to the offset press printing of the Premium cards. They use a very thick stock, and I often get positive comments on the "feel" of the card stock. At first glance the print quality looks pretty good, but upon a closer look you can see that the cards were printed on a laser printer (I presume that the offset-printed cards look better). * The biggest 'gotcha' with Overnight Prints (at least the Value cards) is the color consistency - that is to say, there is none. They don't pay attention to embedded color profiles, and every order I've made the colors come out different. I don't mind too much because I know that my clients aren't comparing colors and I figure most of my cards either get scanned/transcribed into electronic address books and then put away, or get tossed out. But if you're someone who obsesses over the color consistency of your printed material, definitely stay away from the Value Cards (again I don't know if things are better with the Premium Cards).

brixon 16y ago

Your local print shop might not be printing their own business cards. My dad owned a print shop and he has been outsourcing the printing of business cards for over 10 years. He makes a little profit on outsourced cards (@$5 per thousand) and no profit on in-house printed cards. The only cards he prints in-house are car dealerships that have mass bulk with only the salesman contact information changing. Now, he can help you pick the stock, ink and other options and will make sure the order/product is correct before you pay him, so there is some benefit to local.

dholowiski 16y ago
Absolutley true, I know of at least two print shops who order many of their jobs from Vistaprint.

eli 16y ago

Worth noting that Overnight Prints very frequently has coupons for significant savings: http://www.retailmenot.com/view/overnightprints.com http://www.retailmenot.com/view/overnightprints.com Currently it's 50% off premium biz cards. I think they're very hard to beat at that price.

dotBen 16y ago
Just want to re-emphasize the discounts. Check retailmenot.com etc. I often order 250 cards from Overnight Prints for about $15 inc shipping. The quality is only bettered by Moo (great company but expensive).

terra_t 16y ago

I'm just astonished at how much blatant link bait is getting voted up on HN these days. It's starting to look like Digg.

limedaring 16y ago
Even if it has genuinely interesting and informative content?
- terra_t 16y ago
  It's just not interesting and informative enough.

limedaring 16y ago

It always surprises me how many people don't know about Moo.com. Fast, fairly cheap, and really fantastic quality. And if quality isn't great, they'll reprint it. A few years ago I was ordering Christmas cards for my company, and I accidentally had a typo. I contacted them to see if I could get a discount at least since I was ordering them all again, and they insisted on reprinting them for free and even expedited the shipping to me. Compare that to OvernightPrints, when our business cards came back with streaks all over them, and after I called and emailed them several times, I never got a response. Of course I'm going to use Moo.com for everything now.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Plus moo has smaller sized cards which all the cool kids are using these days.
- limedaring 16y ago
  And you can use those smaller size ones to create pretty awesome custom cards: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vadavia/3348895753/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/vadavia/3348895753/ (my personal business cards)
- dholowiski 16y ago
  I believe the smaller cards are no longer officially cool. But Moo does print top quality cards, for sure.
- athst 16y ago
  I would recommend against getting abnormally-sized cards like this. After collecting cards from a group of people, it's annoying to have these stragglers swimming around in your pocket that don't really fit with the rest. I'd rather have a standard sized card that is designed well.
  - limedaring 16y ago
    Do you find you discriminate against those that have the oddly-sized cards, or do you pay them more attention? Think those that got the mini-cards were going for the latter effect.

snprbob86 16y ago

Been very happy with cards, shirts, and service ordered from Zazzle!