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When it comes to networking and building meaningful connections, there are no two ways about it: business cards are a “must-have.”
Now, there are only two types of business cards.
The first is the traditional paper card, with its matte finishes and raised ridges (you know the kind). Shared today, discarded tomorrow.
The second is the more agile and secure digital business card that has recently gained popularity. You can create, share, and track these digital cards without worrying about printing, logistics, and other factors.
So, which of these two business cards is better for you?
Let me compare the costs of paper vs. digital business cards and how they hold up to each other—so you can make the right decision.
Table of contents
- Paper vs. digital business cards: How do they compare?
- Initial setup and recurring costs
- Scalability for growing teams
- Accessibility and distribution
- Environmental impact
- Durability and longevity
- Return on investment (ROI)
- Switch to digital business cards today
Paper vs. digital business cards: How do they compare?
While both do the same job, multiple factors come into play when analyzing the cost of paper vs. digital business cards: accessibility, distribution, and scalability, among other parameters (more in the table).
Regarding overall costs, digital business cards start from $4/month for three cards, while you may have to spend up to $2,000 on paper cards for printing, shipping, reprinting, and other aspects.
Let’s look at a quick comparison of how these two types of cards stack up against each other (with a detailed explanation below):
| Parameters | 🪪Paper business cards | ⚡Digital business cards |
| Initial setup and recurring costs | $2,000 to $3,200 per year for a single batch of cards for 20 users (that’s for the cheapest options in the market). | Approximately $800 per year for 20 users (up to five distinct cards per user). |
| Scalability for growing teams | Fresh batches usually take two to five business days to print and ship for new employees. | Features like bulk-card creation let you create 250+ business cards in mere minutes. |
| Accessibility and distribution | Requires prolonged 1:1 interactions. May not help when engaging with leads in high-profile networking events. | Seamless and instant sharing through multiple channels, including QR Codes, emails, and texts. |
| Environmental impact | One hundred billion paper cards are produced annually, costing almost seven million trees. | Digital business cards impact the environment much less and do not generate paper waste. |
| Durability and longevity | Eighty-eight percent of paper cards are discarded, lost, or damaged within a week of receiving them. | Stored and shared electronically. Features such as two-way contact-sharing help drive digital reciprocation. |
| Return on investment (ROI) | You need to pay at least $100 to get a paper card for a year and more than $2,000 to get a batch of cards. It doesn’t offer insights to track card performance. | Pay as little as $4/month for five cards ($60 annually). Get dedicated analytics to track card views/scans, save, unique users, etc. |
1. Initial setup and recurring costs
🪪Paper business cards
When analyzing the cost of paper vs. digital business cards, you must involve design, setup, and printing expenses.
Forbes’s list of the cheapest business card printing services offers an excellent baseline for estimating the total costs.
Based on this report, a business with 100 employees must pay at least $1,000 to print a batch of business cards. While this is the cheapest option, the more expensive vendors charge approximately $2,200.
But here’s the kicker: hiring a professional to design your cards will cost just as much. A conservative estimate here would be around $1,000.
That’s $2,000-3,200 for printing one set of paper cards together!
⚡Digital business cards:
Cost as little as $40/year.
The most competitive price in the market would be $4 per user/monthly. Billed annually, that’s $40 for yearly access to digital business cards.
Plus:
❌ You don’t have to hire third-party designers
❌ No wait times for weeks and potentially months
❌ You don’t have to worry about reprinting or shipping costs
❌ No need to worry about incurring extra costs for sudden upgrade requests
✅ Digital business card solutions come with ready-to-use templates to instantly create a card and start sharing
✅ You can share your cards through QR Codes, emails, text messages, Apple Wallet, Google Wallet, and almost any digital channel
✅ It’s easy to edit anytime, and your digital cards will be updated in real-time
2. Scalability for growing teams
In an ideal situation, you must be able to scale up your business cards as your team grows.
🪪 Paper business cards
Aren’t scalable because of:
- Timelines: You have to wait at least a week to get a bulk shipment of cards
- Costs: Additional expenses go into printing more cards for more employees—think $50 for 100 cards, $200 for 500 cards, and so on
- Wastage: Greater scope of wastage as employees leave or designations change
- Logistics: Storing and distributing cards becomes a headache without a systematic process
⚡Digital digital business cards
On the other hand, these cards are built to scale up and don’t stagger your operations like paper cards.
For example, using a digital business card management platform like Uniqode, you can create 250+ digital cards for your organization in minutes.
You can also govern features for team members and organizational security measures using role-based access and team management protocols.
For example, you can create a “Master organization” with specific roles under it. You can also set up a “Sub-organization” under it and assign user permissions as you see fit.
This way, only core executives can access the bulk-card creation feature. More importantly, team members or organizational data is secured and only accessible to a select few.
3. Accessibility and distribution
How quickly can you share your business card with a potential client?
🪪 Paper business card
You must be physically present to hand a paper card to a prospect. More importantly, you must carry several copies of your business card everywhere, especially at a networking event, so you will not run out of them.
On average, you need 50-100 business cards when attending an industry event.
Besides, you might not even have a meaningful conversation with a prospect, making it tricky to share your business card without seeming pushy.
⚡Digital business cards
They are built for sharing anytime, anywhere because they’re digital.
The simplest way to share it is to show a digital business card QR Code that users can scan to access it. Other ways include embedding the card URL in an email or text.
Your imagination is the only limit where you can put the QR Code for people to scan and access your card.
If you use Uniqode, you can create an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass. This way, you have an “in” with potential leads through multiple channels. They work like digital business card QR Codes from your wallet app.
⭐Real people. Real impact.
“I don’t have to carry business cards, and the new people I meet really appreciate the fact that all of my information can be added as a new contact at the touch of a button.”
Tracy W, small business owner on G2
4. Environmental impact
🪪Paper business cards
Around 100 billion cards are printed globally annually.
That number alone won’t mean much. So, let’s put this in perspective.
This year alone, we’ve produced 322,397,705 (and counting) tons of paper. To achieve this, we’ve encroached on 21,485,508 (and counting) hectares of forests.
How much would you say those 100 billion paper cards contribute to those concerning numbers? A million trees cut down? Five million trees cut down?
An accurate answer doesn’t matter because it’s the same no matter the number: too much!
🌲🪓How much is too much? Uniqode did a calculation
The Amazon rainforest, one of the largest in the world, covers an area of about 5.5 million square kilometers and contains an estimated 390-400 billion trees! That means, on average, the Amazon has about 71,000 trees per square kilometer.
Using this average density, a forest with seven million trees (the estimated number of trees felled to make paper cards annually) would occupy approximately 98.6 square kilometers. This is equivalent to about 38 square miles. The closest reference to that area we could find is Lake Trichonida in Greece—the nation’s largest natural lake.
Imagine an area of trees equivalent to Lake Trichondia suddenly vanishing from the face of the earth because of our unsustainable practices.
* Numbers are an estimation and do not indicate concrete values.
* The felling of trees indicated above is a mix of sustainable and unsustainable practices.
⚡Digital business cards
These are less heavy on the environment than paper business cards (especially the unsustainably sourced ones), considering the sheer volume of wood required to make paper.
For context, paper uses up 13-15% of total global wood consumption, according to WWF. The US is the world’s second-largest paper producer and consumer.
Considering the enormity of the industry, even a small step, such as switching from paper cards to digital business cards, can positively impact the industry. Besides saving dozens of trees per digital business card created, you automatically save thousands of dollars. Our calculator indicates you can protect three trees by creating 100 digital cards instead of printing paper.
Digital business cards don’t require finite resources to make, generate precisely zero waste, and exist on secure networks voluntarily shared with others.
5. Durability and longevity
🪪Paper business cards
Just under 10 billion business cards are printed annually in the US alone. And 88% of them are tossed within a week of being handed to a person.
Read that again: Eighty-eight percent in under a week! Not in a month. Not in a year. In a week.
Of course, there are plenty of reasons behind this:
- Traditional cards aren’t very durable. You hand one out to a person, and they will stuff it in their pocket. It either gets lost in their laundry, or they forget it entirely.
- One may be lazy to manually export the card details into a digital address book or CRM and procrastinate until they lose the card, misplace it, or simply forget it exists!
- In other cases, they may discard your card after an event because they don’t have a secure place to store it.
⚡Digital business cards
Much of the process is automatic once you share it. You can store them electronically. And there’s no risk of loss or damage.
Because digital cards are available on your phone or in the cloud, they’re virtually indestructible—even when you share them with hundreds of people.
You don’t have to worry about losing these digital cards in a desk drawer. Or think about damages and reprinting costs when they’re stashed in your wallet (because they’re not).
These cards are stored securely in encrypted storage. Until you delete them, they’ll last as long as you want to keep them.
6. Return on investment (ROI) with a formula
🪪Paper business cards
Let’s face it: tracking engagement for your paper cards is impossible.
You can’t tell if your leads are holding onto your cards. Second, you cannot know how much these cards contribute to conversions.
Add to that the cost of reprinting, and you probably have no ROI.
⚡Digital business cards
You can track engagement in the real world long after you’ve shared a digital business card. With card analytics, you can track card views/scans, saves, unique users, and views by time/city/device.
Let’s try and understand how this works with an example.
So, say you’re a sales manager and notice increased card views. However, the total number of deals closed by your team remains the same. This could indicate a need to optimize your conversion strategy after someone scans the card to capitalize on the recent surge in card views.
Similarly, your card saves can point to clients or leads with high intent or interest in your product/service. An e-contact card will tell you the exact ROI on every dollar spent.
You can also use this simple formula to compare the ROI of paper vs. digital business cards:
Digital business card ROI = Revenue from digital cards – Cost of digital cards / Cost of digital cards x 100
Let’s say your income is $1,000.
In the case of paper cards, the cost can be around $700, leaving the ROI to be around 42%.
Conversely, digital business cards cost around $100, which would produce an ROI of 180%.
Switch to digital business cards for sustainable networking today!
Considering all the factors involved, it’s easy to see why digital business cards offer better value, ROI, and impact than paper cards.
They are cheaper but eco-friendly. They don’t disrupt your internal workflow but offer a dedicated way to monitor client engagement. Plus, they are easy to share, and you never have to worry about people throwing them away.
Try Uniqode digital business cards for free!
