Digital business cards, QR codes, barcodes and contacts. One deck.

A digital business card platform is a single place to create a professional card, publish it at a permanent link, connect it to a QR code and keep it current. The card is a mobile-friendly page with your name, title, company, contact buttons and links, plus a button that saves you to the other person's phone as a vCard.

Most tools stop there. A full platform also handles what happens around the card:

• Codes — a QR code that opens the card, and barcodes for systems that still use laser scanners.
• Other card types — employee IDs, student IDs, event badges and membership cards built from the same details.
• Volume — generating cards for a whole team, class or attendee list from one spreadsheet.
• Follow-up — capturing the details of people who open your card so the conversation doesn't end at "nice to meet you".
• Control — templates, permissions and deactivation for organizations.

CardDeck is built as that kind of platform. You can use one piece — a single digital business card, say — and add the rest only when you need it.

CardDeck is for anyone who hands out contact details or identity cards, from one person to a few thousand. The same editor, QR system and sharing tools serve all three groups below; what changes is how many cards you manage and who controls the design.

Individuals

Freelancers, founders, consultants, real estate agents and recruiters usually need one great card, a QR code to print on signs or slides, and a way to know who they met. The Free and Pro plans cover this: a card you edit yourself, dynamic QR codes and a contact list.

Businesses

Sales teams, small businesses and larger companies need every employee on the same brand, cards that can be switched off when someone leaves, and a dashboard that shows which cards get used. Team business cards add locked templates, an admin view and employee ID cards.

Organizations

Schools, colleges, event organizers, clubs and communities issue cards in batches — a class list in August, a registration export the week before a conference. They mostly need the batch generator, print-ready exports and QR verification. CardDeck handles the cards themselves; it works alongside your existing school management, ticketing or membership system rather than replacing it.

In CardDeck every card starts from a record: a person's name, role, organization, photo, contact details, links and an identifier such as an employee or member number. That record can then be rendered in more than one format.

• Digital business card — the public, mobile page people open and save.
• Employee or student ID — a printable CR80 card (85.6 × 54 mm) with photo, number, validity date and a QR code that opens a verification page.
• Event badge — a role-labelled badge with a check-in QR code that also works as a networking card.
• Digital profile — a longer public page with work, links and a booking calendar.

The QR code is the bridge between paper and the live record. Print it on a business card, badge, sign or slide; when someone scans it, their phone opens the current version of the card in the browser. Barcodes do the same job for older scanners: a Code 128 employee number on an ID can be read by an access-control reader, while an EAN-13 code identifies a retail product.

Contacts close the loop. When someone opens your card they can share their details back through a short form. CardDeck stores each contact with its source — which card, badge or QR code brought them in — so you can tag them, add notes and export them. That is the difference between a card that gets looked at and a card that produces follow-ups. See contact management for how capture and export work.

Because everything shares one record, a change happens once. Update a job title and the business card, profile and next ID print all use the new title.

Use a dynamic QR code for anything you print and expect to keep using; use a static QR code when the data will never change. The difference is where the information lives.

A static QR code stores the data inside the pattern — a URL, a block of text, a WiFi login or a vCard contact. It works offline and never expires, but it cannot be edited. If your phone number changes, you need a new code and a reprint. Static codes are unlimited on every CardDeck plan.

A dynamic QR code stores a short link that redirects to a destination you control. Change your card, swap the destination for a new page, or fix a typo, and the printed code keeps working. Dynamic codes also count scans, so you can see whether a flyer, a booth banner or a property sign is actually being used.

A simple rule:

1. Is the code going on something printed in volume, or something you can't easily replace (signage, packaging, ID cards)? Use dynamic.
2. Do you need to know how many people scanned it? Use dynamic.
3. Is it a one-off, like a WiFi login on a meeting room wall or a link that will never move? Static is fine.

Whichever you choose, print the code at least 2 × 2 cm for close-range scanning and scale it up with distance — roughly one-tenth of the distance the code will be read from. Keep dark modules on a light background and leave a clear margin around the code. The QR code generator handles sizing and export in SVG or PNG.

Put the details people need to contact you and the one or two links that move a conversation forward. More fields rarely help; the best cards are scannable in a few seconds.

• Essentials: photo, name, job title, company, phone and email.
• Links: website and LinkedIn first, then a portfolio, listings page or product page if it matters for your work.
• One call to action: "Book a call", "See current listings" or "View our menu" — a button with a clear next step.
• Save contact: always on. It downloads a vCard so your details land in the other person's phone contacts with your photo and title.

Avoid information that changes weekly unless it sits behind a link you control. If you have several roles — a day job and a side practice, or two client sectors — make a separate card for each rather than cramming both into one.

You can publish your first card in a few minutes on the Free plan, with no credit card. The path depends on whether you're setting up a card for yourself or for a group.

For yourself

1. Create an account and pick a template.
2. Add your photo, details and links, and choose which fields to show.
3. Publish. Your card gets a permanent link (for example carddeck.co/yourname) and a QR code.
4. Share it: show the QR code on your phone, add the link to your email signature and social bios, or print the code on a paper card.

For a team, school or event

1. Set up a workspace and build a template with your logo, colors and fixed fields.
2. Prepare a spreadsheet with one row per person, saved as CSV (UTF-8) or XLSX.
3. Upload it to the batch generator, map columns to fields and fix any flagged rows — a missing photo or a duplicate ID number.
4. Issue cards digitally or export a print-ready PDF.

When you outgrow Free — more cards, more dynamic QR codes, bigger batches, locked templates — compare plans on the pricing page. The step-by-step version of all this is on how CardDeck works.