How to choose a QR code generator
We sell one of these products, so a ranked list with us at the top would be worth nothing. What follows instead is the six questions that actually separate providers, why each one matters before you print, and our own answer to each, including the question where a competitor beats us outright.
Choosing6 min read
Why this is not a top ten
A ranking has to pretend every buyer is the same buyer. A parish printing a service sheet once a year and an agency running codes across forty clients’ campaigns are not choosing the same product, and a list that hands both of them the same winner has stopped being advice.
The questions below travel better than any ranking. Put them to any provider, in writing if the print run is expensive, and keep the answers. Under each one is why it matters, and then what we would have to say if you put it to us.
1. What happens to printed codes if I stop paying?
A dynamic code is a short link on the provider’s domain, so the leaflet in the rack depends on that link still answering. Subscriptions lapse for ordinary reasons: a card expires, a campaign ends, the person who set it up leaves. The printed material does not know any of that has happened.
The market’s answers genuinely differ. Some codes stop resolving the day a plan lapses. Some keep resolving with features removed. Some destinations are kept for a period and then deleted. We collected every major vendor’s own wording on this, quoted and linked, because the answer is rarely on the pricing page where the decision gets made.
Our answer: when a paid plan lapses you drop to the free allowance for creating new codes, and everything already printed carries on resolving. That is not a policy we hope to honour; a test in every deploy fails the release if a lapsed account’s codes stop resolving.
2. Is the price shown the price my card is charged?
Three things routinely sit between the number on the pricing page and the number on your statement. VAT, which at 20% changes the figure by a fifth and is not always included. Currency, because a dollar or euro price moves with the exchange rate and can carry a card fee that appears on no pricing page anywhere. And billing period, because an annual-only plan makes the real commitment twelve times the number you were admiring. The UK arithmetic is a page of its own.
Our answer: prices are in pounds and include VAT, so the number shown is the number charged. Free is three codes you can repoint. Starter is £3.49 a month, Pro is £9, Business is £24, and monthly billing exists on all of them, so nobody has to commit to a year to find out.
3. Can I export true vector artwork?
A printer wants PDF or EPS. Vector scales from a business card to a pull-up banner without softening; a PNG enlarged to poster size does not, and JPEG compression actively damages the hard edges a scanner reads. Ask which formats you get and on which plan, because the answer is not always where the prices are.
Our answer: SVG, EPS, PDF and PNG on every plan, including the free one. Each download is also decoded before it is handed over, so artwork that will not scan is refused with a reason rather than sent to your printer. The print guide covers what to send and why.
4. How short is the redirect host, and who answers it in five years?
Two questions wearing one domain. The short one first: the host’s length sets how dense the printed pattern has to be, and a denser pattern needs to be printed larger to scan. A nine-character host produces a coarser, more forgiving code than a long domain with a path after it. This is measurable before you buy: make a test code and count the modules.
The long one: every scan for the life of the printed material is a request to that domain. So ask how long the company has operated, and what its stated position is on the domain if the product is sold or shut. Nobody can promise you five years. What they can show you is a record.
Our answer: the host is nine characters, which is the good half. On the record we lose, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise: this product is young, operated by NUVIX Studio Limited, a UK company, number 16287603, and we cannot point at a decade of the domain answering because the domain has not existed for a decade. Bitly has been running short links since 2008. On this question age is real evidence, and they have more of it than we do.
5. What happens to scan data, and to the people scanning?
Scan analytics point in two directions. Your data: where it is held, who else can see it, how long it is kept. And the scanners’ data, which is the one people forget to ask about. A provider that stores the raw network address of everyone who scans your poster is holding data about identifiable people, and that data exists because your poster does. Broadly, that comes with obligations under UK data protection law, and it is worth knowing what you are signing your customers up for before the run is printed.
Our answer: scan data is held in the UK, and the raw IP address of somebody scanning is never stored. It is salted, hashed and truncated at the moment of the scan, and the salt rotates daily, so no column in the database could hold the original. How that works, and what analytics can honestly tell you, has its own page.
6. Can I get my data out, and what can never leave?
Start with the part no vendor will volunteer: with any dynamic provider, the codes themselves cannot move. The printed pattern encodes that provider’s host, permanently, so switching providers means reprinting. That is true of us exactly as it is true of everyone else, and it is the reason the five questions above deserve answers before the print run rather than after.
What can move is the record. Ask whether you can export your scan history and your list of codes and destinations, in a format a spreadsheet opens, without raising a support ticket.
Our answer: scan analytics export as CSV from the Starter plan up. The free plan shows the numbers on screen and does not include the export, which is a real limitation of the free tier and you should know it before choosing us for the analytics.
When somebody else is the right answer
Some readers should close this tab, and it is cheaper to say so than to be the wrong purchase:
- You want ordering, not pointing. If the plan is a menu where customers build a basket and pay at the table, that is an ordering system with a QR code on the front of it. We point codes at destinations and we do not run baskets or take restaurant payments. Buy the ordering system and use whatever code it gives you.
- You need enterprise plumbing. Single sign-on, user provisioning, procurement questionnaires, a signed security review. We do not offer those, and a small team pretending it can service a five-hundred-seat rollout helps nobody. The larger platforms sell exactly this.
- Your destination will never move. A phone number, a Wi-Fi password, a homepage that is staying put. That wants a free static code and no subscription from anyone, us included. The difference between the two kinds is a ten-second test.
And whichever provider the answers point you to, the artwork can still waste the run on its own. Size, quiet zone and logos are covered here, with the numbers in millimetres.
We make QR codes you can re-point after they are printed. The pattern on the page never changes, and the codes you have already printed keep working even if you stop paying.
Three codes free, no card. Paid plans start at £3.49 a month including VAT.