The Pros & Cons Of Paper Vs Digital Business Cards

Last updated on June 17th, 2025

Business cards are essential for professionals as well as businesses of all sizes across various industries. They not only provide contact details but also help build a brand. Recognizing the significance, modern entrepreneurs have transformed conventional paper-based business cards into modern digital cards.

In the modern competitive world, marketers engage customers with new strategies. One of the cost-effective ways to draw clients’ attention is to hand out business cards.

These cards provide contact details. Clients or customers can have quick access to some key contact information. However, providing the details is not the sole purpose of the cards for today’s businesses.

The modern cards are designed to impress clients. They include carefully chosen design elements such as color, typeface, spacing, logo, and imagery. These elements combine to make the desired impact. The impression remains at the back of the client’s mind, creating the desired perception of the brand.

Like their paper counterparts, digital business cards can leave a lasting impression — but designers face a unique challenge. Digital cards lack the sense of touch that paper-based cards have.

For example, a thick card paper signals that the company’s products or services are top-notch. This advantage is missing when using a digital card. Digital cards, also known as virtual cards, rely solely on visual design to make an impact. 

Some marketers believe that the paper card has become obsolete. They list out many disadvantages of the conventional cards. For them, digital cards are the future.

A study shows that in the US, nearly 77 percent of small and medium businesses believe that digital presence helps them in customer acquisition. So, the future is digital, and it includes a digital business card as well. However, the fact is that both types have their pros and cons.

Here Are The Key Advantages And Disadvantages Of Paper And Digital Business Cards

Paper Business Cards

Do you still use paper business cards in the digital era? You can continue to enjoy having these cards, as they still hold some advantages for business owners and individuals. Here are some of the advantages:

Pros

• Grab Attention Quickly

Paper-based business cards can instantly make an impression the moment a client touches them. This is due to the thick card paper. Thick, high-quality paper in the perfect business card size speaks favourably about the high quality of a company’s products or services.

You grab the client’s attention in a quick time. However, you need exciting graphic design ideas to create a standout business card that catches your audience’s attention. Creative visuals on your business card can engage customers with graphics, leaving a lasting impression aligned with your brand’s message.

• Easy To Share

You can easily share paper cards with people. All you need to do is give the cards personally to your valued clients. Additionally, distribute them randomly at the sidelines of a seminar or at a trade fair.

• Establish Personal Connection

With the paper cards, you build a strong personal connection and relationship with people. The cards are usually shared in warm and happy moments. Therefore, clients place more value on these cards. This ultimately helps in building a loyal customer base.

• Affordable

Most small businesses can afford to have paper-based business cards. The printing costs are within the budgets of startups and other small and medium-sized companies. That is a huge advantage for many startups. All they need to do is search for the term “business card near me” on Google, and they will get plenty of options to create a business card within their budget.

Cons

• Need Professionals To Design Cards

Many small businesses cannot afford to hire expensive professional graphic designers. For impactful cards, it is essential to hire a designer with significant experience. The average cost of a designer is usually out of the reach of small budgets of new companies.

• Require Frequent Redesigning

Most companies redesign the card to add new contact details such as web addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and fax numbers. This should prompt them to redesign the card. This also results in the reprinting of a new set of cards.

• Takes up A Lot Of Space

Paper-based business cards become a heap of cards within a few months as clients receive them frequently. They occupy a good space in the office. Sometimes, the presence of hundreds of such cards becomes overwhelming.

• Need A Scanner

When sending contact details to someone, you need to enter the information into the CRM. So, you need a business card scanner.

• Discarded In A Few Days

Most paper business cards end up in a dustbin in a few days. Many studies have revealed that 88% of such cards are thrown out within a week.

• Not Environment-Friendly

Trees are felled in large numbers to make paper. This means that paper business cards are a significant contributor to environmental damage to the air we breathe.

Digital Business Cards

Pros

• Easy To Share

You can easily share digital business cards with your clients and others. All you need to do is send the card to them via email, social media, text [SMS], and other ways. You do not have to shake a client’s hand before sharing your card.

• Stand Out

Since not everyone is using digital business cards, you can easily impress clients and stand out with these cards. While others are still sticking to conventional paper cards, digital business cards help your business look different. Ensure that your business card ideas stand out from your competitors.

• Attach Media

Another significant advantage is that businesses can attach a variety of media to digital cards. They can add videos, links to their surveys, subscription lists, sign-up forms, etc. This is useful in many ways. You promote your business by sharing videos and other media.

Clients are likely to form a positive impression of your brand due to the diverse media included. It ensures better engagement. You don’t have to hire graphic design services to incorporate media, as you can do it yourself.

• Store The Information Conveniently

One of the most significant advantages of digital business cards is that it is a convenient way to store as much information as you want in one place. Unlike paper cards, there is no lack of space here, as you can access business cards online. Therefore, ensure that you include your URLs, links to social media accounts, fax number, and phone number on the card.

• Updating Is Easy

A problem with the paper cards is that whenever you update information, you need to redesign and reprint the cards. That made them costly for small businesses. But that is not the issue with the digital counterparts.

A digital business card design lets you automatically update the information. You do not have to reprint a new set of cards, and no need to redesign either.

• Great For Contact Management

Another advantage of digital business cards is enhanced contact management experience. Some apps feature Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality, enabling users to scan business cards effortlessly.

The scanner, including a special business card scanner, gets the contact details converted into digital text. The app either saves the information or syncs the details with your CRM program.

• Easy To Customize

Customizing the paper cards is not easy, as you must incorporate new colors and other elements. Then, the card is put through the printing process.

However, digital business cards can be quickly customized to a brand with the help of business card maker software. You need to incorporate the latest contact details, colors, typeface, etc., and other relevant elements for the new card. There is no need to go through the time-consuming designing and printing process.

• Cost-Effective

Digital cards do not require a significant investment in printing and design, unlike paper cards. The cost of printing cards on paper is very high for many small businesses. However, the digital cards are accessible for free online with no printing required. You will spend some money only on designing the card.

• Eco-Friendly

Digital business cards eliminate the need to cut trees for paper. This helps maintain a healthier environment by reducing deforestation and air pollution.

Cons

• Not Accessible To All

A significant disadvantage of digital business cards is that many people are still not well-equipped to access these cards. They are simply not accustomed to getting the cards digitally.

Then, others do not know how to obtain the cards, contact information, or how to save it. So, while you have free business cards, not all of your clients may be seeing them.

• Lacking In Personal Touch

Since you share these cards digitally, the personal touch is entirely missing. The handshake, talks, welcome, and other gestures while presenting a card personally to a client are absent when sharing the cards online.

• Risky App

• Risky App

If a digital business card application has bugs, it can cause some issues when sharing the card with your clients and others. So, be careful. Choose a business card app only if it comes from a reputable company.

• A Tedious Task

• A Tedious Task

For some people, downloading and installing an app along with creating an account for digital business cards is a tedious task. Handing out paper cards to clients is easier for them. 

• Email Not Opened

What if the client does not open an email containing your digital business card? In that case, the chances are that the email is buried in the inbox and remains unread.

• Blocked Images

The client might have blocked images, or the mechanism to block spam gets activated. That may prevent your card from displaying correctly or reaching the recipient’s inbox.

• Depends On Internet Access

Both you and your client must have quick access to the Internet to share your digital business card. If the client has no Internet connection or access, the card becomes useless.

Both paper and digital business cards offer excellent opportunities for brand building, each having distinct advantages and disadvantages. 

Whether you opt for digital or paper business cards, ensure they’re professionally designed. Platforms like Designhill help you collaborate with talented designers through design contests that you can easily launch. Contests allow you to receive multiple unique design concepts and choose the one that best suits your brand.

Designhill, a leading creative marketplace, is home to hundreds of talented designers whom you can access after launching a design contest. You get many design ideas at an affordable price.

Conclusion

Both paper and digital business cards are excellent for sharing your contact details and making a lasting impression. Both types of cards have their advantages and disadvantages for businesses. Their use will depend on your branding strategy. Use both to gain their benefits.

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