I ordered my LOLbiznes cards on November 25, and they arrived yesterday on December 3, a day ahead of schedule.
I compared two companies, VistaPrint and PrintsMadeEasy.com. I decided to order from PrintsMadeEasy.com, since they offered smaller quantities and I was just experimenting with this batch of cards, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, overall.
For cheap on-demand printing at low quantities of personal cards, the cards from PrintsMadeEasy.com came out fine. Some cards–I’d guess, maybe 1 in 10 or so–didn’t print properly, with toner not adhering to the card stock properly or other visual defects. The color profile of their printer is a bit too heavy on the magenta as the front-side art is a lot more purple-tinted than it should have been. The cards are good enough, but if you’re looking for perfection, this isn’t it.
I placed the order on Nov. 25 and it arrived Dec. 3, or eight days later. The guaranteed delivery was by Dec. 4. For 100 glossy, double-sided business cards, it cost $19.99 and $6.95 for shipping and handling, for a total of $26.94. Uploading my own design for the front and back was included, free. The net cost per card is $0.27 each.
Compare this to VistaPrint, whose minimum quantity is 250 cards for $19.99, and they charge $4.99 per uploaded design, plus $9.99 more for glossy finish, and $6.99 for double-sided: $46.95 total. Add $9.15 for 14-day shipping, and you’re talking $56.10, or a cost of $0.22 per card.
Generally, folks order in larger quantities, typically 1,000 at a time, so lets compare those prices. VistaPrint: $71.95 + $11.15 S&H = $83.10 or $0.083 per card. PrintsMadeEasy.com: $79.99 + $8.85 S&H = $88.84 or $0.089 per card.
Costs aside, both sites provide reasonable web interfaces for uploading your own designs and preparing your order. PrintsMadeEasy.com uses a Flash-based interface which I really dislike, but it does work and I was able to complete my order using it. No real surprises here.
In the end, I would certainly order from PrintsMadeEasy.com again for small quantity orders just to test out new designs, but I do want to give VistaPrint a try just to compare the print quality difference. If they can deliver better quality, I would definitely use them for larger quantity jobs, where the price difference becomes negligible.
Have you ordered cards from VistaPrint? How did they come out? Or, do you have any other on-demand business card printing companies to recommend? Let me know about them in the comments. Thanks!
Tags: LOL, business cards, VistaPrint, PrintsMadeEasy.com, review
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
Check out Giggleprint.com. They offer 250 free business cards + the cost of shipping which is $5.25.
You can upgrade to their premium business cards which are currently 80% off with free image upload. You can get blank backsides, black & white, or full color.
They do a pretty good job for the prices they offer. Definitely check them out sometime.
sondra: Thanks for the tip! I’ll go check out GigglePrint.com right now …
OK, their website makes creating a custom card really difficult. They only accept rasterized images for file uploads (GIF, JPEG, TIF) which is really disappointing. They won’t allow me to upload an image that is the entire card design, only a logo–or, if it’s possible to upload an entire card design, it’s not obvious as to how.
If all you need is a bunch of text laid out on a stock design, GigglePrint looks adequate. But, it won’t work for me.
I never used printsmadeeasy.com, but I’m not a fan of VistaPrint. They are low price, but very bad in quality and for some reason they are known to charge your account with hidden fees (Check them out on the BBB and you’ll see all the complaints against them).
Dave: I’ve heard about those complaints about VistaPrint, which is also why I decided to try PrintsMadeEasy.com first. If anyone else is interested, here’s the link to VistaPrint’s BBB record. Indeed, “unsatisfactory” isn’t a good sign.