If you have amassed shoeboxes full of business cards that clutter your workspace but you refuse to throw away, help has arrived.
Solvate can help you digitize your business cards and get the right information synced up with your contact management systems. Send your request details, call us at 646.720.7110 or email delegate@solvate.com. Digitizing business cards and getting the info in the right place is part of our Digital Contact Clean-up service.
Want to do it yourself? Here’s some help.
We reviewed four solutions for digitizing the information contained on business cards, cataloging it into searchable databases, and syncing to your contact management system, including Outlook, Gmail, LinkedIn and Plaxo.
CardScan and NeatReceipts sell hardware that scans business cards and automatically sorts the data; CloudContacts and Shoeboxed have you mail in your cards and do all the work for you. Read on for pricing and best fits depending on whether you are a Do It Yourself or Do It For You type, and whether you have a steady flow of cards or just have a pile for a one-time job.
Check out our 15 feature comparison of these services. (PDF)
Now onto the reviews.
DIY: CardScan and NeatReceipts
CardScan
CardScan sells scanners that scan the data on business cards and then sort it into basic fields, such as name, company, email, and phone number, and display it in their searchable online contact system. CardScan Personal, a small, portable scanner, costs $159.99. CardScan Executive, a larger desktop model that is faster and offers color scans, costs $259.99. Executive also lets Mac users sync the data to Address Book. CardscanTeam lets you buy licenses for a team to scan and share contacts, but the license fee adds up quickly.
Pros: CardScan is a good solution if you want to do all the work on your own. If you’re on ACT, LotusNotes or Goldmine, the Executive version syncs contacts to those systems.
Cons: Solvate has found that errors in automatically sorting the data into fields are frequent, and users must go through each entry one-by-one and edit for mistakes. Far from the 30 cards per minute that CardScan advertises, it can take an average of one minute to scan each card, proofread, and correct for errors. Also, CardScan has limited syncing options to new-school contact management systems but is a solid choice for Outlook users (see other syncing options in our chart).
NeatReceipts
Like CardScan, NeatReceipts sells scanning hardware, though its products are also designed to digitize receipts and other general documents, and they’re making a play to organize your documents for tax time. The core product includes a desktop scanner with slots for business cards, receipts, and 8 ½x11” documents, and costs $499.95 $399.95! A mobile scanner (as in portable, not cellular) costs $199.94. If you use a Mac, it’s also possible to buy the data-sorting software on its own for $79.95, providing your scanner is compatible with the system (read the details).
Pros: Organizational tools for other document types too. Bonus points or tax time: NeatReceipts makes pdf backups of all receipts, offers organization by IRS standard categories, and exports to TurboTax.
Cons: More expensive than even CardScan. They also present the same problems of having to proofread and correct mistakes for each scanned card. We have not compared error rates for NeatReceipts versus CardScan.
Services: CloudContacts and Shoeboxed
CloudContacts
CloudContacts is a 2.0-friendly service in New York that does the scanning for you. Prices start at $29.95 for a batch of up to 100 cards, and go up to $124.95 for up to 500 cards. You can mail your cards in, send them via email or send in photos of business cards from your cell phone.
CloudContacts does offer monthly subscriptions if you’re sending in cards via email or mobile phone. Customers may submit 20 cards/month this way for $4.95, or 40 cards/month for $8.95.
Pros: CloudContacts leads the pack on offering syncing options for the 2.0 crowd (see our chart). If you use a system they don’t automatically sync to, they’ll prepare a .csv file for you, free of charge. If you work in Manhattan, CloudContacts also offers free pick-up service so you don’t have to fuss with envelopes.
They also support customers in Canada, the UK, Australia and parts of Europe.
Cons: Not as cheap as Shoeboxed, below, if you have heavy, steady volume. CloudContacts currently only supports business cards, not receipts or other document formats.
Shoeboxed
Shoeboxed is another mail-in service, but unlike CloudContacts, you purchase a monthly subscription. Rates depend on the volume of cards you send: 50 cards per month costs $9.95; 150 cards/month costs $19.95; and 500 cards/month costs $49.94. The purchase of an annual plan includes two months free and an initial bulk catch-up order. Since Shoeboxed also accepts receipts, it can scan and send them to Quickbooks, Excel, PDF, Quicken, Freshbooks, Outright.com and Evernote, and they’ve rolled out some Mint.com-style spending analytics features. More in their FAQ.
Pros: Shoeboxed provides prepaid envelopes for mailing cards and guarantees uploading the cards’ information within 1-2 from receipt of a shipment. They claim they check for scanning errors. Bonus points for accepting and organizing receipts.
Cons: Less automated syncing options than CloudContacts. Also, a subscription model makes sense for heavy, steady users but will be wasteful for others. Last, the subscription envelopes are only sent to you once a month, so there might be a lag time between when you have your cards and when you have them digitized.
Solvate’s Recommendations
Purchasing scanning hardware from CardScan or NeatReceipts doesn’t seem practical, since you still have to proofread and correct for mistakes. Also, it’s hard to justify the high prices of the equipment; the CardScan Executive scanner costs more than a two-year subscription to Shoeboxed, a value of 1450 scanned cards.
The mail-in options, on the other hand, are hassle-free and offer more syncing options. CloudContacts wins if you want to avoid the subscription and pay as you go. Shoeboxed wins if you want a service that also organizes your receipts.
For heavy, steady users, CloudContacts appears more expensive than Shoeboxed on a cost/card basis, assuming you use your fill subscription’s worth for the latter. Compare a CloudContacts order of 100 cards for $29.95 ($0.30/card) to a Shoeboxed order of 50 cards for $9.95 ($0.20/card), or 500 CloudContacts cards for $124.95 ($0.25/card) to 500 Shoeboxed cards for $49.94 ($0.10/card).
Still not sure which to use, or have other questions about digitizing and syncing contacts across platforms? Contact Solvate and let us help you out. The first hour of work for a new client costs you nothing and is obligation-free. Send your request details, call us at 646.720.7110 or email delegate@solvate.com. Digitizing business cards and getting the info in the right place is part of our Digital Contact Clean-up service.
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Tags: cardscan, cloudcontacts, contacts, crm, neatreceipts, shoeboxed
Thanks for including Shoeboxed in this comparison!
I first want to point out an exciting new integration we have with BatchBlue.com, a freelancer and small business CRM. If you have a BatchBlue account you can pull cards scanned by Shoeboxed into BatchBlue effortlessly thanks to our direct sync with them. We just rolled out this feature a few days ago. Be sure to check it out.
Also, Shoeboxed does indeed require a monthly (or yearly) subscription but you can cancel at any time. If you only need a set number of receipts/business cards in, you can cancel once you are caught up. I know that can be seen as a hassle, and we are working to create plans that work for everyone…so thanks for bearing with us.
We also provide users of Classic and Business plans with more than one business reply envelope if requested. This is something we are experimenting with, and may roll out as the default option on all accounts once we more feedback and evaluate our costs. Users can mail in receipts/business cards in their own envelopes as well at any time.
Taylor
taylor@team.shoeboxed.com
CEO Shoeboxed Inc. (Shoeboxed.com)
Follow me on twitter: @taylormingos, @shoeboxed
I use CardScan Executive and I synch the scanned cards with both Outlook and Act. Yes you have to proofread each card after scanning but even if you typed in the information manually, you would still take time to proofread what you had typed in. When there are errors in the scan, it’s usually because the card has a text in a font that is difficult to read or the background colour makes the text hard to read. I’m very pleased with CardScan and find the proofreading time to be a non-issue. The value of do it yourself vs. send away systems is that you have the information available to you right away instead of days or weeks later. Even if you don’t scan in the cards immediately, you still have the actual card to refer to. If you mail to them away to someone else for processing, you don’t have them available to you. If they are lost in the mail on the way to the service provider, then you’ve lost a lot of potential business. If you scan in your cards daily or once a week, the time you spend on scanning and proofreading won’t be very much. I highly recommend the CardScan scanner and software.
Satinder
help@helpmeit.ca