Found business cards & postcards cheaper than Vista Print

I can't admit this without feeling a little guilty, because I work for a printing company. I always hear how cheap Vista Print is, and there's no way my company can compete with them. The other day a customer was telling me about a site called clubflyers.com. I checked them out and they are cheaper than Vista Print!

They don't offer all of the shirts, magnets, etc. Just business cards, postcards, banners, posters, etc. They give you a optional "printing discount" if you allow them to put the clubflyers.com logo on the back side of your cards. It's very small, so I went for it. I think it saved me around $15 per item.

I wrote down Vista Print's prices to compare....
1000 business cards, full color on both front & back would've been $75.97 before uploading fees & shipping. I paid $29.37 including shipping, 4 day turnaround time.

Vista Print - 500 postcards, full color on both front & back would've been $130.98 before uploading & shipping. I paid $50.81 (4x6 size) including shipping, 4 day turnaround time.

If you need the items designed it adds A LOT to the total, so Vista Print would be the better deal in that case. I designed my own staying over after-hours at work, and I'm rather proud of them.

My order is not scheduled to arrive until the 9th, but the person that told me about them showed me things he'd ordered, so I know the quality is great.

I'm still planning on ordering some car door magnets and a few other things from Vista Print, but I'll take a better deal whenever I find one.

hard to compete though with the 80% off or Free stuff from Vista print, especially when they have free uploaded images too. Most of the stuff I order is shipping only from Vistaprint. And even if I pick the slow shipping option, it still comes pretty fast usually because the closest vistaprint location is in my city.

I only purchase from Vistaprint when I have fantastic coupons (which is almost always)...

Thanks for the info!

Vista Print has the greatest marketing angle ever. FREE and in small print it says plus shipping and Processing fees.

I've told the story many times of comparing and ordering cards from vista print and another co. Vista prints cards ended up costing a few dollars more and arrived at my door a few days after the other order.

I usually order from Got Print, http://gotprint.net, I love their cards, and just recently I ordered 5000 from them, cost including shipping was $40.00 (41.02 exactly). Anyway, the point is that you really need to look at all the printers, well ok some of the other printers too, and you will see that there are some really great deals to be had out there.

Jenny

Just Jenny - I totally agree with you that there are some great deals out there. You just gotta look around and compare. I think Vista Print has some great deals. I will probably order some car door magnets from them within the next month or so. I was going to order my cards from them, but when I got to the order processing fees and saw how much they were charging for even the slower processing (around 20 days I believe), I started shopping around. I don't agree with their $4.99 file uploading fee. I've done most of the work for them by designing my own. Why do I need to pay to use my own files?

Clubflyers.com also offers free business cards and postcards with just their logo on the backside, but I wanted to add my own pictures and text to the backsides of each.

Thank you for pointing me to Got Print. I will be sure to check them out for future orders. They have great prices on banners! I only ordered 1000 cards this go-around from Club Flyers because I know I will be changing some things and didn't want to get stuck with a bunch of cards with old information on them.

Hello colormehappy

did u get the business cards? how did they turn out? would u guys be willing to post a pic of ur final product?

For $48.00(this includes shipping & free uploads) from vistaprint:
500 business cards
1 large car door magnet
25 magnet business cards
1 window decal(I'll never buy this as it was for my car windows & is totally invisible & useless).
Still not bad. I get their sale emails all the time & usually around holidays they run some awesome specials where everything is "free" and you just pay shipping. I go with the slowest shipping & still usually get the items in a week(not the 21 days they say it'll take).
I also like getting the smaller quantity of business cards. I like to put my best pics on them & this has changed since last year.

rxtorre wrote:Hello colormehappy

did u get the business cards? how did they turn out? would u guys be willing to post a pic of ur final product?

Whoops, I meant to post here when I received my items and forgot! I am soooooo happy with everything! The paper stock is very thick (14 pt.) and glossy and the print quality is great! The design (my work, lol) ain't too shabby!

The pic doesn't do them justice, but I just snapped a quick one. The edges of this postcard look a little rough just because this was one that's been in my purse (the pic backdrop). I blocked #'s and mailing address on the pics, but you get the idea....

colormehappy wrote:Just Jenny - I totally agree with you that there are some great deals out there. You just gotta look around and compare. I think Vista Print has some great deals. I will probably order some car door magnets from them within the next month or so. I was going to order my cards from them, but when I got to the order processing fees and saw how much they were charging for even the slower processing (around 20 days I believe), I started shopping around. I don't agree with their $4.99 file uploading fee. I've done most of the work for them by designing my own. Why do I need to pay to use my own files?

Clubflyers.com also offers free business cards and postcards with just their logo on the backside, but I wanted to add my own pictures and text to the backsides of each.

Thank you for pointing me to Got Print. I will be sure to check them out for future orders. They have great prices on banners! I only ordered 1000 cards this go-around from Club Flyers because I know I will be changing some things and didn't want to get stuck with a bunch of cards with old information on them.

I just wanted to comment about the $4.99 upload fee. I think they're probably charging for formatting time on their end. My day job is in the wonderful world of printing and no matter how you send your file we end up having to manipulate it one way or another depending on how soon its needed, what type of press, etc. Printing is a very competitive industry where you have a lot of newer vendors undercutting the established vendors just to get a piece of the action. As a consumer I love it, as a vendor I'm a little shaken, but we have this awesome thing at my job called customer service, ie you need 50K printed today, I'll make it happen!

Color me happy....those are amazing, they look sooo good that's exactly the look Im going for all black with my pics on them thanks for posting the pics

Just Jenny wrote:

I usually order from Got Print, http://gotprint.net, I love their cards, and just recently I ordered 5000 from them, cost including shipping was $40.00 (41.02 exactly).
Jenny

I was just wondering if they normally charge a lot for shipping. I just ordered some business cards from them that cost $11.60, but the shipping cost was $13.34 for only 250 business cards. I know it doesn't cost that much to ship a little box.

Hmm. Well, I know it is cheaper to buy online but I get all my printing done locally - sure I pay more for it, but I'd rather support my local small business people and potential clients than some internet based company god knows where.

They take my pencil drawings or mock-ups and make me great stuff from my idea and a bunch of photos. I've been very happy with them.

I know cost is important and it will govern where you get your print materials... I just think it is important to support local business too.

I definitely like to support local businesses... which had me avoiding vista print for a while. Then I realized that one of the vistaprint printing places is right here in Windsor! So it does support local jobs for me to be using vistaprint. I still use local printers for paper stuff because I like interacting with people about my business too.

Hi ladies,

I thought I would just share a postcard that I just finished. Whew! I worked way too long on this but it's for a special event - called Queen of the World. It's a gathering of all the High School girls in my town. So, I needed something to cater to them.

How cute is that? I'm sure you will book a lot of parties with that.

Thanks! I am curious to see if this age range gets interested! Do you work with this age group at all? I don't have a ton of experience serving them.

This is actually my first postcard. I am going to make one for a younger audience as well and send it to the upper income moms in my town.

I would recommend the discount printing from Bargain Basement Printing. They offer quality products at great prices. They print them in various sizes and have color options available for both sides as well as the gloss effect for either or both sides. Their turnaround is from 5-7 days. Get a quote online from them.

emilyleon wrote:I use CardFila.com to collect all business cards on iPhone because it is so easy to collect, find and use any contact at any time.
You can access the contacts everywhere without Internet connection by using CardFila for Mobile (iPhone or Android phones). I also can do this on Android, computer, laptop. As i know, they will award 100 free coins for accounts registered within Nov 2012!

I'm not sure this really applies to the subject, Emilyleon. This thread is for inexpensive places to have business cards printed..

Great stuff! Thank you!

For a while I was using VistaPrint, because the cost was so reasonable for client projects... then I started having huge quality issues and very slow shipping, and using them became too much of a hassle for me since I couldn't count on solid results, so I went to GotPrint and couldn't be happier. In fact, they just ran a batch of 1000 full-color, double-sided glossy cards for me, and there was an issue with the cutting, and they are re-doing, no hassle, no cost at all. I think their quality is far superior to VistaPrint - the colors are true and saturated, the stock is thick and the gloss is great. Turnaround is good too... my only gripe is they don't have 80% off promo codes, but their prices are very reasonable, which makes up for the shipping being a little high.

Another hat to drop in the ring! I am very happy with overnight prints.com. I don't mind ordering larger amounts to get a great discount. Here's what I paid for 5000 cards, 2 sided, 1 side laminated, full color: $92.73. That also includes shipping/handling. I designed my own card. I just change the photos every time that I reorder.