Conclusion:
Vista Print offers low cost cards and lots of options and upgrades. Vista Print is arguably the largest and most well-known business cards brand. As such, they offer very low prices and lots of business cards options, including recycled paper, foil accents and “fold-over” business cards. However, compared to some of the other companies we’ve reviewed Vista Print offers lower quality business cards, which are smaller and thinner than the average card. They also charge for things that are usually included for free with your cards, such as uploading your logo and receiving a proof. While they do offer a free shipping option, their standard shipping time is longer than our one-week Market Standard.
Default Card
We rated VistaPrint’s default card 2 out of 5 stars. Their default card stock is 12 point, which is thinner than our Market Standard of 14 point card stock. VistaPrint’s default card size of 1.93”x3.43” is smaller than the standard business card, which is 2”x3.5”. The default finish can be either matt or glossy, but you have options to upgrade to several different finishes like "Signature Glossy" or "Metallic Finish" for prices ranging from $8 to $20.
Designing Your Card
Uploading Your Own Design
If you have a business card design already created, or you plan to create one, Vista Print will let you upload the design to create a card.
Using a Predesigned Template
VistaPrint has average quality predesigned templates. However, they offer more than 5,000 horizontal and over 1,500 vertical templates and 113 fonts to choose from. If you use any of VistaPrint's predesigned templates, you can upload your company’s logo onto them.
Creating a Card from Scratch
We rated VistaPrint 3 out of 5 stars for creating a card from scratch. We found it fairly easy to upload, resize, and move images around the templates with VistaPrint. The editor allows you to add as many text fields to your card as you’d like. They also have a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to move the text and images around your card with ease. VistaPrint’s card editor shows you the cut and bleed lines, so that you’ll know how far to extend your background. They have vertical and horizontal layouts available. However, they only let you upload one image per order, while other editors will let you upload an unlimited number of images. Also, this editor does not allow you to draw manually on the card.
In order to see how easy it was to create a card from scratch using VistaPrint’s design tool, we attempted to replicate a simple business card we already had. The overall designing and creation of the card is easy. The only issue we ran across was not being able add a vertical line to match our business card design because of the lack of a drawing tool.
Options & Upgrades
VistaPrint offers a wide variety of cards including raised print and metallic finish cards. The card standard card stock is 12 pt, which is a bit light, but the upgraded cards are all heavier stock. The cards can come in either a matte or glossy finish for free. They also offer the ability to add foil accents (metallic finish) to your card, as well as “fold-over” cards, which are essentially one paper that is the size of two cards and can be folded in the middle to stand upright.
Shipping & Delivery
VistaPrint’s standard shipping time is 14 business days, which is longer than our Market Standard of one week. VistaPrint’s standard shipping costs $9.52 for 250 cards. 3-Day shipping is available and costs $20 for 250 cards. We used Austin, Texas, as a point of comparison for shipping. They also offer free shipping with certain offers, which means you must spend over a denoted amount before you get free shipping.
Customer Support
VistaPrint offers phone, email, and live chat support. Their phone support is available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. EST, which we found to be helpful and knowledgeable when answering our questions. We had to wait around five minutes to get in touch with a support representative over the phone and two days to hear back from their support via email. As such, their email support is slow compared to our Market Standard of 24-hour response.
Pricing
VistaPrint offers 250 business cards for $16.00, which comes out to about 7 cents per card. This is relatively inexpensive compared to prices from other online vendors, as our Market Standard is 8 cents per card. It costs an additional $4.00 to print on the back in black and white or $8.00 to print color on the back. VistaPrint charges for a couple of things that typically come standard with your business card order. PDF proofs to review your design are included free of charge. Their other order sizes range from 500 to 5,000 cards. VistaPrint has a money-back guarantee if there are any errors on the cards that they made.
