Every vendor in this category splits the bill the same confusing way: a one-time price for the physical NFC card, and a recurring per-seat price for the profile behind it — sometimes plus a fee per lead captured. This guide separates those three numbers for Popl, HiHello, Blinq and Dot, so a team rollout can actually be budgeted.
Individual Pro is listed at $7.99/mo in app-store listings; teams are licensed by quote only. See the pricing note below.
Billed annually ($60/user/year), 5–100 users, 5-seat minimum. Professional for one person is $6/mo billed annually.
Billed annually, per card, 5-card minimum — plus $9.99 per captured and enriched lead. Premium for one person is $7.33/mo billed annually.
The basic profile is free for life with a device purchase. Profile+ ($15/mo, or $12/mo billed annually) and team plans are separate — see the trade-offs.
| Popl | HiHello | Blinq | Dot. Cards | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Event-heavy teams that capture badge leads and sync them to a CRM | Teams that want published prices and brand control without shipping hardware | Sales teams that live in their CRM and can forecast lead volume | Individuals and creators who want a physical card with no monthly bill |
| Works without a physical card? | Yes — QR, link, Wallet and widgets | Yes — QR, Wallet, link; NFC only via a tag you supply and program yourself | Yes — QR, Wallet, link, email signature | Partly — the profile has a link and QR, but the product is built around buying a device |
| Physical NFC card price | Not listed on the vendor's own site; individuals buy accessories via Amazon US (US shipping only) | Not sold — no house-brand card | From $24.99 (classic); custom designs from $59.99; no subscription needed for the card to work | $30 standard, $50 metal, custom from $50 — one-time |
| Free plan, honestly read | Free card exists, but viewable leads are capped and export / CRM sit on paid plans (per third-party checks — Popl publishes no plan detail) | Personal: 2 cards, sharing by QR / Wallet / link, but only 5 paper-card scans a month and 1 design | 2 cards with unlimited sharing and contact creation; scanner, analytics and export are paid | No $0 start — the "free" profile is included with a $30 device purchase |
| Paid plan for one person | Pro $7.99/mo ($76.99/yr in app-store listings); Pro+ $14.99/mo — not shown on the official pricing page | Professional $6/mo billed annually ($72/yr), $8 monthly; 8 cards, 20 scans/mo | Premium $7.33/mo billed annually ($87.96/yr), $9.99 monthly; up to 5 cards | Basic profile $0 after the card; Profile+ $15/mo or $12/mo billed annually ($144/yr) |
| Team plan | Custom license quote only — no published rates, no per-seat or per-lead metering per the vendor FAQ | Business $5/user/mo billed annually ($60/yr), $6 monthly; 5–100 users, price drops at 26 and 51 users; Enterprise (100+) custom | Business $4.99 per card/mo billed annually, $6.99 monthly; 5-card minimum; people without a card are not billed | Essential $8/user/mo, annual billing only, standard device included per vendor listings; Growth is higher-tier — confirm current terms, listings differ |
| Extra usage fees | None published — the license is the quote | None published beyond seats; scan allowances are pooled per team | $9.99 per lead captured and enriched on Business (0.75 credit if no email/phone could be added, duplicates free), billed monthly on top of seats | None published beyond seats / Profile+ |
| Team admin & CRM gate | Team dashboard, badge scanning and CRM sync are the paid team product itself | Templates, admin dashboard and CRM sync (Salesforce / HubSpot / Dynamics) on Business; SAML SSO and SCIM on Enterprise | Templates, brand control, automated provisioning and native CRM integrations on Business; enforced SSO and SCIM on Enterprise | Team management on Essential; CRM integrations sit on the higher Growth tier per vendor listings |
| Shipping to Japan (public info) | Individual accessories: Amazon store ships within the US only (vendor support article, Sept 2025) — no official route for a Japan-based individual | Nothing to ship: no hardware sold. Digital sharing works from Japan as anywhere | Not confirmed on public pages we checked — cards are made and shipped from the US; confirm Japan delivery at checkout before planning a rollout | Not confirmed on public pages we checked — delivery estimates are published, a destination list is not; confirm at checkout |
| Trade-off to know | You cannot put a number in a budget spreadsheet until a sales call happens | No physical card with your branding from the vendor — the tap moment needs your own tag | A busy event month can cost more in per-lead fees than a year of seats | The one-time price is real only while the basic profile is enough; Profile+ is the priciest solo add-on here |
Prices are USD, before tax and shipping, as published by the vendors in November 2026. Popl is the exception throughout: its official pricing page publishes no numbers, so the individual prices shown come from its app-store listings and third-party checks dated October 2026 — treat them as indicative, and expect the team quote to follow a different (license) model. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what's included on the vendor's site before you buy.
Seat prices make these four look similar. First-year totals — seats plus physical cards, annual billing, before tax and shipping — do not. This is arithmetic on the published prices above, not a quote:
| Team of 10, annual billing | Year 1 | Year 2 | What drives it |
|---|---|---|---|
| HiHello Business | $600 | $600 | 10 × $60/user/yr. No card purchase — and no card to lose or ship. |
| Blinq Business | $848.70 before lead fees | $598.80 before lead fees | Seats 10 × $59.88 = $598.80/yr, plus cards 10 × $24.99 = $249.90 once. Then the meter: 100 enriched leads a month across the team adds $999/mo — $11,988 a year — on top. |
| Dot Essential | $960 | $960 | 10 × $8/user/mo × 12. The standard device is included in the seat per vendor listings, and there is no per-lead meter — the highest seat price, the most predictable total. |
| Popl Teams | Cannot be calculated | Cannot be calculated | No published rates. Any total you see on a comparison site for Popl teams is an estimate, including ours — we won't print one. |
For one person the split flips. A Dot card at $30 with the basic profile costs $30 in year one and $0 in year two. HiHello Professional is $72 a year, every year; Blinq Premium is $87.96 a year, plus $24.99 if you add its card. But the moment a solo Dot user needs the card scanner, contact export, analytics or branding removal, Profile+ adds $144 a year — making the "no subscription" card the most expensive solo setup of the four over two years ($318 total). Which side of that line you are on matters more than which logo you pick.
Popl started as an NFC card and has become an event lead-capture platform: a digital card, a universal badge scanner that works without organizer APIs, enrichment, and sync into CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot. Individuals can start free and upgrade to Pro ($7.99/mo in app-store listings) or Pro+ ($14.99/mo), which is where branding removal and full lead handling sit. For teams, there is no price list at all: Popl sells a custom license, and its FAQ describes that license as having no per-seat charges and no per-lead metering — simple to run, impossible to budget before a meeting. One practical warning for buyers outside the US: since September 2025, individual accessories are sold only through Popl's Amazon store, which ships within the United States only, and custom accessories for individuals were discontinued.
HiHello is the software-only entry: a digital card, email signatures, virtual backgrounds and a company directory, with no house-brand physical card at all. The free Personal plan includes 2 cards, sharing by QR, Wallet, email, SMS and WhatsApp, and 5 paper-card or badge scans a month. Professional ($6/mo billed annually, $8 monthly) raises that to 8 cards and 20 scans, and lets you program your own NFC tag. Business ($5/user/mo billed annually, 5–100 users) adds template-driven brand control, an admin dashboard, pooled scan allowances (50 per user a month), and CRM integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics. SAML SSO and SCIM are Enterprise (100+ users, custom). Because nothing physical is sold, there is also nothing to ship — the same setup works in Tokyo as in Texas.
Blinq pairs a polished digital card with its own NFC hardware and a strong integration list. The free plan gives 2 cards with unlimited sharing and contact creation. Premium ($7.33/mo billed annually, $9.99 monthly) is for one person: up to 5 cards, the universal contact scanner, AI notetaker, enrichment and export. Business ($4.99 per card/mo billed annually, $6.99 monthly, 5-card minimum) adds team templates with field locking, automated provisioning, admin-controlled signatures and native CRM integrations — and it is billed per card, so admins and members without a card are not billed. The number to model is not the seat: lead capture and enrichment on Business costs $9.99 per captured and enriched lead, billed monthly on top. Its physical cards (from $24.99) are explicitly sold as needing no subscription — cancel the plan and the card still opens your profile.
Dot is the hardware-first model: you buy a device — a $30 standard card, a $50 metal card, bands and other formats — and the basic dot.Profile behind it is free for life, with no subscription required to share by tap or QR. That is a genuinely different offer from the other three, and for simple tap-to-share it is the cheapest two-year cost in this comparison. The boundary is Profile+: at $15/mo, or $12/mo billed annually ($144/yr), it gates the paper-card scanner, advanced contact management and export, analytics and branding controls. Teams move to per-seat pricing anyway — Essential at $8/user/mo on annual billing, with the standard device included per vendor listings, and a higher Growth tier above it whose current terms differ between listings, so confirm before budgeting.
If people only need to receive your details, every free plan here copes, and Dot's one-time card is the cleanest purchase. If your team must capture the other person's details and push them into a CRM, you are buying a paid team plan whichever logo you choose — that feature is behind the paywall at all four.
List the features you will actually use in month two: scanner, export, analytics, branding removal, CRM sync. If the list is empty, the buy-once model wins. If it has even one item on it, compare subscriptions — including Dot's Profile+ at $144/yr — instead of comparing card prices.
Add seats × 12, one physical card per person, and — for Blinq — your honest monthly lead volume at $9.99 a lead. For Popl, accept that this step requires a sales quote and factor the delay in. The worked example above shows how the ranking changes once all three lines are in.
Outside the US this step is not a formality: Popl's individual accessories ship within the US only, and Blinq and Dot do not publicly confirm Japan delivery on the pages we checked. A QR-and-Wallet setup (HiHello, or any vendor's digital-only mode) has no such dependency — confirm delivery for your address at checkout before ordering cards for a whole team.
No. All four services share by QR code and link, and Popl, HiHello and Blinq also work through Apple and Google Wallet — a physical card is an optional extra everywhere except Dot, where buying a device is the entry point. An NFC card makes the in-person handoff faster; it does not unlock a different profile.
Popl is the best-known name in this category and its event tooling is genuinely its focus — badge scanning and CRM sync. The reason this guide treats it carefully is narrower: it publishes no pricing, its individual hardware is US-only through Amazon, and its free plan's lead limits are described by third parties rather than by Popl. If your team is US-based, event-heavy and comfortable with a sales process, get the quote. If you need a number today, HiHello and Blinq publish theirs.
For sharing your own details daily, HiHello Personal and Blinq Free both hold up — cards, QR and Wallet sharing are not meaningfully capped. For capturing other people's details, none of the free plans hold up: HiHello allows 5 scans a month, Blinq paywalls its scanner and export, Popl caps viewable leads, and Dot's free profile starts with a $30 purchase. Treat free as "your card works", not "your pipeline works".
On published annual pricing: HiHello $600, Dot Essential $960, and Blinq $598.80 in seats — plus whatever the per-lead meter added, which at 100 enriched leads a month ($11,988/yr) dwarfs the seats. Popl cannot be answered from public information. Year two is where one-time card purchases stop mattering and the pricing model — flat seats, seats plus meter, or license — is the whole decision.
Three things. First, hardware: Popl sells individual accessories only via its US Amazon store with US-only shipping, and neither Blinq nor Dot publicly confirms Japan delivery on the pages we checked in November 2026 — confirm at checkout, or start digital-only. Second, HiHello sells no hardware, so it has no shipping question at all. Third, all prices here are USD before tax; your card issuer's exchange rate and any customs charges on physical cards are on top.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from hands-on testing — we say so rather than dressing up a spec sheet as field experience. Where a judgment appears (for example, that a per-lead fee "decides the real bill"), it is arithmetic on the published prices, shown next to it so you can redo it with your own numbers.