October 9, 2024

Sapiensdigital

Sapiens Digital

MOO Business Cards – Review 2020

Gone are the days when you had to order business cards from a local print
shop, which would help you design them, too. These days, you can do it yourself
online, and one of the key differentiators among such services is just how easy
they make that process. MOO’s website has one of the slickest designs of any business
card printing services
we’ve tested. It offers many paper stock choices and
the unique ability to use multiple graphics in a single order. But the service
costs a lot more than most competitors, and, though the website is slick and
clear, it offers less design customization than competitors.

Pricing and Signing Up

MOO lets you create an account simply using your Facebook credentials, or
you can enter an email address and password. As with all business card printing
services, you don’t need to enter payment information until you’re ready to
pull the trigger on an order. The minimum order price is $19.99 for 50 cards, with
a 100-card order doubling that—significantly higher than the cheapest services
we’ve tested. GotPrint charges $7.63 for 100 cards, and Editors’ Choice Vistaprint charges $16 for
100 cards, though there are often deep discounts available for many of these
services.

Business Card Printing with MOO

Staples charges $9.99 for 250 cards, with same-day local pickup. PSPrint’s lowest-price
order is listed as $20.15 for 50 one-sided cards, though a discount was applied
automatically to my order, making it just $8.06. 100 cards at PSPrint cost $10
after the discount. Keep in mind that MOO’s lowest-price card orders are for
16pt stock, which is thicker than the cardboard used by the cheaper services,
and all MOO cards have two-sided printing.

MOO offers some nifty and unique card styles, such as semi-letterpress printing (starting at $59.99 for 50), gold foil
($39.99), spot gloss accents ($39.99), and raised spot gloss accents ($39.99).
You can also get mini business cards, which can make an understated impression
all their own, for the same $19.99 as standard size. However, the company doesn’t offer leaf-shaped or oval-shaped cards like those from GotPrint or custom die-cut
cards like those offered by PSPrint.

When you need larger quantities, MOO’s prices significantly pull away from
the pack. Here’s the lowest price for a set of 1,000 cards from the tested
services:

Service Price for 1,000 Cards
EliteFlyers $35.00
GotPrint $19.60
MOO $230.00
PSPrint $27.37
Staples $19.99
Vistaprint $33.00
Zazzle $125

Other MOO Offerings

MOO is mostly about business cards, but it wanders into other pastures
beyond those. Unlike and GotPrint, Vistaprint, and Zazzle, everything offered
by MOO is paper-based. You can get stickers, flyers, postcards, letterhead, and
notebooks. But there are no magnets, posters, or clothing like those offered by
the others. Nor does MOO offer professional graphics
design
services as EliteFlyers, GotPrint and Vistaprint do, except for larger
business accounts, starting at $300 per year.

Business Card Printing

Designing Your Card

After choosing the paper type (original, cotton, super, or luxe) and shape, you
have three choices for starting your card design: You can use a template,
design online, or upload an image file. In general, the template designs are
among the slickest offered by any card printing service, so if chic card design
is more important to you than price, MOO may be a fit. Designing in MOO is more
rigid than in competitors, however: You’re relatively locked into the template
layout, where the others let you move and resize things more.

MOO offers 48 font choices, but there’s no grouping into styles like Bold
and Classic, which Vistaprint does. When you choose a template, MOO locks you
into that design to a greater extent than Vistaprint and GotPrint do. You
can’t, for example, remove an image on the back of the card that was included
on the template. It’s also difficult to change your template after you’ve
started.

If you use the option to design without a template, you’re actually locked
into the simple list-and-logo layout to an even greater extent—you can choose
from several layout options, but you can’t move any text or image boxes
afterwards. Nor does it help that the layout options are limited; I didn’t see
one in my testing that let me put text below and above images on either side of
the card. There’s no option for two images side-by-side; you can have a single
image or a grid of four.

You can resize an image box to make content fit, but guide lines don’t
always appear to show you how to line objects up with other items of the design.
Ctrl-Z does not work to undo actions, and there’s no Undo button—something
incredibly useful for the mistake-prone design process.

The design interface does offer clear indications when you place something
outside the safe printing area. And I appreciate that MOO includes a QR code
generator, though it’s hardly a unique feature—even EliteFlyers
offers a very good one. You can also design or upload up to 50 images for different
card backs at no extra cost.

Another distinguishing feature of MOO is that it lets you create a set of
cards with multiple alternating images on different cards, so that they don’t
all look the same, in what it calls its Printfinity option. Some of the
templates even include predesigned multiple back-side images for your card
order to take advantage of Printfinity.

Ordering Your Business Cards

When your card design is done, it’s checkout time. MOO gives you a two-hour
window to make edits after you’ve placed your order, which can save you from
typos. I ordered the minimum 50 cards for $19.99. MOO offers a Next Day AM
shipping option that adds $41.75 to the cost. The Economy shipping is just
$5.50, a little more than Vistaprint’s $4.99 Economy shipping. MOO’s Economy
shipping takes two weeks, compared with one week for Vistaprint. PSPrint’s
cheapest shipping rate is also $4.99. If you order cards from Staples, you can
avoid shipping costs altogether by picking them up at a local branch store.

Business Card Printing

The MOO cards were thoroughly inked and sharp, with nice thick paper. The
colors in the photo are more realistic, but the layout options wouldn’t let two
images equally fill the sides of the back of the card.

Results and Print Quality

My premium MOO order arrived four days after I ordered, even though I only
paid for the 9-day shipping rate. The packaging MOO uses is comparatively luxurious.
My shipment came in double-padded envelopes and the inner box was a handsome
two-piece case, or what could be described as a box with a slipcase. It’s a far
different story from Vistaprint’s unceremonious packaging.

I had better luck this time with the print job as a whole; last time I
tested the product one PSD image didn’t appear, even though it showed up on MOO
preview. This time, my only issue was that I couldn’t divide the back of the
card into two equal halves, hence the cut off image. Nevertheless, I wanted to
test the image printing, which indeed had more accurate colors than the
Vistaprint job. The card stock MOO uses, even on its entry level order, is thick
and satisfying to hold—something you’d be proud to hand out.

Not Just for Cows

MOO is appealing, and it’s the most modern and boundary-pushing online business card service we tested. Its up-to-the-minute site design, high-quality cardstocks, classy packaging, and unique offerings like multiple images printed within a single order set it apart. But pricing is well above that of the competition, and the online designer lacks latitude offered by others. For a lower-priced but also high-quality option, check out our Editors’ Choice, Vistaprint.

MOO Specs

Starting Price for 100 Cards $39.98
Cheapest Shipping $5.50
Pro Design Services No
Offers Recycled Paper Yes
QR Code Generator Yes
Different Designs in One Order Yes
Same-Day Pickup No

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