Best Business Card Scanner Apps for speedy and convenient contact saving
Anyone working in the business sector spends way too much time searching for business cards that have been handed over at meetings, networking events, and conferences. After all, who has time to empty pockets, wallets, and purses and then neatly pile and sort through the cards, file them, or type in every detail? Not me, that’s for sure! And don’t tell me you’ve never tossed away a card because you can’t foresee that you’ll ever need that connection, only to find a few short weeks later that it would have been useful after all.
If you easily become swamped with business cards, the best answer is to digitize them, and mobile apps provide a handy way of doing this. Business card scanner apps offer a quick and convenient way to store the contact that you might need to search for at a later time. You can save the details of every contact you make by using the camera of your Android device to scan and digitize the cards so that all of that information is readily to hand. As well as being a much more convenient way of accessing your contacts, you’ll also save a lot of room in your desk and drawers.
The Google Play Store is awash with apps to convert Android into a digital cardholder but knowing which ones are worth looking at is hard without a lot of work. That’s where we come in as we’ve compiled our choices of the best business card scanner apps for Android. We’ve tested out many of these apps in a pursuit to narrow down the ones that have top features and functionality. Some app saves the info to the contacts or to the database of the app, while some also store an image of the card itself. Most of the following apps are free, although many include in-app purchases (IAPs) while some also have paid options.
1. SCANBIZCARDS
Price: Free/ Offers IAP, $1.99
ScanBizCards allows you to either submit cards for manual transcription or scan the cards on your phone. Like most of these apps, it employs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to get the job done. The free Lite version comes with some limitations, including limited exports to CRM platforms such as Salesforce or SugarCRM, or you can choose to upgrade to the paid premium version.
The app recognizes 22 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, and Turkish. You can scan double-sided cards, create notes for individual cards, make use of the easy search facility, and use custom folders. There’s also a 3D gallery view mode. A Quick Intro feature allows sending an email with your contact details and a picture to others.
Download ScanBizCards Lite – Scan Card
2. CAMCARD – BUSINESS CARD READER
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP, $0.99
CamCard is one of the very best business card scanner apps with over 100 million users, a testament to its effectiveness. The process is speedy, with cards saved to the phonebook of your device, and which syncs across your other devices. The app is also useful for sending your electronic e-card or notifications to your contacts when you update your profile.
CamCard currently recognizes 17 languages and is free to download. The free version of the app allows you to scan up to 200 cards or you can upgrade to the paid version of the app for more.
3. BIZCONNECT – BUSINESS CARD READER
Price: Free/ Offers IAP
All of your business cards will be available at your fingertips using BizConnect. The app allows you to batch scan up to 10 cards at once, easily manage and search your contacts and features exporting to Excel. Other features include a schedule for entering events and appointments, and you can make the most of your business connections for networking by linking your social media profile. It’s an efficient and easy-to-use app offering accurate card transcription and one-tap communication with your contacts.
4. CARDHQ – BUSINESS CARD READER
Price: Free
This doesn’t quite have all of the bells and whistles of some other business card scanner app, for instance, it can’t scan both sides of a card. But, the fact that it’s completely free to use without any in-app purchases makes it an appealing choice. Not only that but there are no-ads, and the developers state that the app will always remain free. You can scan an unlimited amount of cards and scan multiple cards simultaneously.
The app also benefits from auto sending an introduction email for each card scanned, auto backup, and the ability to bookmark your favorite cards. It’s quick and simple to use and certainly worth checking out.
5. WORLDCARD MOBILE
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP
Millions of users avail themselves of WorldCard Mobile for scanning business cards to save themselves having to input contact information manually. The interface supports the following languages, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, and the app recognizes 25 languages in total. You can sort the details by name, phone number, fax number, address, company, position, and more, and the cardholder function makes it easy to view and manage contacts.
The free version has a lot to offer, but for further features, you might want the paid version instead. Overall, WorldCard Mobile would be a good option for those who often do worldwide business and would benefit from having international language support.
6. ABBYY BUSINESS CARD READER
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP
The free app offers a trial version only for up to 10 business cards but for an unlimited amount of cards you’ll need the paid Pro version. However, it’s easy to transfer card data with ABBYY instantly, and at least you can try it out before deciding whether to spend the money on upgrading to the full version. Contacts saved in the CardHolder storage of the app, which also supports syncing across other smartphones, tablets, and PCs.
Usefully, this app also saves the original image of the cards and highlights the uncertain characters to manually correct or confirm the output.
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7. WOCKITO BUSINESS CARD SCANNER & BUSINESS NETWORK
Price: Free with ads/ Offers IAP
Although this is a free app, you’ll only be able to digitize your first 10 cards for free. After you’re satisfied that it’s worth paying for you can use in-app purchases for the advantages of the Wockito Plus/Premium package. Features include access to your business cards from a Desktop Panel, syncing cards with your Phonebook, exporting cards to Excel, and Cloud backup of both digitized business cards and the original business card images. You can also benefit from Smart Search using keywords, add notes and reminders to cards, and share an unlimited amount of them.
8. HAYSTACK DIGITAL BUSINESS CARD
Price: Free
A big bonus with this app is that it’s free to use and offers unlimited scans. It also has no annoying ads! The digital business cards you create are sharable via text, email, NFC, VCF, vCard, and social media. The app receives contacts update automatically when other users change their details via the same app, and also change your contact details on other’s devices if you update your information. Haystack does a good job and is a nice user-friendly app.
9. SANSAN – BUSINESS CARD MANAGEMENT
Price: Free
Sansan works well for corporations that want to build a complete multi-platform, cloud-based contact database. Cards can be easily scanned into the company database (up to 4 at a time) and organized with meeting reports, notes, and tags so that all staff can access them at all times. With the most recent update, Sansan added the ability to display the information from registered business cards when receiving a call.
The app makes the whole process seamless as you can also check out your colleagues’ contacts and follow developments, for example, if somebody changes their position.
10. BUSINESS CARD SCANNER – BUSINESS CARD ORGANIZER
Price: Free/ Offers IAP, $9.99
REDMONK Technologies offers business card scanning through human transcription, or you can opt to use OCR scanning instead. The app features secure cloud storage while additional features include contact sharing, data exporting, and contact integration, You’ll get a trial amount of scans and then you’ll need to buy card credits through in-app purchases for more. Alternatively, further features are available by upgrading to the highly-rated Pro paid version of the app. For instance, the Pro version features Salesforce & MS Office 365 direct syncing plus further benefits.
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Conclusion
This selection of best business card scanner apps for Android provides plenty of options for digitizing your contacts so that you can easily stay in touch. If you’re a business developer, salesperson, marketing expert, entrepreneur, or indeed anyone else who amasses business cards, you’ll soon find that scanning your cards makes a whole lot of sense.
Having the relevant information immediately at hand will enhance your networking and help you to improve your business relationships. These apps offer a variety of different features that will make your working life a whole lot easier, so do take a look and let us know which is your preferred business card scanner app.
