Buying · 6 min read

Looking for a Vistaprint alternative? What to compare

Vistaprint is the default, and defaults are usually defaults for good reasons. If you are shopping around anyway, these are the five things that actually differ between printers — and we should say up front that we make one of the alternatives, so read the last section with that in mind.

1. Does the preview tell you the truth?

This is the one that costs real money, and it is the hardest to check before ordering. There is a large difference between a picture of your design and a proof of the file that will be printed.

A picture shows your text in whatever the browser had available and stops at the edge of the card. A proof shows the actual artwork at print size, with the bleed running past the cut, the trim line where the blade lands, and the safe area your type has to stay inside. If the preview does not show you those lines, you are approving something you have not seen.

2. Can you edit, or only fill in blanks?

Template editors vary enormously in how much they will let you move. Some let you change the words and the colours and nothing else — which is fine until your company name is one word longer than the template expected and there is no way to fix the overlap.

Worth testing before you commit: can you move an element to an arbitrary position, change a font size to a number you chose, rotate something, and put an image where the template did not plan for one? If the answer is no, you are choosing between finished designs rather than making one.

3. What happens on a phone?

A lot of design tools are a desktop experience with a mobile version bolted on, and dragging a text box with a fingertip on a shrunken canvas is genuinely unpleasant. If you run your business from your phone — and most trades, stylists and single-operator businesses do — this is not a small detail. Try the thing you will actually do, on the device you will actually do it on, before you fill in a card's worth of details.

4. What do you own at the end?

Two questions here. Can you get your design back out, and can you reorder it in a year without rebuilding it?

The second one matters more than people expect. Business cards are a repeat purchase — you run out, someone joins, a number changes. A printer where reordering means finding the old design, forking a copy and changing one line is a very different experience from one where you start again because the old file is gone or locked.

5. The full price, not the headline price

Card printing is famously an advertised-price business, and the number in the ad is rarely the number at the end. Compare the total for the order you actually want, with the same options selected everywhere:

• Shipping, which on a low-value order is often a large share of the total.
• The stock you actually want, not the lightest one the headline price is quoted on.
• The second side. Some prices are one-sided by default.
• Turnaround. The cheap price is usually the slow one; the fast one is priced separately.
• What the checkout adds. Count the number of upsell screens between your cart and your card, because each one is a chance to end up with a total you did not intend.

Where BotPrints is different

Our answers to the five, plainly:

• The proof is the real artwork. The editor draws the bleed, trim and safe lines while you work, and the 3D proof is your file at print size rather than a mockup with your logo pasted onto a stock photo.
• It is a real editor, not a form. Anything can move, rotate, resize, or be replaced — whether you started from an AI-generated card, a template, a blank canvas or your own upload, they all land in the same editor.
• Phone first, by construction. It is an app, not a desktop tool made smaller. Describing a card to the AI and fixing the result takes a few minutes on the device already in your hand.
• The design stays yours. Reordering forks a copy so your past orders keep showing the artwork they were actually printed from, and editing the new copy never rewrites your own history.
• One configurator. The same options screen buys one set, a cart, or an edit — so the price you are shown is the price of the thing you are looking at.

Where it might not suit you

Being honest about this is more useful than pretending otherwise, and it will save you an afternoon:

• Business cards, not a print shop. If you need flyers, banners, mugs and a website in one basket, a general-purpose printer is the right tool and we are not it.
• No spot UV, foil or die-cut shapes yet. Standard and rounded corners across a wide range of stocks — including linen, suede, pearl, waterproof synthetic, magnet and plastic — but the specialist finishes are deliberately not in the first version.
• You need a phone. There is no desktop editor today.

If your card needs foil, go elsewhere and get a beautiful card. If it needs to exist by Thursday, look good, and be fixable from a van, that is the one we built.

Vistaprint is a trademark of its respective owner. BotPrints is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Vistaprint. Comparisons above describe what to check when choosing any printer — verify current options and pricing with each provider directly.