Business Card Reader Reviews

by Iscoyd

I got BusinessCardReader for my iPhone 11 Pro after seeing its excellent review ratings, but sadly my experience has been anything but good. It makes a lot of OCR errors even when the captured image is perfect, and assigns text to the wrong fields more often than is acceptable. Lastly, it takes too much time to register a card in the database (10-15 seconds per card), during which time the screen is frozen and not ready to scan the next card. I’m not sure it is much faster than entering the data manually.

Unfortunately, other business card apps that I tried are no better. Looking for an app that can at least do OCR well.

by Ricky Rocket22

Requires you to agree to ABBY’s terms regarding agreement to share personal data. If this can be revoked, then why even ask for it at all? Also, allowance of 3rd Party Advertising, which means that there is a sharing of my personal data with other companies. For myself, these terms are unacceptable. While, true, all private data might not be shared, there are no guarantees, that it won’t. As far as, GDPR, I don’t think most people know what that is, (including myself) and ABBY might want to elaborate its meaning to others and, more specifically, how being GDPR compliant provides justification for denying access to this application to the end user. I would very much like to use this application; however, being required to agree to the privacy and advertising terms, again. for myself, is unacceptable.

by Inch1962

I cannot state clear enough information was posted on BusinessCardReader when you looking at it to see if it something you want. I think it is ridiculous to charge that amount for something you can do yourself by taking a photo with the business card and putting it into an album.
Some of us are on fixed incomes due to physical limitations, these people have a lot of business cards from their doctors. Perhaps you could offer part of BusinessCardReader for free to hold 30 cards to put all their doctors cards using BusinessCardReader it could save somebody’s life. So if somebody has some kind of a medical problems and and needs emergency they would look in your phone for any information on doctors that you have on the phone .

by JETTX

The OCR engine in BusinessCardReader is buggy. I understand some cards have graphics that are hard to decipher, but that doesn’t excuse BusinessCardReader ’s inability to get most fonts in English correct.

Usually I have to edit the contact after it’s scanned in, sometimes I have to edit so much of it, I might as well have entered it manually.

So my question to the developer: If I still have to do the entry work, tell me again, why do I need BusinessCardReader? Right now, I don’t plan on renewing the subscription when it comes up for renewal. BusinessCardReader just doesn’t do the job the developer claims it can do.

by Chungamus

I do not know why, but it seems that the OCR function is degrading in comparison to the initial few months. (This is my 2nd year in use) Obviously cumbersome to go back and manually edit each card; at that point, I might as well create the card on my own instead of using BusinessCardReader.

I now switch to manual photo capture and retake it several times to get close enough of reading so I do not have to retype so much. Around 3rd time of retaking I can get 90% usable image.

Still a way to go…

by Darinpf

I spent $25 for an annual subscription and that seems like a good deal given costs for similar solutions.
The plus side- fast scanning, simple intuitive interface, export to excel.
The down side- from the first 10 cards I scanned, only 2 picked up the email address and it seemed that several didn’t pick up the name of the organization. And, if you find you want to upload a contact without a business card, you have to go into settings and select the “create your own business card” option and just use that feature to add other contacts without cards. That’s not as intuitive as the rest of the interface. All in all, my hope is I will be collecting hundreds of cards this way and making it easier to upload into Salesforce. I haven’t tried that yet. This is just my day one feedback.

by Donjbay

Most features of BusinessCardReader are great, and the recognition is more accurate than other card scanning apps. The main downfall has to do with the text, navigation and email ‘buttons’ or lack thereof. ABBYY would do well to adopt the more user friendly interface of CamCard, when the most used features have buttons on a banner above the card info, so you can quickly call,text, email or load the directions to the address in a navigation app of your choosing. For navigation, simply seeing the pin on a map within BusinessCardReader is mostly useless for navigation purposes, and ultimately renders BusinessCardReader ineffective holistically. Please address this, I paid for the premium features not realizing this, and will ultimately switch to CamCard for its more user friendly interface/functionality.

by Erinvaughn

I love this tool and I’ve recommended it to many, many people. It has been brought to my attention that the subscription based charging is problematic. If I stop subscribing, where do my cards go? Why can we not purchase it with different rates for number of cards? I’m sure subscription fees are great as a business model for you, recurring revenue and all, but for those that may be on the job search or not using it as often, it’s too expensive a tool.

In a day and age when all developers are being taught to look to inclusiveness in their design models, is there not a way to make this more accessible to the hordes of people that need a tool like this but don’t have the budget for recurring charges? Since 7 out of 8 people in our country are living paycheck to paycheck, can you not design a business model that enables people to use such a valuable tool (in job searches especially) while still paying you for your valuable work?

by Eafb1234

BusinessCardReader is good, scan and reads the cards quick and is fairly intuitive. But there are some important needs for improvement
- Application crashes far too many times. Scanned +300 cards and BusinessCardReader crashed more than 50 times, luckily with no loss of info
- App should recognize and learn from prior scanning. If you scan several cards from the same firm, it would be good that once 1 is corrected, then forth coming are scanned correctly
- Scan is ok, but could be improved, specially for international business cards. Some scanning errors are not understandable
- Should try to follow a format for the phones, particularly when there are international cards so they are all recorded properly
- Maybe a good idea would be for BusinessCardReader to lear. If I don’t use nicknames, and rename it as the 2nd last name, well that could be the result next scan.

Hope to see further updates to BusinessCardReader that take care of some improvements that could be made.

by Buckeyes Baby!

Business card scanners are largely horrible. I’ve tried every major product and, though it’s hard to believe that in 2021 there aren’t better scanners, all of them fall short. That said, this one is the best. It has room for improvement, however, is worth the money. They even have an email that sends support a detailed email of the image and OCR results, so they are trying! I’m assuming some of this is due to iPhone XR limitations....

by Redcoat90

BusinessCardReader helps me organize my contacts from business. I always have them with me and don’t have to carry a big book around or use up space with pictures of cards! I don’t even have to obtain the business card! Thank you for that!

BusinessCardReader is still a little clunky. Sometimes I have to re-enter some or all of the info that was misread or the picture doesn’t automatically take (which can be a pain when I only have one hand). I have learned to work around it, tho.

by Htimsc01

Has a good set of tools, but not initially easy to get to. Have to go thru screens of this and that to do so.
Also, it like a number of apps these days need an annual type of subscription to use all the features. I think this should be clearer as to what it does cost. Perhaps this is an Apple issue not the developer.
Finally, the previous Feb reviewer talks about 7/8 people who work live paycheck to paycheck. This is just factually incorrect - all you have to so is review the data on city by city, by job category type (using the workers compensation categories) to see cost of living vs income is not even close to 7/8. Ridiculous unsupported statements that become true because they are repeated over and over. Even above that “paycheck to paycheck” does not account for how the paycheck is spent and so this phrase just becomes a loaded phrase. But back to the review - a useful app! One suggestion would be to somehow connect it to the Apple contacts app, altho that may take away from the data base BusinessCardReader uses. Thanks.

by 岩恩

Completely worth it! Great concept and fun design especially with nice features such as being able to send an email automatically, with your info in the body and your card picture attached, to those whose business cards you have uploaded.
The reason it is not 5 stars is because ok the last few cards I used (which were all the same company but different individuals) it got the spelling and certain info wrong on them so that I had to go in and manually rewrite parts. Not a major issue but something that is there. Also first 15 are free and a fee if you want to add more. Yearly fee is 29+ - not bad.

by Amc4anyavailablename

I love BusinessCardReader . Scanned 10 cards during the trial. Decided to purchase the premium lifetime option,BUT The only way to subscribe to BusinessCardReader is through an iTunes account. I’m not buying as I will not get an iTunes account. Very shortsighted, I could pay by credit card PayPal send a check but no these options are not available.

I will now go to BusinessCardReader Store and look for a different business card reader.

by MichaelWidener

This software works much better than its name would suggest. A lot of programs like this have names that use Usability principles in the name itself. This leads us to believe the coding must also be as well thought out or as easy to use as the name is to remember. Not so.

I’ve done Agile development as a Designer. That’s the part with the pictures and buttons, and animations, and what could bottoms how an app moves around in response to end user button-taps (in the case of a touch screen.)

BusinessCardReader has clearly given their QA team the teeth to hold up release until all the annoying problems are fixed. There’s something called a “backlog” in software development.

Unsuccessful app makers (and software makers alike) focus on release dates instead of long-term customer loyalty.

This software developer clearly chose the latter.

Recommended.

by O1o1o1o1

None of these packages have 100 % accuracy, but this one comes close. Further, BusinessCardReader connects to LinkedIn, and it has easy editing. Finally, if you don’t think it scanned something correctly, it allows you to send an email to the developer with the details of the improper scan (assuming you don’t mind having the developer see the card). Don’t know if they read the email and do anything with it, this feature at least makes you feel better.

by Appbay

I have tried over 10 business card scanning apps and this one is the best by far.

It is 98% accurate and allows you to connect via LinkedIn/Facebook .. a feature most do not offer. Try the free version if that’s good enough for you no need to pay… But for me I am a heavy user of BusinessCardReader and have no problem paying the developer to continue making improvements extremely happy with this product!

by Polpet

I am having a real hard time with BusinessCardReader. Basically when you scan card it saves to contacts but doesn’t save on app. Out of 20 cards scanned 3 saved on app. If you try again it keeps adding same contact over and over to your phone contact list. This is a mess. Support not easy to find on BusinessCardReader. I paid for the subscription but will contact apple for refund.

by Crasshipster

ABBYY BCR app is so very superior to all other business card import apps that I have tried over the years, both free and paid ones. ABBYY BCR automatically captured and imported the contact info from the card accurately into the appropriate places. I didn’t have to edit or add any info. It also grabbed a pic of the card and corrected the image angles so the pic of the card looks centered and perfect. You then have import options including to your own contacts. I like that you can keep the pic of the business card in BusinessCardReader .

I am not a working professional so I don’t have a subscription. I would recommend it. Though I do get subscriptions just to support app development. I don’t use this often enough.

I did just see that there are a variety of paid options in addition to the full paid subscription. Thank you big time for that!

Thanks for a great app and for maintaining it. Even though I can’t continue to use it.

by Pnoble

I ingested around 200 old business cards in maybe 2-3 hours. BusinessCardReader crashed 5-6 times but to no ill effect. Parsing of card content was sometimes inconsistent for the same card. Character recognition was by no means perfect. Also doesn’t seem to flag duplicates.

But all in all it worked like a charm and since my personal use is purely archival and it stores the original image to refer to it is just fine. Better than fine. A few hundred cards to go and then I will never store another and will return from trips and shows card free!!

Just two incredibly stupidly designed business cards out of 200 failed to ingest! And one company’s graphics refused to photograph without enormous effort.

Importing into iOS address book, into SalesForce, into Excel is huge if you need. Also knowing where and when you ingested the card is terrific.

Great app in terms of utility value. Fair subscription cost. Chose on account of an independent comparative review and it’s very high App Store rating.

by Wads Of The Woo

Requires you to agree to ABBY’s terms regarding agreement to share personal data. If this can be revoked, then why even ask for it at all? Also, allowance of 3rd Party Advertising, which means that there is a sharing of my personal data with other companies. For myself, these terms are unacceptable. While, true, all private data might not be shared, there are no guarantees, that it won’t. As far as, GDPR, I don’t think most people know what that is, (including myself) and ABBY might want to elaborate its meaning to others and, more specifically, how being GDPR compliant provides justification for denying access to this application to the end user. I would very much like to use this application; however, being required to agree to the privacy and advertising terms, again. for myself, is unacceptable.

by IAskMartin

Using the Fine Reader on my pc for scanning I was expecting much better product. I previously used ScanBizCards but they dropped web access. The web access with BCR is just plain crap. No import function exists. Edit is OK. Sync with contacts appears to be one way only. Scanning is just ok. ScanBizCards did much better job of suggesting correct company too. There is no rescan functionality. You have to delete and start over. Don’t pay for this!

by Kasiamich

I looked at a bunch of apps, and finally decided on this one. I am quite satisfied! The scanning of both Japanese and English characters is fine, and I don’t mind that I have to revise sometimes. It syncs with my Mac and iPhone Contacts quickly, and is easily exported for backup. I love that I can connect to LinkedIn and Facebook, and that the person’s photo can sometimes come up (I can’t figure out, though, how I can determine which photo can be used). Love it! The only feature I would like is if the business card scanned image can be exported along with the other data in the csv file, if that is even remotely possible. I know I can save a picture of the card in my phone, but I prefer not to. Thanks again for creating this!