AlphaCard’s pre-printing card service offers you the highest quality cards – ideal for businesses and organizations who need large batches of cards not easily printed with a traditional ID card printer.
With pre-printed cards, you still get many options to choose from so you can customize the cards to your needs, including full-size cards or keytags, full-color or monochrome, single or dual-sided, and many encoding options.
But how do you know if an ID card printer or pre-printed cards are right for your business?
When should I buy an ID card printer?
ID card printers put the power of designing and printing cards in your hands – this is important if your organization:
- Regularly prints new cards
- Must print cards on short notice
- Needs customized ID cards
- Frequently changes the card design
- Prints a low volume of cards (several hundred cards or less)
So what do these types of organizations look like? Businesses that have employee photo ID cards for each employee with their photo, name, and personal information, and need to print each employee’s ID card when they start working. This is especially useful if you have different types of cards for different classifications of employees, or frequently change your design
Or organizations that run conventions, retreats, and other events where they are printing customized guest or attendee badges as people arrive throughout the day. Or small businesses with only a few employees or visitors who would save money purchasing an ID card printing and printing their own because they couldn’t meet the 250-card minimum for pre-printed cards.
When should I go with pre-printed cards?
On the other hand, pre-printed cards are a great option if:
- You need very large batches of cards (larger jobs have the lowest cost per card)
- All your cards are the same
- Or your cards are easy to customize
- You have time to order cards in advance
The most important benefit of pre-printed cards is the ability to do large batch prints. These card companies use different printers and technology than a desktop ID card printer, so they can handle hundreds or thousands of cards very easily and quickly.
While you can print thousands of cards with your printer, you will need to stop frequently to replace ribbons and cards after 200 to 500 cards, and clean the printer between batches.
What types of businesses use pre-printed cards? Retail stores that offer customer rewards programs can pre-order hundreds or thousands of reward member cards with serialized member numbers, and then simply active a card when a new member signs up.
Or businesses that do not need highly personalized ID cards for their employees and just need to quickly add the employee information. You will save time and effort by ordering employee ID cards with most of your design already printed (company name and logo, background design, etc.) as pre-printed cards so you always have blank cards on hand, and then you’ll only need to quickly customize it for the new employee by adding their name or photo with your ID card printer.
