Best QR Code Generators in Australia: Your Search Ends Here!
If you’ve spotted a QR Code on your potato chip packet, at a retail store, for payments, and practically everywhere you go — you’re not the only one. The onset of COVID-19 brought upon a tsunami of QR Codes usage, accelerating its adoption across the globe.
QR Codes made waves of commotion and noise with verticals such as restaurants, marketers, and even healthcare providers began plastering them on buildings, advertisements, employee uniforms, and payment portals, urging everyone to scan them.
According to Statista’s survey, 18.8% of consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom strongly agreed that they had noticed a sizeable increase in QR Codes usage since the beginning of COVID-19.
QR Codes are not a novelty technology; they’ve been around for more than two decades!
Generating QR Codes are not a three-ring-circus task — it’s simple. But, how do you get one?
This article will cover how to choose the best online QR Code generator (yes, free and paid) and what makes each one of them unique.
Let’s get started.
Why are QR Codes popular? What led to the supercharge?
Until 2020, although QR Codes were ubiquitous, the struggle to gain adoption in most parts of the world was pretty evident.
Cut to 2020, dozens of marketers, restauranteurs, business owners, and managers worldwide wanted to leverage QR Codes on most physical surfaces to minimise the spread of the virus, gain maximum ROI, create hassle-free transactions, and turn around the brand as tech-savvy.
According to Google Trends, the search for QR Codes in Australia somersaulted from April 2020 to March 2021, with the highest number of people searching for the technology in November.
Here are a few reasons why QR Codes rose to popularity in recent years -
- Scanning a QR Code does not require downloading a third-party application or hardware — thanks to iOS and Android’s introduction of QR Code scanning from the native camera application
- Global-wide adoption of contactless payments via QR Codes by popular payment gateways such as PayPal, Google, and Apple broke the barriers of everyday transactions
- A rise in the appropriation of QR Code technology into various industry verticals, especially restaurants and contactless transactions, delivered high ROIs and brand recalls
- South Asia’s QR implementation and success stories encouraged the rest of the world to join forces
The best QR Code generator: How do you choose the best solution?
With QR Codes becoming increasingly popular, it’s typical to stumble across hundreds of online QR Code generators claiming to be the best. However, what sets apart from quality QR Codes vs spammy ones are low conversion rates, distrust over the brand, increased phishing attacks, and more.
Selecting the right QR Code generator can be quite a tedious task. To make this process easier for you, I’ve listed out the best QR Code generators and sorted them out based on their features and complexities.
But before zeroing down on your QR Code generator, consider the following factors to check the boxes -
- Check online reviews of the QR Code generator — A simple way to do this is to type the name of the QR Code generator + reviews on Google
- Can the QR Codes be customised — colour, logo, CTA, pattern, and shapes?
- Ease of use
- Can I track my QR Codes’ performance once I leverage them?
- How easily can I reach out to their customer support? — E-mail, pop-up dialogues, and social media
- Does the QR Code generator host security features for enterprises — SSO login, password protection, SOC 2 Type 1, GDPR, custom domain, and multi-user protection?
- Can I try the platform for free and leverage QR Codes on a campaign to test out its capabilities?
These are the top best QR Code generators available on the market -
Best QR Code Generator 2021
- Beaconstac
- QR Code Monkey
- QR Stuff
- QR Codes Australia
- Kaywa
- QR Code Generator
- Scanova
- Visual Lead
- QRickit
#1 Beaconstac’s QR Code Generator
Beaconstac offers a myriad of custom QR Code options with informative pieces on the go to help you get the hang of the technology. QR Codes offered on the Beaconstac platform are flexible, easy to use, and keep track of.
Beaconstac is the only platform that is SOC 2 Type 1 certified. The platform offers more than 15 dynamic QR Codes with multiple features such as multi-lingual QR Codes, restaurant menu QR Codes, forms, and more.
In addition, the dashboard offers granular tracking data in conjunction with Google Analytics to help users pinpoint where their scans are coming from. The security offered by the platform is beyond exceptional with GDPR compliance, SSO log-in, password-protected QR Codes, and age-gated QR Codes to ward off hackers.
Check out their reviews here — https://www.g2.com/products/beaconstac-qr-codes/reviews
Paid Plans: Beaconstac’s QR Code solution starts from as low as $5/month, billed annually with customisable enterprise options. Talk to their in-house experts to schedule a demo or even learn more about their product.
#2 QR Codes Australia
QR Codes Australia does not have a dedicated QR Code generator, unlike other platforms. The platform has a small drop-down type of QR Code generator that can create only vCards with no customisation options.
Users cannot track the created QR Codes on their own. The platform generates a tracking ID in case you want to monitor your campaign scans.
With no customization options and only one type of QR Code, this platform can be skipped altogether.
Paid Plans: The platform does not reveal its pricing. To learn more about it, the user has to request it with the customer support team.
#3 Netfront
Netfront does not have an exclusive QR Code generator. The platform hosts a number of services such as surveypod, oncall apps, and a QR Code generator.
Netfront’s QR Code Maker can be used to only create URL QR Codes. The platform does not provide customization of any sort to help you campaign your QR Codes better. In addition, uses cannot leverage any of the advanced features a QR Code is capable of since the platform does not support it.
Netfront hosts only one type of QR Code, it’s safe to skip the QR Code generator with another viable one.
Paid Plans: The URL QR Codes are free to download.
#4 Barcodes Australia
New Zealand based company, Barcodes Australia provides low-cost barcodes numbers and images to individuals and businesses in Australia. The platform also offers QR Codes.
The QR Codes offered are only of two types — URL QR Code and vCard (business card) in both static and dynamic formats. The platform offers advanced features such as tracking, editing, and unlimited scans for dynamic QR Codes.
However, with only two types of QR Codes being offered, the options to scale up use-cases are limited, making the platform not worthy.
Paid Plans: Netfront charges $30 to download one QR Code image, and the cost for each QR Code image reduces considerably if the requirements are large.
#5 QR Code Monkey
QR Codes, including dynamic and custom QR Codes, are free to create and use on QR Code Monkey. The interface and usability are simple and easy to use. QR Codes can be categorically organised via folders and gauge their performance on the dashboard.
The platform also offers a 14-day free trial offer to get a hands-on experience of the dashboard and its offerings.
QR Code Monkey also hosts various templates to choose from while creating QR Codes for advanced customisation.
Paid Plans: Paid plans are available on QR Studio and start from €5/month, billed annually.
#6 QR Code Generator
The QR Code Generator platform is by far one of the most easily navigated solutions to use. Like Beaconstac, QR Code Generator also offers multiple customisation options for both static and dynamic QR Codes.
The platform offers advanced customisation features for premium users to track, customise, and manage QR Codes on their dashboard.
Although the platform is easy to use, the company auto-renews subscription plans without alerting the user, which might be troublesome.
Paid Plan: QR Code plans start from €5/month billed annually and go on till €37.50/month, but the platform limits the number of users.
#7 QR Stuff
QR Stuff’s pillar page, which hosts the QR Code generator widget, is not as easy to use — its complicated, haphazardly placed features, and overwhelming. The platform has various types of QR Codes that can be customised and have options to mail your QR Code.
QR Codes can be customised only for premium users and has a limited number of scans (50).
Paid plans: QR Stuff’s plans start from $11.95 for a monthly subscription and $7.50/month for a 12-month subscription billed annually, making it the most expensive solution.
#8 Scanova
Scanova has four different platforms: QR Code API, QR Code Generator, QR Code SDK, and QR Batch (bulk QR Codes) for easy accessibility. The QR Code generator widget hosts about 12 custom QR Code options with a preview feature so users can tweak the QR Code on the go.
Scanova has a variety of features for each of its platforms. However, Scanova does not let you manage all your QR Codes in one place — each platform has its own dashboard making it difficult to track.
Apart from this, Scanova’s platform is easy to use, has distinct features, and helps the user with their vast educational guides.
Paid Plans: Scanova’s plans start from $15/month and go on till $100/month, billed annually and monthly. However, the number of QR Codes that can be created with Starter and mid plans are very minimum (5 and 20 respectively), making it expensive.
#9 Kaywa
Kaywa QR Code’s user interface is not as simple and easy as the other QR Code generators. Kaywa offers only seven types of QR Codes that can be either static or dynamic simply by switching on the toggle.
The platform does not have customisation options available easily, making it difficult to use it for campaigns deeming it to be less alluring.
Paid Plans: Kaywa QR Codes start with $13.75/month and go on to $150/month with a range of limited dynamic QR Codes (5–500).
#10 Visual Lead
Although Visual Lead’s platform is easy to use, it has customisation options and even a preview option to visualise how the campaign will look. However, the customisation options are not as easy as you think.
The platform is also overloaded with text, images, and features, making it difficult for a user to learn and navigate through the platform.
Visual Lead is primarily known for QR Codes that host media with them, but they do offer other types of QR Codes as well.
Paid Plans: If you’re creating QR Codes for one-time use, their plans are free. Else, it starts with $6.23/month billed annually and $7.52/month. The platform hosts only three types — smart packaging, mixed reality, and brand protection QR Codes, which can be revealed upon request for enterprise users.
Apart from the QR Code generators as mentioned earlier, here are a couple more of them worth mentioning -
11. QR Tiger
12. QRZebra
13. The QR Code Generator
14. GoQR
15. uQR
16. QR Explore
17. QRD
Selecting the best QR Code generator must be solely based on your requirements and how easy the platform is to navigate, availability of customer support, and educational guides handy to help you get started.
With a ton of online QR Code generators available, it can get overwhelming to zero down your choice. To avoid any confusion, make sure you read online reviews and sign up for a trial before making a purchase.
Disclaimer: I work as a Content Marketing Manager at MobStac that has created the Beaconstac platform. In case you find a discrepancy in the reviews, please leave a comment and I will address it right away.