So after getting a good recommendation from someone else who had business cards printed from VistaPrint, I decided to give them a try myself. $54 is better than $120 right? So why not. I got my 1000 cards and ummmmm... not so good.

The "Glossy White" card stock was yellowish. So my white background looked yellow. And my red ink looked orange. Making it look even more off color, everything VistaPrint does is either Black & White or CMYK, no spot colors. So my Pantone 1805 Red came out looking like some orange out of your $68 Epson printer.

Now, the standard size of business cards in this country is 2" by 3.5" (see!). But not on VistaPrint. Their business cards are 3.43" by 1.93". So the cars are noticeably smaller than they should be. Its like saying "Hey, I fix computers, but I'm a little insecure, so I don't want to say it too loud".

And finally, the template they gave me told me to upload an image with a .25" bleed. Now I'm just making up that number cause I don't remember exactly what bleed I was supposed to use, but whatever they said, thats what they got, EXACTLY. So I got my cards, and rather than bleed .25" off the page, the entire image of my card (which, do the math, is .5" taller and .5" wider than its supposed to be, because .25" of it all the way around is supposed to be printed off the edge of the paper) has been shrunk down, so the whole image, including the bleed, was on the card. So everything was shrunk, and none of the backgrounds lined up like they should. What made this extra annoying, was that on the "digital" proof their web site gave me, it actually DID line up perfectly, and the cut lines were exactly where they were supposed to be.

So anyway, the point is: Don't use VistaPrint unless a really low price is more important than a quality products. And, I don't even mean that sarcastically. There are certainly times when you don't need a good document, you just need a lot of them.