Free vs Pro vs Team: Which Digital Name Card Plan Do You Need?

Every share2.io digital name card subscription — Free, Pro or Team — gives the same kind of thing: a set number of profiles, card widgets, QR codes, short links and card scans per month. What differs is scale and price, and picking between them comes down to one question: how many people need a profile, and how much scanning will they realistically generate? This guide breaks down exactly what each tier includes, which limit actually forces an upgrade in practice, how to work out the real cost per person rather than just the headline price, and what to do if your headcount sits awkwardly between two tiers.

The three plans side by side

All three plans share the same five limits — they just scale differently:

Card widgets barely move between Pro and Team (49 on both), so that limit rarely decides anything. The real gaps are profiles, QR codes/short links, and scans — and scans in particular jump enormously between tiers, which is the clearest sign of who each plan was actually built for. Notice too that the jump from Pro to Team isn't gradual: profiles more than triple, QR codes and short links more than triple, and scans jump more than sixty-fold. There's no "Pro Plus" in between — the platform is built around three clear buyer profiles (a solo user, a small team, a large team or multi-branch operation), not a smooth ramp, which is why getting the headcount-versus-scans question right up front matters more here than on most subscription products.

Free: for one person testing the idea

Free is a genuinely usable starting point, not a crippled trial: 3 profiles, 27 card widgets, 3 QR codes, 3 short links and 20 card scans a month, at no cost. That's enough for one person to set up a digital profile and start sharing it by QR code or NFC tap without committing to anything. As our guide on what your scan count is actually telling you covers, 20 scans a month is a low number in absolute terms, but it's not a red flag on Free — it's simply the ceiling of a plan meant for light, individual use. It becomes a real constraint once scans start regularly bumping against that ceiling, or once a second or third person needs their own profile.

The 3-profile allowance on Free is also easy to overlook as a feature rather than a limitation: it means a sole trader can set up one profile for themselves and a second for, say, a business partner or a part-time assistant, without paying anything, as long as scanning stays light. Where Free genuinely falls short is anything involving regular events or multiple marketing touchpoints at once — a single QR code on a booth banner plus a different one in an email footer already uses two of the three codes available.

Pro: for a small team or one active networker

Pro costs RM39/month or RM368/year, and covers up to 15 profiles — which works out to RM2.60 per profile on the monthly plan. Its QR code and short link allowances jump tenfold over Free (30 each, versus 3), and its scan allowance jumps to 150 a month, more than seven times Free's limit. Pro fits two kinds of buyer: a small team of up to 15 people who each need their own card, or a single person whose networking volume has genuinely outgrown Free — someone attending regular events, meeting new prospects weekly, or running multiple QR touchpoints (a booth, a signature, a printed flyer) at once.

150 scans a month works out to roughly five a day across the whole account, which is comfortable for a small team doing ordinary day-to-day networking, but tight for a team that's regularly at trade shows or client events where a single afternoon can generate dozens of scans. If that describes your team even some months of the year, it's worth checking the scan count after the first busy month rather than assuming the allowance will hold.

Team: for a sales team or a multi-branch business

Team costs RM104/month or RM1,088/year, and covers up to 50 profiles at RM2.08 per profile on the monthly plan — cheaper per profile than Pro, because the cost is spread across more than three times as many people. The defining number, though, is scans: 10,000 a month, against Pro's 150. That capacity is built for a full sales team handing out cards at volume, or a multi-branch business where every outlet shares and taps its own card regularly — the kind of setup covered in our guide to setting up a digital name card for a whole sales team, which walks through the rollout side once Team is the right plan.

10,000 scans a month is a large enough allowance that most Team accounts will never come close to it — it exists for the businesses that genuinely need it, such as a retail chain where every outlet's card gets tapped by customers throughout the day, rather than a typical office-based sales team. For most 20-to-50-person teams, profiles and QR/short-link count are the limits actually worth watching, not scans.

Which limit actually runs out first

In practice, the five limits don't run out evenly, and knowing which one to watch saves a lot of guesswork:

• Profiles are the simplest to track — one per person who needs a card. This is the limit that decides the minimum plan you need, before anything else is considered.
• QR codes and short links run out faster than most people expect, because a single person can use more than one: a QR code on a printed flyer, a different one on a booth banner, a short link in an email signature. A solo networker running several campaigns can hit Free's 3-code limit well before hitting its scan limit.
• Card widgets (the content blocks on a profile — links, galleries, contact buttons) rarely cause an upgrade, since Pro and Team both offer 49 and most profiles use far fewer.
• Card scans are the limit that scales with actual usage rather than headcount, and the one most worth checking monthly. A quiet month barely dents a Free account's 20 scans; a trade show weekend can use most of a month's Pro allowance in two days.

Monthly vs annual billing

Both paid plans cost less billed annually than the same number of months billed monthly. Pro is RM368/year annually, versus RM39 x 12 = RM468/year monthly — a saving of RM100/year. Team is RM1,088/year annually, versus RM104 x 12 = RM1,248/year monthly — a saving of RM160/year. Annual billing only makes sense once you're confident which plan fits; there's nothing wrong with starting on monthly billing while usage is still being figured out, then switching to annual once it's settled.

Working out the real cost per person

The sticker price (RM39 or RM104 a month) is only half the comparison — what matters for a team is the cost per profile, and that number changes depending on how close to full capacity the plan actually runs. Divide the plan's monthly price by the number of people who will actually use a profile, not by the plan's maximum:

The pattern is clear: a plan is cheapest per person when it's running close to its own capacity, and most expensive per person right after an upgrade, while there's still unused headroom. A 20-person team on Team pays more per profile (RM5.20) than a 15-person team maxing out Pro (RM2.60) — not because Team is a worse deal, but because it's paying for capacity it hasn't grown into yet.

How to actually decide

• Count today's headcount first. How many people need their own profile right now, not in a hiring plan that might not happen.
• Check scans before QR codes. Scans are usually the limit that bites first on Free and Pro; QR codes and short links matter most for a solo user running several campaigns at once.
• Treat the Free tier as a real trial, not a toy. There's no reason to pay for Pro before Free's limits are actually being hit — the upgrade path is simple and nothing is lost by starting small.
• Re-check monthly, not once. A plan that fits at launch can be outgrown within a quarter if the team starts attending events or hiring; the scan count and profile count are both worth a five-minute check each month.
• Bill monthly until the plan is settled. Lock in annual pricing only once a few months of real usage confirm the tier is right — switching plans is simpler before annual billing is in place.

When your headcount falls between Pro and Team

There's a real gap between Pro's 15-profile cap and Team's 50-profile cap, and a team of 16 to 30 people sits awkwardly inside it: too big for Pro, but nowhere near using all of Team's capacity. For a business at that size, the honest trade-off is paying a higher cost per profile for a while in exchange for not having to plan another upgrade for the next couple of years of hiring. If the team is growing quickly, that headroom is worth it; if headcount is genuinely stable at, say, 18 people with no plans to expand, it's still the only option once Pro's 15-profile ceiling is hit — there is no tier between the two.

One practical way to soften that trade-off: if only part of the team does regular in-person networking — sales and account management, say, versus back-office roles — it's worth asking whether every role genuinely needs its own profile from day one, or whether the rollout can start with the roles that benefit most and add the rest as the team grows into the plan's capacity. Our guide on setting up a digital name card for a whole sales team covers how to sequence a rollout like that.

Common mistakes

• Choosing a plan by today's headcount only. A fast-growing team that picks Pro at 14 people is back shopping for an upgrade within months.
• Ignoring QR codes and short links. A single active networker running several campaigns can exhaust Free's 3-code limit long before touching its scan allowance.
• Comparing plans on sticker price alone. RM104/month looks expensive next to RM39/month until it's divided by the right number of people.
• Paying annually before usage is settled. Annual billing saves money, but only once you're confident in the plan — switching tiers mid-year is simpler on monthly billing.
• Assuming card widgets matter. Pro and Team both offer 49; it's almost never the limit that decides an upgrade.
• Not checking scan counts regularly. The scan allowance is the one limit tied to real-world usage rather than headcount, and the easiest one to blow past without noticing.

Where Gotka Technologies fits

Gotka's Digital Name Card is ordered and managed on the share2.io platform, where Free, Pro and Team are the three subscription tiers available. If you're weighing the subscription against an optional physical NFC card as well, our guide to what a digital name card actually costs covers the physical card pricing separately from the plan you're choosing here, and our guide on what your scan count is telling you is the practical way to tell when a plan's limits are actually being hit.

Key terms used in this guide

• Profile: one person's digital card page on share2.io; each plan includes a set number of them.
• Card widget: a content block on a profile, such as a link button, photo gallery or contact form.
• QR code: a scannable code that opens a profile; a plan limits how many distinct codes can exist at once.
• Short link: a brief web address that opens the same profile as the QR code, for places a code can't be scanned.
• Card scan: one opening of a profile by QR, NFC tap or short link, counted toward the plan's monthly allowance.
• Per-profile cost: a plan's monthly price divided by the number of people actually using it, not the plan's maximum capacity.
• At capacity: using the full number of profiles a plan allows, which is where its per-profile cost is lowest.