Ryan CobblerQRCG by Bitly (formerly QR Code Generator PRO)

The QR code on Danny's yard signs died on day fifteen

Filed Time 3 min read Length 758 words

The Bitly logo, the word bitly in dark lowercase letters with an orange square

My nephew Danny called me on a Tuesday with his truck idling behind him. He'd put QR codes on fifty yard signs so homeowners could scan and book a mowing quote. Kellie at Kepner Sign Works printed the whole run and he stapled them up around three counties. On day fifteen, every scan quit. Point a phone at a sign and you got a page demanding a subscription before it would say one word about grass. "Who puts a paywall on a yard sign?" he asked. Somebody does, and he found them.

So here's the thing. Danny didn't get a broken code. He got the wrong kind. The generator he used, QRCG by Bitly, calls its default product a dynamic code. A dynamic code doesn't point at your website. It points at the generator's own server, which looks up your address and forwards the scan there. When the free trial ends, that forwarding shuts off and the scan lands on their signup page. A static code is the plain kind. It just encodes your web address, like the words printed under it. Nothing sits between the phone and your site. Nothing to shut off.

Danny picked "URL" on a site that says free QR code generator right in the search results and figured that was that. The paid kind got picked for him.

What I did about it

  1. Paid the Starter plan for one year, $9.99 a month billed yearly, $119.88 on my card. That brought the fifty signs back to life that afternoon. Danny owes me pulled pork.
  2. Built him a static code pointing straight at the quote page on his own domain. Tested it on three phones in Kellie's parking lot before it went anywhere near a printer.
  3. Had Kellie rerun the signs, about eighty dollars for the batch on her small-run price.
  4. Turned off auto-renew on the subscription the same week and put a note on my calendar for next September, because they don't make that button loud.

The paid year carried the original signs through the season. The static reprint takes over from here, and it costs nothing monthly, forever.

What it costs if you stay

  • Starter, $9.99 a month billed yearly or $19.99 month to month. Two dynamic codes.
  • Advanced, $18.99 a month, billed yearly only. Fifty dynamic codes.
  • Professional, $49.99 a month, billed yearly only. 250 dynamic codes.

The trial runs fourteen days and they don't ask for a card up front. Their own support page says it plain. Dynamic codes get deactivated when the trial ends and point to a service page instead of your destination. Static codes keep working. You don't get charged for letting the trial lapse with no card on file, and I'll give them that. The trap isn't the trial. It's printing before you know which kind you made.

Trustpilot lists the site as QRCG by Bitly, the new name since April. It sits at 1.3 out of 5 across more than nine thousand reviews, and the same story runs through reviews dated this September. Made a code, printed it, trial ended, scans died, and the only fix is a subscription. That's not one bad month of support. That's how the product works.

I'll be fair about the other side. Dynamic codes do something static ones can't. You can change where they point without reprinting, and you can count scans. That's real for a restaurant menu or a flyer you update. For fifty yard signs pointing at one page that will never move, it's a meter on a water line you already own.

The rented water heater

A dynamic code is a rented water heater. Plenty of outfits around here lease them. The tank heats fine, the showers run hot, and the bill shows up every month until you die or move. Stop paying and they roll a truck out and take the tank. Static is the heater you bought outright in 2004. It sits in the basement, nobody sends you a bill, and if it ever quits you call me and not a leasing office.

What to do Monday

Go find anything you've already had printed with a QR code on it. A sign, a door hanger, an invoice. Scan it with your own phone today and watch where it lands. If it shows your site, you're fine. If it asks you for money or lands on a page you don't own, make a static code pointing at your own domain before your next print run. Kellie can tell you how many you've got out there.