Four prices cannot be compared on one line, because each one buys something different.
Search "what does collecting reviews cost" and the numbers that come back have nothing to do with each other. It looks like four prices for one thing. It is not.
It is four different things, each solving only a slice of the same problem, so their prices cannot be lined up and compared as if they were interchangeable. A piece of plastic with a printed QR code does something different from software that emails your customer list, which does something different again from a feature buried inside a system you already pay for something else.
This page walks through all four honestly, including what each one cannot do, since no price list on its own shows that. It ends with the option that costs nothing, because even that exists in this category.
A finished plaque, made of plastic, wood, or acrylic, printed with a QR code and sometimes an NFC chip inside. Buy it once, set it on the counter, and pay nothing further.
Ready-made signs from small manufacturers run roughly $15 to $40 a piece, checked against current listings. Price mostly tracks whether you want custom artwork instead of a manufacturer's template with somebody else's logo on it, not what is actually inside.
For that price you get exactly what you see, a code leading somewhere. You will not know how many times it was picked up, since a scan never gets recorded anywhere. A printed code also cannot be rewritten, so if the listing it points to gets renamed or moved, the code still leads to where it pointed on the day it was printed. And an unhappy guest who does not want to leave one public star has nowhere else to go.
What to check before buying one anywhere is on the NFC card page.
Software you log into, upload a customer list to, and it emails or texts a review request on its own, sometimes drafting a reply to one that already arrived.
For a single location, the platforms tracked here run roughly $30 to $150 a month, rising with more locations and more texts sent. Most bill annually with a discount for paying up front.
You never have to ask anyone at the counter, since the system sends the request itself, and that is the whole appeal. What it cannot reach is the guest you have no email or phone number for, which is exactly the guest standing at your counter holding a card, not the one who booked ahead. Someone who pays cash and walks in once never enters the database and never gets a request, no matter what the platform costs.
Booking software for a salon, an ordering system for a restaurant, scheduling software for a repair shop: plenty of these tools now bundle an automatic post-visit review request as one of dozens of features.
There is deliberately no figure here. No specific booking or scheduling system prices this feature on its own with its own line item; it is one item inside a package you are already paying for something else. When you have it, it costs nothing extra.
The catch is who the message actually reaches. The system only messages someone who went through it, meaning someone who booked, ordered, or registered. A guest who walked in without a reservation, paid, and left never entered the system, so nothing is ever sent to them. At a business where most people arrive without booking ahead, this feature covers only a fraction of who walks through the door, and it leaves with you if you ever switch systems.
Valtela works differently from the three options above: not just a piece of plastic, and not just software, but both in one licence. A licence year runs $599, and an extra card for a second counter is $79 a year.
For that, you get a card with its own code on the counter, a screen offering a Google review and a private message equally to every guest, and a nightly check on your Google listing. When something changes, your name, hours, or rating, an email arrives the same day. None of the three options above do that, since none of them look at your Google listing at all.
The full breakdown, including what happens if an invoice goes unpaid, is on the pricing page.
And here is what a page selling any of the above usually leaves out: Google generates both the link and the QR code for a review, free, right inside your own Business Profile. It has one limitation.
"Currently, review QR codes can only be generated using a browser on a computer, not on mobile devices."
Google Business Profile Help, read September 14, 2026
Try it from a phone and you will not see the code and will assume it does not exist. From a computer it takes a few minutes, and the same limitation applies as the printed sign above: it cannot be redirected, and it never counts how many times a guest used it. The whole process, plus what a printed code cannot do on its own, is on the free QR code page.
None of the four options promise more reviews or a better ranking, and Google itself does not promise ranking either:
"Third parties can't promise or directly influence your business ranking."
Google Business Profile Help, read September 14, 2026
Start by checking whether the software you already use for bookings or orders has this built in. If it does, and reaching only the people who went through it is enough, you are done and it costs nothing extra. If not, and all you want is a code on the counter with no monthly bill, a printed sign works, but check first where the code leads and whether it can be redirected.
If you have emails or phone numbers for your customers and want to reach them in bulk, a platform makes sense, but do not rely on it for guests who never entered that database. If you also want to know whether something changed on your Google listing, not just a code on a counter, that is the reason to consider a licence: none of the other three options watch your listing at all.
What happens when a guest actually picks up a card, meaning what the screen shows and what happens to a message they write, is on the review card page. Anyone buying an NFC card anywhere, from us or elsewhere, should read the four supplier questions on the NFC card page.
Every citation on this page comes from one of these pages. The link goes to the original source, not to our summary of it.
$599a year, plus $79 for each extra card. See the full price.