Static vs dynamic QR codes, and why a £1 code never expires
Almost every QR code company sells you a subscription. We don't, and the reason comes down to one technical decision that nobody explains properly. Here it is in plain English.
The short version
A static QR code has the web address baked into the black-and-white pattern itself. The pattern is the address. Nothing sits in between, so there is nothing to keep paying for and nothing that can be switched off.
A dynamic QR code has a short link baked in instead —
something like qr.example.com/a7f3k. Scanning it takes the
phone to that company's server, which then forwards it to your real
address. That forwarding is a service, and services get billed monthly.
The useful consequence: with a dynamic code you can change the destination later. The dangerous consequence: if the forwarding stops, every code you ever printed stops working at the same moment.
Side by side
| Static (what we sell) | Dynamic (the subscription kind) | |
|---|---|---|
| What's in the pattern | Your actual web address | A short link on someone else's domain |
| Cost | £1 once | Typically £5–£20 a month, forever |
| If the provider closes | Keeps working — they were never involved | Every printed code stops working |
| If you stop paying | Nothing happens; there is nothing to pay | Codes usually break, sometimes immediately |
| Change the destination later | No — you'd generate a new code | Yes, that's the point of it |
| Scan tracking | None from us — use your own analytics | Yes, via their server |
| Who sees your scan data | Only you, on your own website | The QR provider, on every single scan |
| Pattern density | Slightly denser for long addresses | Always short, so always sparse |
Why this matters more than it sounds
The failure mode is not hypothetical, and it is unusually cruel. A charity prints 5,000 donation leaflets with a dynamic code. Eighteen months later a card expires, or the free tier changes, or the company is acquired and sunsets the product. Every one of those leaflets is now landfill, and the charity finds out from a supporter who couldn't donate.
The code on the paper looks completely fine. It scans. It just arrives at a dead page, or worse, at a parked domain that someone else now owns. There is no way to fix it except reprinting everything.
That risk is the actual product being sold with a dynamic code. You are renting the continued existence of a redirect. For a large brand with a procurement team and a marketing budget, that can be a fine trade. For a village hall printing 200 posters, it is a bad one.
When a dynamic code genuinely is the right answer
We'd rather send you elsewhere than sell you the wrong thing. Pay for a dynamic code when:
- You truly cannot know the destination at print time — a conference programme finalised after the signage is printed, say.
- You need per-code scan analytics that you cannot get from your own site's analytics.
- You're running A/B tests and need to reroute traffic between destinations mid-campaign.
- The code is going on something permanent and expensive — a metal plaque, an engraved bench — where the destination genuinely may outlive the URL.
In every one of those cases, budget for the subscription lasting as long as the printed thing does. That is the real cost, and it is the part that tends to be left out of the comparison.
The trick that gets you both
There is a way to have a permanent code and a changeable destination, and it costs nothing extra: point the static code at a page on your own website, and change what that page does.
Buy a £1 static code pointing at yourcharity.org/give. Today
that page shows your donation form. Next spring you can redirect it to a
campaign page, then to a JustGiving appeal, then back again. The printed
code never changes because it never needs to — it points at an address
you control.
You keep the editability. You just keep it on your own domain, where nobody can switch it off or start charging for it. The only requirement is that you own the domain and keep renewing it, which you are doing anyway.
A note on what we don't do
We don't offer dynamic or editable codes at all, and we don't plan to. Partly that's principle — we'd rather sell something finished than something rented. Partly it's honesty about scale: this is a one-person business, and a redirect service is a promise to keep a server alive for decades. We're not going to make a promise that our own business model can't guarantee.
A static code asks nothing of us after you've bought it. That is exactly why we can stand behind it. More about who's behind this.
Make one now
£1, with your logo and colours, delivered as PNG and SVG. It will still work in twenty years.